by SEAN BURKE – THE once-conservative Liberal Party has barely enough members to staff half of NSW’s polling booths.
Former Liberal Branch President Mark White posted on social media last week that the Party now has fewer than 4000 financial members.
- The Liberal Party has been hollowed out. All that’s left is a shell — and the machine that owns it.
- Your footy club is more democratic.
- This is a trajectory to certain death. It seems unstoppable now.
“I’m reliably told that the NSW Lib’s financial membership is now under 3800,” Mr White said.
Nationally, he said, the Party had sunk from a peak of 197,000 to less than 40,000 members today.
INCAPABLE
In NSW, with as few as 3800 members, the Liberals are incapable of properly staffing the State’s 7000 polling booths.
This mirrors the demise of the Australian Democrats Party, which resorted to delivery van drivers dropping off self-help boxes of How To Vote cards in the early 2000s.
The Democrats, which formed in 1977, ceased to have parliamentary representation by 2007.
Mr White said the current position of the Liberals also appeared to be terminal.
“This is a trajectory to certain death. It seems unstoppable now,” he posted.
“When Parties were mass organisations, members funded them, members staffed them and members wrote the ideas.
“But when the members left, something had to fill the shell. That’s the machine, the think tanks, the investment funds, the consultants and taxpayer subsidies.
“The machine exists because the members don’t.”
According to Mr White’s social media post, voters have followed members out the door.
“The major Parties’ combined vote was nearly 100 per cent in the 1950s, 90 per cent into the 1980s and is now below 60 per cent.
“The Parties were hollowed out decades ago. What’s left is a shell — and the machine that owns it.
“Your footy club is more democratic than your government.”PC
The demise of any Party or ideology is usually caused by intellectual laziness. The Liberal Party of the UK, the Australian Democrats and the former DLP have disappeared. Inability to craft a clear narrative based on one’s fundamental principles is death to any Party trying to harvest public opinion and, thus, votes. Since the 1970’s the Liberal Party has rested on its laurels and compromised bit-by-bit with the incessant surge to the Left. Seemingly comfortable or morally nice ideas have gone unchallenged and disastrous economic and social outcomes have now dragged our society down. The march through the institutions by well-organised, motivated Leftist thinking is now fully on show. It will continue until a principled classical liberal set of policies is enunciated fearlessly from its proponents to challenge seemingly (that word again!) nice and comfy ideas of giving everything to everyone with a claim. Liberal social and economic thinking must win by conviction and principle, rather than by default that weakly bleats “we are not as bad as the other lot”. If that’s your best claim, then you ARE as bad as the other Parties.
I want to vote Liberal, but I’ve found it impossible to do so since 2016. The party has become radicalised by gays and climate lobbyists who care nought for the well-being of my family.