Roger Franklin has a delightfully scathing Quadrant piece on the political outlook of the Liberal Party of Australia after the federal election yesterday.
Dissolve the Liberal Party
Glum, sad, angry, sinking into the slough of despond on this morning after the night before? Well don’t be, because there is much for which to be thankful in last night’s massacre.
As the Coalition casts about in shell-shocked incomprehension for its next for-the-moment leader the pretenders to that hollow crown will talk about reclaiming the centre and rejecting the ‘hard right’ of which they fancifully imagine a discarded milquetoast called Peter Dutton to be an example. They will nod as the pundits pronounce Australia a bastion against Trumpian extremism, and they will swear their fealty to multiculturalism, Net Zero, censorship, upholding Section 18C, and appearing as habitually outnumbered guests to be ritually humiliated on the ABC they have refused to do defund.
The whole piece is well worth reading, even for those whose familiarity with Australian politics is as sketchy as mine.
Never forget it was the Liberals who launched the office of the eSafety Commissioner, who shunned Craig Kelly for speaking bluntly about the climate scam, who took months to decide the Voice was an abomination and joined with Labor to support laws ostensibly aimed at safeguarding children from the nastier bits of the Internet but which will mean in effect that everyone must prove their age and identity if they are to go online. Yes, it would have been preferable if the Coalition had won — preferable as is ringworm over scabies.
Now Labor has three years to do its worst, which it will without a doubt. Think here of Victoria, where the alleged conservatives stand for nothing and fall for anything. Treaty and ‘reparations’ for race-hustlers, tick. Oppose the Covid lockdowns, never. In what is now almost 26 years, the state’s Coalition parties have held power for only four of them — a period in which their only legacy is a memory of the speed with which they were bundled out of office. Premier Jacinta Allan is on the nose, the polls all say, but that disfavour proved no impediment to federal Labor not only retaining seats seen as in jeopardy but, or so it appears, quite likely picking up another one. Victorian Labor, malodorous as it is, treats the opposition with the contempt it richly deserves. When deputy leader David Southwick thinks it a good idea to boast on Twitter that his party’s policies and goals are even more carbonphobic than Labor’s, what you’ve got is a pair of deaf ears either side of an empty space.
Glum, sad, angry, sinking into the slough of despond on this morning after the night before? Well don’t be, because there is much for which to be thankful in last night’s massacre.
As the Coalition casts about in shell-shocked incomprehension for its next for-the-moment leader the pretenders to that hollow crown will talk about reclaiming the centre and rejecting the ‘hard right’ of which they fancifully imagine a discarded milquetoast called Peter Dutton to be an example. They will nod as the pundits pronounce Australia a bastion against Trumpian extremism, and they will swear their fealty to multiculturalism, Net Zero, censorship, upholding Section 18C, and appearing as habitually outnumbered guests to be ritually humiliated on the ABC they have refused to do defund.
The whole piece is well worth reading, even for those whose familiarity with Australian politics is as sketchy as mine.
Never forget it was the Liberals who launched the office of the eSafety Commissioner, who shunned Craig Kelly for speaking bluntly about the climate scam, who took months to decide the Voice was an abomination and joined with Labor to support laws ostensibly aimed at safeguarding children from the nastier bits of the Internet but which will mean in effect that everyone must prove their age and identity if they are to go online. Yes, it would have been preferable if the Coalition had won — preferable as is ringworm over scabies.
Now Labor has three years to do its worst, which it will without a doubt. Think here of Victoria, where the alleged conservatives stand for nothing and fall for anything. Treaty and ‘reparations’ for race-hustlers, tick. Oppose the Covid lockdowns, never. In what is now almost 26 years, the state’s Coalition parties have held power for only four of them — a period in which their only legacy is a memory of the speed with which they were bundled out of office. Premier Jacinta Allan is on the nose, the polls all say, but that disfavour proved no impediment to federal Labor not only retaining seats seen as in jeopardy but, or so it appears, quite likely picking up another one. Victorian Labor, malodorous as it is, treats the opposition with the contempt it richly deserves. When deputy leader David Southwick thinks it a good idea to boast on Twitter that his party’s policies and goals are even more carbonphobic than Labor’s, what you’ve got is a pair of deaf ears either side of an empty space.
5 comments:
I know Australia as it was - The Lucky Country. The total dedication to the pre-dawn ANZAC day , the camaraderie, the Meat Raffle and The daily Ceremony in RSL clubs. The total incomprehension of anyone wanting to vandalize public facilities - " But why would they want to do that?!! ". The amiable melange of races, great great grandchildren of Europeans, Asians (I mean all Asians, from Urals or Turkie to far eastern Russia, and from Franz Josef Land to Indonesia. Not just the lazily denominated Indian Sub-Continent.
Melbourne is reputed to have more Greeks than Greece.
The East Asians are not invisible as they are in UK. Not PoCs.
And all getting on, all classifying themselves as Aussies.
But the past is a different country.
Nice to see the slough of despond getting a mention, together with the assumption that folk would know of it.
I am watching from from New Zealand. The Liberals are the colonial cousins of the British Tory party and have the same self destructive traits, not having any ideas and just turning up for the pay packet and perks .
Doonhamer - even having never been there and watching from thousands of miles away, that's my impression - UK style decline. Maybe in some respects worse because Australia doesn't seem old enough to decline in the same way as the UK. Common factors of course.
John - that's my impression, they just turn up for the money and perks and go along with political fads, however absurd.
There are certainly similarities with/to the Conservative and Unionists here. Not true conservatives, very much wet far more than dry, dab hands at lying and putting up weak leaders when it’s the other side’s “turn”. We could compare with/to the C of E as well … pretend Christians in the most respectable way which people can see.
James - as in the UK, one of the political puzzles is why voters vote for parties which persist in serving up weak leaders and liars. It's all fairly transparent.
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