by PAUL COLLITS – THERE are two Robert Menzies Institutes in Australia. One is run by Nick Cater, and the other by the University of Melbourne, aka The Parkville Asylum.
So named by the legendary and now vanished Professor Bunyip, who may or may not have been Imre Saluszinsky.
- There is not the remotest evidence that Menzies would be a 21st century wet.
- The Liberal Party is now a narrow church, and it ain’t run by conservatives.
- It has done its very best to excise genuine conservatism from the Party.
No prizes for guessing the one to whom Malcolm Turnbull has just granted an interview. What a privilege for them.
There is not much that is new or unexpected from the former Liberal in name only (LINO) prime minister.
RICH
His two main contributions here have been to the rich literature of Godwin’s Law – invoking comparisons with Hitler – and to the endless Liberal quest to appeal to Robert Menzies to bolster one’s arguments.
His invocation of Hitler involved Tony Abbott’s supposed endorsement of Donald Trump and Viktor Orban of Hungary. Turnbull wheeled in the late Menzies, inevitably, to prove his own Liberal virtue.
Here’s how it went: “Mr Turnbull then attacked his Liberal predecessor for defending the ‘authoritarian populism’ of Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“Menzies would look at Trump or an Orban and say ‘Man, I’ve seen that film before; it’s called Mussolini and Hitler’,” Mr Turnbull said.
“But this is what so many people on the so-called conservative side of politics are adopting, including in the Liberal Party.
“I mean, Tony Abbott extols Viktor Orban and says he is the type of conservative leader other nations would like to have.”
On the one hand, it is a legitimate and interesting question as to what Menzies would think of many aspects of modern politics. On the other, many might now argue that who really now cares what he would think?
But let’s play the Turnbull Menzies invocation game.
What would Menzies make of the COVID State, for example?
Of the crushing of small business during the plandemic? Of the destruction of individual rights and freedoms? Of mandates? Or serial, official lying? Of handing control of policy to unelected bureaucrats?
What would Menzies make of the climate grifters who now control his Party?
The American congressman Scott Perry recently put it to John Kerry that he and his globalist climateers were spending $1.6 quadrillion dollars on solving a problem that didn’t exist. The first time I have seen the word “quadrillion”.
Turnbull is on board with this. Would Menzies be? Would Menzies endorse fiscal incontinence, executive overreach, national cabinets, the abandonment of the rule of law, foreign policy recklessness, cosying up to China, republicanism and the Voice?
There is not the remotest evidence that Menzies would be a 21st century wet.
No, Turnbull’s take on Menzies is quite bizarre, not grounded in reality or any understanding of either politics or Menzies and a figment of the fetid swamp that is his imagination.
One thing we do know is that Menzies stopped voting for the Liberal Party he founded a mere five years or so after he retired in January 1966.
It seemly highly unlike that Menzies would be remotely enamoured of the modern progressive, globalist, green, woke (PGGW) class that now runs his old Party.
It is understood he voted for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in his later years. The National Civic Council, like the DLP, founded by BA Santamaria is, today, the very antithesis of the PGGW class.
The values of the NCC are not a million miles from both Tony Abbott nor Viktor Orban – and many of Trump’s policies and values would also have appealed to Santamaria’s successors.
Menzies, we know, was rabidly anti-communist. The policies pursued by Turnbull were far closer to the Communist Party than the Liberals of the Menzies tradition.
The Communists are now almost of one mind with the Davos Class of which Turnbull is a paid-up member.
Turnbull opined that the Liberal Party might not even exist in a few years. On this, he might be right, but – almost inevitably with poor, dumb Malcolm – for the wrong reasons.
To suggest, as he does, that the modern Liberal Party is in thrall to Orban or Trump-like principles, is pure fantasy.
The Liberal Party is now a narrow church, and it ain’t run by conservatives.
It has done its very best to excise genuine conservatism – and, yes, Turnbull actually claimed to have been a student of Edmund Burke’s – from the Party.
At the risk of repetition, think Nicolle Flint, Craig Kelly, George Christensen, Gerard Rennick, Moira Deeming. Centrists all. And all shunted.
Would One Nation and the United Australia Party even exist, and garner substantial votes, if the Liberal Party were conservative? Nope.
If the Liberal Party ceases to exist any time soon, it won’t be the fault of those who are no longer allowed to even be in the building.
As to Hitler and Mussolini, I think that far more apt comparisons are with the World Health Organisation, the World Economic Forum, Tony Fauci, Daniel Andrews, Professor Halpern (Mr Nudge) and Brad Hazzard.
Anyone more self-aware and philosophically savvy than Turnbull would know this.
John Howard made mistakes, to be sure, big ones, in addition to doing wonderful things and providing Australia with good government for over a decade.
No mean achievement in these postmodern political times. His two greatest non-policy errors were accepting Turnbull into his Cabinet, and, years later, helping persuade Turnbull not to leave politics after Abbott won the leadership in 2009.
The latter, in particular, had profound and deleterious consequences for our polity. This week was but a small reminder of those consequences.PC
Turnbull is no longer even a LINO, now sees himself a full flown Lefty elite, delivered to us by divine providence. Several more like him are still there. The party of Menzies really needs to clean house and start again.
This is situation normal for Malcolm. He has never grown up. Once a bully always a bully. What Malcolm has yet to grasp is that the majority of the people couldn’t care less about Malcolm’s views on anything Liberal.
Just ignore the p***k and he might go away!
Sadly, Cliff, there’s no chance of that!
Chris Ottaway.
Turnbull! The personification of a Narcissist!
Google tells us this condition, NPD, needs a medical diagnosis, mainly affects men and cannot be cured. Symptoms include an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others feelings, an inability to handle criticism and a sense of entitlement.
Unfortunately there were not enough leaders in the Liberal Party at the time of the disastrous usurpation of Tony Abbott to show some common sense and identify this disorder before they inflicted Turnbull upon us!
He has left an indelible stain on the party and he won’t be satisfied until all of his enemies are completely erased. It would seem that he has plenty of other infiltrators to do his dirty work for him as one by one they are prised from their grip.
“John Howard made mistakes, to be sure, big ones, in addition to doing wonderful things and providing Australia with good government for over a decade.”
Howard’s greatest mistake was thinking Turnbull would be an asset to the Liberal Party, and then going on to endorse the creep!
So many examples of how gutless the LNP are; not just turdball crapping on them continually and not being expelled, or little Johnnie still being held out as the elder statesman of the party but now I understand the green ex leader of the libs in WA, Zak Kirkup, is re-nominating. Nothing could be more symbolic of how gutless and out of touch the libs are if this woke posy gets back in.
Turnbull continues to court expulsion because he knows it won’t happen: Liberals don’t have the nuts to do it. And anyone chuntering on about what they think a man born over 120 years ago (Menzies) would think now is quite mad.
Menzies was a great leader for his time. End of.
Meanwhile the Communist far-left Union Labor movement is imploding quickly.
They will be mortally wounded when the referendum result is a landslide of No.
Exactly. Albo is clearly in panic-mode, as the double-dissolution bluff attests. This threat was nothing to do with social housing for a million migrants, it was designed to pre-empt the catastrophic loss of authority that the ALP government will endure following a No vote. The civil war on the Left after the voice crashes and burns will be a wonder to behold.
The rise and now fall of the LINO left movement.
Considerable but not irreparable damage done to the real Menzies Liberal Party of Australia.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton appears to be on the recovery path now.
He has always been in the wrong party, just no one has the guts to throw him out