As with Peter, Paul, and Mary’s signature 60’s peace anthem, Where have all the Flowers Gone, the wars and unravelling of the Liberal Party didn’t arrive on May 3. It has been a long time passing, with the rot starting in the lead-up to the 1996 election.
Much has been trawled over by the Turnbullian ‘moderates’ and their media mates about Menzies, his loss to Curtin, the disintegration of the United Australia Party, and the ‘Forgotten People’ speech culminating in the 1949 triumphant return under the banner of his new Liberal Party. The great man himself, (Turnbull who else?) once declared that the party Menzies created was not conservative. Tell that to those of us who grew up under Menzies and recall the communist wharfies who dubbed him ‘pig iron Bob’.
This narrative is seen among those now leading the parliamentary party ever backwards into insipid dithering – re-framing the Menzies legacy as not really being a conservative one. Sussan Ley and like-minded others are scrabbling around for relevance, making up the forlorn remnants occupying the Opposition benches. They are careerists with few exceptions and a big part of the problem. The message of May 3 unlearnt the medicine spat out, as with the ‘broad church’ of Laodicea of which the Apostle John was inspired to castigate in Chapter 3 of Revelation:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Go-getters, plotting and scheming their forte, are driving the Liberal Party into this snake-pit – absence of a scintilla of common sense being the common denominator. Having been cloistered, pampered, and molly-coddled as children, never as much seen a moving axe, wielded a pick and shovel, or run a small business – they blather on about spending five minutes doing so in order to tack it on to a CV.
How then could they ever be charged with fixing the problem, not only through lacking the insight to appreciate they are it, but also when they’re bereft of a sense of recent history? So here’s some relevant medicine that they need to consume rather than suck their thumbs until the urge to plot returns.
In 1996 Pauline Hanson as the Liberal candidate for Oxley, Labor’s safest Queensland seat, was dis-endorsed for remarks she made about spending on the Aboriginal ‘industry’. John Howard even stated that she would not be allowed to sit in the Liberal Party room if she won. Astonishing all, she received a swing towards her of 19.3 per cent taking the seat from Labor and ending with 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. It meant that even among a swag of traditional Labor voters, her message resonated.
That message wasn’t heeded and the Liberals set about trying to destroy Ms Hanson. At the 1998 election she ran in the new seat of Blair and received nearly 36 per cent of the primary vote, streets ahead of the Liberals with 21.29, the Nationals with 10.25, and Labor with 25.29. For good measure the Liberal Party shunned her likewise most other preferences were directed away from Hanson so that by default, its candidate fell over the line.
The underlying message in the press was that those tens of thousands who voted for Pauline were racists, which was an an uppity two-finger salute to a significant slice of the electorate. Hanson has endured it all, including a term in prison after a wrongful conviction, to sit as distinguished Senator now with three other colleagues.
For 30 convoluted preferencing years, the Liberals eschewed the history lesson with abstruse relish, conned by Labor that won’t think twice about accepting preferences from the rabid left Greens before finally deigning to preference One Nation over Labor this time around. Too late, you’ve annoyed us once too often and we ain’t coming back…
Howard’s misjudgment in 1996 was compounded thereafter by an intransigent mission to destroy One Nation as if it was a more potent enemy than the socialists. Has everyone forgotten the DLP and its role in preferencing the Libs thus consigning Labor to the Opposition benches from the mid-fifties, after the Labor split, to 1972 and no bit player in Whitlam’s downfall either.
Granted Howard was successful as Prime Minister, but his intransigence found its zenith in the lead-up to the 2007 election. The electorate was tiring of him, he looking grumpy, worn out, and waiting in the wings was one Peter Costello. With no peer as a parliamentary performer, he was poised to make mincemeat of Rudd. Howard vacillated for a time and Janet Albrechtsen’s devastating piece telling him to go appeared to embolden him to stay on. In the premises, Rudd was the gift from Howard and the nation began its backward slide into debt and mediocrity with lashings of political correctness.
Instead of using history as a guide, it has become a vehicle for the naked ambition of the ‘moderates’.
So, many thanks for all that Mr Howard, along with the NSW branch of the Liberal Party still trying to outdo Labor from the left promising zero minus 20 perhaps out of some convoluted exegesis that the same left, which won’t ever vote for them in a pink fit, might just come around, please do petals, please. More zeros for you, too.
Where have all the Liberals gone, long time passing
Where have all the faithful gone, long time ago,
Where have all their voters gone,
Looking for conservatives every one,
When will they ever learn
When will they ever learn?
With apologies to Peter, Paul, and Mary.