by PAUL COLLITS – THE Liberal Party is a corrupted, careerist, utterly feminised and factionalised rabble that now claims to be “under new management”.
Observers of the Liberals’ death spiral – who even mentions the Nats anymore? – will have noticed that the Party has recently chosen new parliamentary and administrative leadership.
- The Liberal “broad church” ain’t that broad. Just two radically opposed wings.
- Menzies foresaw none of this. He would have rejected every last bit of it.
- He didn’t create a broad church, he very specifically created a Party for “the forgotten people”.
We all thought the Party was to be run by Tony Abbott as President and Angus Taylor as Parliamentary Leader. With Abbott doing most of the heavy lifting.
Their mission was not to win the next election – even when facing the worst government in Australia’s, and possibly anyone’s, history – it was simply to survive.
BUBBLE
This is in the light of the likely extinction level event that has overtaken the Party and about which many inside the Canberra bubble have failed to comprehend.
But it isn’t a duumvirate leading the restoration effort. No, it is actually a triumvirate. The third leg is Louise Clegg. Also known as Mrs Angus Taylor.
Clegg, with legal chops and extensive establishment connections, has assumed centre stage through her increasingly prolific writing and commentary.
She appears to be especially focused on One Nation. And, like all Liberals, she is largely navel gazing. But she is part of the A Team.
Clegg’s latest piece in what is becoming a regular column in The Spectator Australia is titled “Menzies would not have built One Nation”.
Maybe, maybe not. But I am sure Sir Robert would now be voting for Pauline Hanson’s cause.
As Constitutional Professor David Flint recently argued: “If you are going to endlessly invoke Ming, best you get him right!”
The Spectator’s Terry Barnes also provides a lead in: “The day after Newspoll joined other polls in putting One Nation at the top of the primary vote, Louise Clegg’s magazine article summed up why the Liberal Party could never be One Nation.
“But she also highlights – inadvertently perhaps – why One Nation is surging.
“We who still have faith in the Party of Menzies need to listen to the leavers of the broad church, and ask ourselves what we need to do regain their interest and trust,” Barnes continued.
“We can’t just hope the lost sheep will soon come home, dragging their tails behind them, even if we have justifiable reservations about the capabilities of their new shepherds to lead them.
“Tony Abbott has got that as the new Liberal president, but has Angus Taylor and his parliamentary ‘team’ got it too?”
Listen to the leavers? Nope. Too late for that. Oh, and One Nation isn’t just about the failure of the Libs, by the way.
There was a surge of support for One Nation after the recent budget from hades.
Labor’s vote has collapsed since. They didn’t go to the Libs. Nope. One Nation is taking votes off Labor.
Clegg wrote: “One of the more dubious claims in Australian politics at present is that One Nation represents the future of Australian conservatism while the Liberal Party represents its past.”
Nope. One Nation isn’t about “conservatism”.
It is about the people, accountability, the democratic social contract. About voting our way out of a crisis, absent violence in the streets.
Arguments over conservatism are now pretty much irrelevant musings over the issues of the day before yesterday.
Clegg opines: “However attractive a movement’s message may be, governing requires something rather more than just slogans, cut-through or charismatic leadership.
“It requires policy development and the management of hundreds of people exercising delegated responsibility. It requires people turning up, day after day, to do the hard and often thankless work associated with governing a country…
“That was a central challenge facing political movements and Parties when Menzies founded the Liberal Party. It remains a central challenge today.”
UNDERGRADUATE
I have to confess, I have no idea what she is talking about here, and so question its relevance, outside undergraduate debating circles.
Sadly, in view of Angus Taylor’s latest bizarre intervention (that the Liberals’ crisis is the result of Labor’s budget) it seems that confused, shallow thinking runs in the family.
No wonder Tony Abbott will have to do the heavy lifting for the triumvirate.
The rest of Clegg’s piece is about the Glorious Revolution and Edmund Burke.
I will yield to no one in my admiration for Burke. (Edmund, not Tony). But, really? This is obscure, ahistorical non-scholarship, at best.
Perhaps a few Liberal apologists need to remember that Menzies had given up on the Libs within a few short years of his departure in 1966.
And the Libs of the 1970s were, by several orders of magnitude, better than the dregs we have now.
Back then, it was populated by serious men – yes, mainly men. It was pretty unified ideologically, committed to fiscal rectitude and socially conservative.
The Party under Fraser was rabid in opposition, mediocre, but not disastrous, in government. The Nats (Country Party) weren’t yet Brokeback.
Yes, there were a few token wets. Like Don Chipp, who did the right thing and left the building.
But most of the dissidents were eccentrics (Billy Wentworth) or failed leadership aspirants (Snedden and Peacock).
The unity and supreme focus displayed was well demonstrated in October and November, 1975.
The Liberal decline has occurred, since, in stages.
First, we had NSW Premier Nick Greiner and his tilt at technocracy – urged and led by his Svengali, Gary Sturgess.
They planted the seeds, disastrous all, like outsourcing, new public management, corporatism and privatisation (a grifting play for all concerned).
Greiner was also a closet wet. Sturgess called his philosophy “dry and warm”. We now know what that really means.
OUTLIERS
Then we had John Howard’s “broad church”. Most of Howard’s troops fell into line. There were outliers, like Peter Costello who marched across the “sorry” bridge and who craved the top job.
But was the church that broad? Maybe the broad church was a construct, like multiculturalism, used to maintain a fiction of blended individualism, a battle of ideas, a meritocracy of sorts. A melting pot that works.
But no, the Liberal Party “church” is narrow, not broad.
There are two competing mini-fiefdoms, that is all. One is essentially populist (One Nation-lite) and the other globalist, DEI, high immigration and as green as Sarah Hanson-Young.
Yes, the Leftist members of the broad church support the Paris Agreement and net-zero. The church ain’t that broad. Just two radically opposed wings.
Which leads us to the corrupted, careerist, utterly feminised, factionalised Liberal rabble we now have.
Two Parties within one structure. A Party run by Turnbull globalists who, on occasions, gift leadership positions to (apparently) old style conservatives, who are all too scared to speak truth to Liberal Party power when it counts.
Menzies foresaw none of this. He would have rejected every last bit of it.
He didn’t create a broad church, he very specifically created a Party for “the forgotten people”. Deliberately. Consciously.
Sounds a bit familiar, n’est-ce pas? PC
I’m supporting One Nation because the Liberals and Nationals are no longer fit for purpose
An extract of a letter from Sir Robert Menzies to his daughter, ‘Letters to my Daughter’ (p 260), is as relevant today as it was then!
Nothing has changed!
“I write to you at a time when I think I have never felt worse about politics. The idiots who now run the Liberal Party drive me right round the bend …. But, of course, the main trouble is that we have the State Executive of the Liberal Party, which is dominated by what they now call ‘Liberals with a small l’ – that is to say Liberals who believe in nothing but who will believe in anything if they think it is worth a few votes. The whole thing is quite tragic.”
– Sir Robert Menzies, Letter to his Daughter, 8th of April 1974
Let’s face it, Angus Taylor could walk on water and cure cancer and still be ignored while the likes of Sky News, 2gb and other conservative media are enthralled by Pauline Hanson and One Nation. I think it’s only a matter of time before the big egos in One Nation clash big time. However, if she was to win enough seats to form government, she would have 50 or 60 newbies from who knows where. No experience in government. A few days after winning the election, they would have to be up and running the country. Who is going to be Treasurer, Attorney General, Foreign Minister, Health Minister, Education Minister, Defence Minister, Trade Minister and 20 other portfolios? Some say that the bureaucracy is experienced. You mean the Canberra bureaucracy that leans hard left and has been heavily politicised? THAT bureaucracy? And there would be no leaking to the Left from them? No attempts to sabotage? You are extremely naive to think there wouldn’t be. Even Pauline Hanson herself has never been part of a ruling government. Just imagine the chaos with all those newbies (some insufficiently vetted no doubt) running around like chooks with their heads chopped off. It has ‘disaster’ written all over it.
One Nation Party, previously Pauline Hanson One Nation Party, established in the State of Queensland and today headquarters in Queensland is reflecting the widespread anger and frustration most voters have with Albanese Labor Government elected in May 2022, now in the fifth year of government.
There can be no counter arguments to many things our Federal and Federation of States governments have done, but they were all democratically elected (preferential voting system noted) and therefore legislation by parliaments carried out in line with constitutional laws, and with the right to challenge in the High Court of Australia, and reviewed and sometimes blocked/rejected by the upper houses Commonwealth-Federal Senate and/or State Legislative Councils.
There is a trend to claim nothing achieved by the Liberal National Coalition in government yet from after WW2 they rebuild our nation and managed increasing economic prosperity.
Until 1972 when Whitlam Labor was elected and soon faced a double dissolution of Parliament election, well and truly defeated at that election and handed over a recession.
That recession was managed back to economic growth by Fraser Coalition (Treasurer Howard) and Hawke Labor inherited economic growth in 1983, by 1990 the worst recession since the Great Depression (60 years earlier) began.
To ignore Coalition government achievements, and errors of judgement in my opinion, and therefore claim “uniparty” which is misinformation looking at the “big picture”, and claiming that popularity by opinion polls by a party that did not gain even one House of Representatives seat at the 2025 election and had four Senators undermines the conservative side and hands Labor an advantage again. And many if not most political analysts are pointing out that as the trend indicates the most likely results in the foreseeable future are Labor governments returned to office based on what is described as “scattered preferences” by voters, and Labor voters swinging to maybe One Nation referencing Labor second. And similar by voters generally who are angry and frustrated with the poor governance displayed, the incompetence of past Labor government years.
Liberal Party of Australia has an on line list of achievements over many past years;
https://www.liberal.org.au/achievements-in-government
Maybe the One Nation supporters would be good enough to find the One Nation (ON/PHON) record of achievements over the past thirty years for comparison?
“Liberal Party of Australia has an on-line list of achievements over many past years […]”.
If the only way that the driver of a car can maintain situational awareness is by staring at his rear-view mirror, he will eventually find himself involved in a crash…
2 March 2016
“It is exactly 20 years since John Howard was elected prime minister and it’s all too apparent how much we have missed him in public life. Not one of his successors has come remotely near him in terms of his grasp of people, politics and policy, writes Terry Barnes.
It was 20 years ago today that John Howard defeated Paul Keating in the 1996 federal election. His victory ended 13 years of Labor rule and laid the foundations for the nearly 12 years of Coalition government.
For those who worked on the 1996 Coalition campaign, what we helped achieve that night is recalled with satisfaction and pride. Keating’s government was not only defeated, but thrashed. Overturning Labor’s comfortable parliamentary majority, Howard won a 40 seat majority: 94 seats over 49 Labor MPs and five independents, including three former Liberals.
The deliriously happy crowd in Sydney’s Wentworth Hotel, and the nation on television, saw Howard claim victory as a second-time-around Liberal leader, having learned from his mistakes and experience, and determined to lead a government with a tone and a substance very different from the aggressive and divisive arrogance of Keating….”.
The Liberals have nothing, that’s why they have to spend taxpayer dollars to be elected every time. Nothingness.
The “hard-nosed” Liberal machine operatives were warned, did nothing, told their members they were too “far right”. They are now inconsequential. Many will run to One Nation.
The rise of the Liberal left was first publicly noticed after November 2007 when the Howard Government was defeated by Rudd Labor, the Liberal MPs elected Dr Brendan Nelson as their new leader and Opposition Leader of the Liberal National Coalition parties. By 2008 he was replaced by the LINO left Malcolm Turnbull MP and then he was replaced by Tony Abbott in 2009 reflecting the close balance of power between the LINO left and traditional Liberal Party MPs.
Opposition Leader Abbott led the Coalition to defeat Gillard Labor at the 2010 election, and gained all the seats from Labor that they had gained with the Rudd Labor 2007 election, and forced PM Gillard into an alliance with Greens and others to form a minority government. She was soon replaced by Rudd returning as PM and in 2013 the Abbott led Coalition defeated Rudd Labor in a landslide.
By late 2015 PM Abbott was replaced by PM Turnbull, he remained until 2018 and was replaced by PM Morrison and resigned and left Parliament.
And from 2018 to 2022 the traditional Liberal positions were reintroduced including turning away from renewable energy transition and away from fossil fuels, and much more.
Apart from the brief one year after the 2025 election of Opposition Leader Ley the left have not been as influential as they hoped to be. And early 2026 the Liberal MPs voted for Angus Taylor as Leader, the National Party selected Matt Canavan unopposed.
Rear view mirror gazing and selective memories, that ignore the good achievements conveniently, and general criticism of like minded conservatives is not politically wise. After all, if we all want to get rid of Labor governments we need all conservatives working together to defeat the common political enemy.
Expert political analysts are indicating from recent elections, opinion polls and past trends that right now Labor looks like benefiting again from scattering of preference votes, like Labor supporters maybe voting One Nation and Labor second is just one example. And One Nation votes not preferring a Liberal National or LNP candidate!!!