by PAUL COLLITS – THE languishing Liberals are still in a state of confusion about who they are, why they exist and about who they represent.
Yes, we have had the outstanding “Dutts found his voice” effort on the Aboriginal question, the promotion (in every sense of the word) of the wonderful Jacinta Price, and the recovery of some Tony Abbott-style attack dog tactics over lying Labor’s Brittany affair.
- Eventually, we have to ask is Bragg a Labor plant? Is Archer? Are all the moderates ALP plants?
- The obvious answer is, if it quacks like a duck…
- Inner-city elites do not vote Liberal, and never will. They abhor the Liberal Party.
But Dutton’s progress and the opportunity for a Labor kill might be outliers.
The question for the Liberal Party is not “how do we get back into government?” But rather, “why are we here?”
PROBLEM
In other words, we still have “the problem”. The Liberal Party problem.
His name is Andrew Bragg. But before we get to him, some context is needed.
First, we had the replacement of the late, great Jim Molan for the Senate. Jim was solidly centre-Right. So, the contest to replace him came down to, err, two “moderates”.
(Moderates were used to call “wets”, a perfectly apt descriptor they naturally sought to ditch. The Moderates love everything the progressive Left does, only they occasionally back capitalism more vigorously than the ALP Left).
Next, we had the debate over who would conduct the “review” of the recent NSW Liberal defeat.
They couldn’t even agree on which old Liberal stalwart to wheel out to dance around the real issues.
Then there is the ongoing silence over the malignant shadow over the Party of the lobbyist whose name no one (apparently, still) dares to speak.
Finally, determining the issue of the NSW Liberal Presidency has taken up considerable energy and time, only to be “resolved” in a factional agreement that threw up failed MP Jason Falinski as the third president in a year.
Falinski is a political gnome of epic proportions and, inevitably, a factional appointment.
Just prior to losing his seat in 2022, Falinski said: “Any reasonable analysis of the past six years would show we won much more than we lost, but we obviously have not done a good enough job of communicating that with people…”
By “we” he means “moderates”, not “Liberals”. The Left faction and its ideology trumps “the Party” and its core values.
It was an attempt – that failed miserably – to ward off the Teals. Teal voters are “the people” referred to above.
Who cares about the electoral prospects of the failed Liberal Party, you might well think?
None of this would matter, except that our country is being thrown to the wolves by the lunatic, demonic mob now occupying the Treasury benches in Canberra.
Democracy and the prospects of the voiceless (the real voiceless) remain dire without an effective opposition to the suicidal direction of travel.
But Liberal heads are still in the sand. Worse than this, there are active agents working to wreck the future of the Party.
Let’s name them. Apart from Falinski, there is the aforementioned Bragg.
His new girlfriend, former Member for Reid Fiona Martin (each of them having dumped their spouses), – and their great mate Bridget Archer.
The media sniffs an emerging “power couple”.
The Daily Mail gushed: “Love is in the air as top Liberal senator and a high-profile politician get together after breaking up with their spouses – after he praised her as a ‘super impressive’ candidate.”
HAVOC
What a puff piece. Bragg a top Liberal Senator? I think not. As for Martin, falsely described here as a “high profile politician”, has created havoc for Liberal Party unity and for what many still hope are Liberal core values.
In February last year Dr Martin defied the Party by crossing the floor to strike down religious freedom laws.
Senator Bragg would have also voted against the bill had it reached the Senate, multiple media outlets reported.
This caused the Liberals to abandon an admittedly less-than-perfect three-year effort to introduce protections for religious schools from strategic attacks by the LGBTQ brigade, post the same sex marriage victory in 2017. So, not inconsequential.
And let us ignore the old, self-serving canard that preserving religious freedom means bullying gays.
Next, we come to Archer, a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records’ entry for the most times a politician has crossed the floor (27 times since 2019, to be exact).
It is a wonder that she knows where her seat in the Senate actually is. Archer wants a “revolution” in the Liberal Party. She wants to “pick a fight with her own side”.
According to The Conversations’ Michelle Grattan, she wants “root and branch reform”.
What, like in NSW? Archer argues the strength of the Liberal Party has been for members to be able to sometimes disagree and to do so respectfully.
She clearly has a sense of humour, if not of history.
So, it is okay to stack branches to get rid of conservatives, is it? Like they tried in South Australia
It is okay to block the candidacy of true independent thinkers like Noel McCoy in NSW, because he dared to challenge the idiot, malign lockdowns.
Archer claims the Liberal Party is currently “unelectable”.
If correct – and it may well be – it is because it has governed badly, broken promises, done things that it never said it would, embraced policies from the other side, ignored its own members, effectively disenfranchising them, forgotten the large silent minority who have abandoned both major Parties, embraced pork barrelling, handed over decision-making to unelected bureaucrats, and, over the past three years, smashed our freedom and rights into tiny pieces.
TONE DEAF
She claims a desire to talk to “middle Australia”. She wouldn’t know where to find them. She is politically tone deaf.
Archer has publicly called for a Liberal Party revolution.
According to Good Weekend Magazine: “Tasmanian Liberal MP Bridget Archer thinks the federal Liberals are unelectable in their current form and wants to ‘take the Party back’.”
Perhaps she hasn’t caught up with the fact that the Liberal Party is dying because it’s already had its revolution.
Another puff piece that is a gift to the Leftist media. They love communists in the Liberal Party.
They see Archer a “a jewel in the Liberal Party crown”. It gets the Moderates’ names in the paper. Win-win.
Bridget Archer has claimed (hilariously) that Menzies would approve of her approach and actions. Well, Menzies couldn’t even bring himself to vote for his former Party within five years of his retirement, such was his perception of their drift Leftwards.
He literally wouldn’t recognise the current lot. He simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend how someone like Archer found her way into the joint.
But is it Andrew Bragg who is the emerging leader of the wet pack, and the biggest threat to an authentic Liberal revival. Eventually, we have to ask is Bragg a plant? Is Archer? Are all of the moderates plants?
The obvious answer is, if it quacks like a duck…
Let us look, firstly, at Bragg and the May 2022 election aftermath, and see the evidence emerge.
Liberals must shun “conspiracy theorists” of climate wars, moderate Andrew Bragg says.
With some conservatives declaring that the Liberal Party needs to shift to the Right in the wake of Saturday’s electoral defeat, the remaining moderates, including Bragg, are rallying to ensure the new opposition leadership doesn’t write off inner-city professionals and lurch into populism.
Conspiracy theorists? Who are they? Tony Abbott? Professor Ian Plimer? Anyone who has seen through the climate lies? Write off inner-city professionals? “Lurch” into “populism”? Like listening to normal, non-Guardian-reading centrist voters from club sensible. Like doing what the few remaining Liberal Party members select them to do.
No, Bragg misreads the politics and his ideologically belongs across the aisle. Huffing and puffing about climate rectitude allows Bragg to virtue signal, the wets’ pastime of choice.
Inner-city professionals do not vote Liberal, and never will. They abhor the Liberal Party. And their core values are not those of the Menzian Liberal Party or of middle Australia.
DEFEAT
So determined is Bragg to get the “conspiracy theory” charge in there that he fails even to understand climate science 101. He simply spouts the same old moderate tosh proclaimed by Michael Photios after the Party’s ignominious NSW defeat in March.
Prior to his entry into politics, of course, Bragg was a paid-up member of the BlackRock investment management class. The private equity industrial complex. And he brought to the Liberal Party all of its unreconstructed ideological baggage – progressive, globalist, green, woke, COVID tyranny (PGGWC).
Bragg stated: “I think climate change, for example, has been too often captured in a culture war when it’s really about capturing a huge economic opportunity for our country. So I’ll be guided by what the foreign investors are saying about the need for us to send the right signals rather than any sort of conspiracy theorists.”
He said the Party needed to embrace the transition to low-emissions energy. “We need to see this as an economic challenge and a huge economic opportunity for our country, especially for the regions where a lot of these new jobs will be – and we just need to get on with the job.”
Put simply, he is a climate nutter of the Chris Bowen kind, who believes in the fantasy of global warming and climate “emergency” and, like Matt Kean, is willing to destroy our national landscape so that his old mates in the equity investment industry can grow even richer while impoverishing the rest of us.
I am still failing to see how destroying our economy, causing blackouts and brownouts, sending the cost of power through the roof, and shutting down regional jobs, will “capture” an economic opportunity. Guided by foreign investors?
So, he is no doubt fully on board with the whole ESG movement of global corporatism. The elites who place their own ideological purity, gaia worship and personal enrichment ahead of the lives of ordinary folk. Why should anyone give a damn about foreign investors?
Ditch the culture wars. As if these were some ephemeral affair of little import to the lives of normal people.
What else has Bragg done and said? He worked for years for the Financial Services Council.
Its attitude to climate change policy is summed up as: “The FSC and its members support the emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050 and believe this is a positive step in ensuring stable policy settings are put in place to transition Australia to a lower emissions economy.”
For them, the 2022 lunatic climate bill was “a welcome first step”. Perhaps Bragg’s statement to The Guardian was simply lifted from an old FSC press release.
He is a friend of Malcolm Turnbull’s. He was leader of the Liberals-for-the-Yes case to inflict homosexual marriage upon us.
He said: “Great institutions evolve and marriage is no different.”
No, mate. Marriage has been trashed. It didn’t “evolve”.
He regularly appears, with other “modern” Liberals like Dave Sharma, at the Mardi Gras, decked out in his rainbow Liberal tee. He leads the Liberal friends of LGBTQ with, well, pride.
QUOTAS
He once volunteered (naturally) to step aside from a pre-selection contest “so they could select a woman”. Supports quotas for women in politics. Supports the Uluru “statement from the heart”.
He wrote a book on the Liberal case for national reconciliation. In other words, he has never, ever found a woke issue he didn’t love.
If he played cricket, Pat Cummins would probably have him in the Australian team. His nickname should be Davos Bragg.
And sure enough Bragg is one of the most high-profile Australians with ties to the World Economic Forum (WEF). He attended WEF’s Young Global Leaders school while being a federal senator.
He’s one of Klaus Schwab’s kids.
To the present…
This week Bragg, from (of course) the NSW Division of the Liberals, decided he would endorse a Channel Ten demand for a police investigation of the Brittany Higgins leaks.
Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian has exposed the behind-the-scenes goings on of Team Higgins (Lisa Wilkinson and Higgins’ Leftie boyfriend, David Sharaz, principally) prior to her going public with now decidedly shaky accusations of rape against Bruce Lehrmann.
A gift for the Leftist media, The Age, The Monthly, The Guardian, The New Daily and The Saturday Paper. It has allowed the issue to be shifted away from the core significance of the revelations.
Albrechten’s journalism has been a masterclass. We get to see behind the curtain. The outsider class doesn’t often get a win like this.
We should all be in her debt, and that of her colleagues working on this case. In a different way, their contribution to justice has been every bit as important as that of Hedley Thomas, who dedicated a large chunk of his career to putting a murderer (Chris Dawson) behind bars.
They have exposed Team Higgins in all its glory. And what a seedy, tawdry lot they have been shown to be. Giggling, hypocritical racists.
Cynical hatcheteers seeking to destroy opponents’ lives, without giving a toss. Strategic #MeToo radicals plotting a course towards personal enrichment (book deals, ludicrous government payouts) and fame (media appearances, fronting public protests), while creating a new phenomenon.
The celebrity victim. Aided and abetted by low rent Labor politicians who, with rat cunning, sniffed a political opportunity.
FALSE
I wonder if Team Higgins has ever heard of Carl Beech and what happened to him for, to put it very euphemistically, wasting the UK Met’s police time over false allegations of sexual abuse.
The latest Channel Ten play is a classic “look over there” strategy deployed by the Left. Rail against the leak, so as to distract attention from the utterly damning revelations from the leak. Pretend that this will “deter” actual rape victims from coming forward. From going to the police.
The problem for Ten and Team Brittany is that none of us can un-see that which we have seen. And heard. And been sickened by.
They have been revealed to be despicable chancers (and that’s being kind). The affair has consumed pants-on-fire Labor, especially Katy Gallagher and PM Albanese.
So into the fray rides Bragg.
“I think this whole thing has been a tawdry affair and it is hugely regrettable how it’s played out publicly,” he quipped.
“I don’t know how these messages have been put into the public domain. I expect that there will be a proper investigation into that. Because I mean, why would anyone come forward with allegations of assault if this is the result?”
Asked if he believed police should investigate, Bragg replied: “Well, there needs to be an inquiry to how this has happened. I mean, this can’t happen again. This is supposed to be a country which values the rule of law and proper process.”
Yes, Andrew, it has been tawdry, but not for the reasons you seem to be focused on. Rule of law? Que?
I am not sure why anyone would think that this affair would deter victims. No one “makes” a rape complainant reveal her identity, do book deals, appear on national television nor front huge public demonstrations.
Saying that it would, as Bragg, Archer, Zali Steggall (of course) and assorted Labor #MeToo elites have done, is a distraction and a lie. Another lie. All ideologically self-serving.
Three points. One, Bragg has kicked an own goal as a Liberal. An epic political blunder. Labor is on the run. They have been proven to be liars in the service of ideology and political gain.
Two, Bragg is playing to the #MeToo establishment in a pathetic attempt at virtue signalling. The real threat to genuine accusations of rape being believed is the glorification of those whose accusations are shown to be false.
Three, Bragg is playing Leftist-Liberal politics as a sacrifice to those to whom he offers fealty, and who will never vote for his Party.
NO FUTURE
And this guy and his mates are the future of the Liberal Party? If so, it has no future.
Certainly not as a broad church with conservative entry points and the possibility of non-factional conversations.
Whether or not it ever wins more elections, it will never win back the hearts and minds of the true inheritors of the Menzies tradition.
No doubt, Archer, Bragg and the rest will all be raising a glass to Sir Robert and to Brittany at the annual Black Hand dinner at the Cinnabar Chinese Restaurant in Canberra tonight.
Hosted by, of course, Michael Photios and Simon Birmingham. Nothing to Bragg about here.PC
From little things big things grow.
Roundup recommended.
Largely agree with you Paul, except that I’d challenge one important premise: who cares if the Liberal party is destroyed. It’s not worth getting them elected for the sake of being in government sans any conservative agenda, nor is it good enough to elect wets just to keep the ALP out. It’s deck chairs on the Titanic if that’s the best they’ve got. Peter Hitchens opined that the UK tories needed to be demolished and, thereafter, rebuilt. Failing that, what you get is the husk of a conservative party staffed by left-leaning people. Voting for One Nation & others in large enough numbers – even if it means several concurrent ALP governments – is what is needed to effect any change at all. If the LNP thinks they can get elected pandering to the “middle” [read: left] then that’s what they’ll continue to do.
‘The latest Channel Ten play is a classic “look over there” strategy deployed by the Left.’
Yes; it’s definitely a signature move – however, one doesn’t “deploy” a strategy (perhaps there’s a spot waiting for me on the editorial staff at politicom.com.au ; -)
I wouldn’t use a semi-colon after starting a sentence with “yes.” It’s an adverb so a simple comma would have been preferable, then you could have used the semi-colon in place of the dash to join the clauses, like this: “Yes, it’s definitely a signature move; however, one doesn’t”deploy” a strategy.”
Your way isn’t *technically* incorrect, but my way is more aesthetically pleasing. If anything, one would go for a colon rather than a semi-colon if not satisfied with the humble comma in that particular sentence.
Perhaps there’s a spot waiting for me as your supervisor!
Watch on. Just as the Coalition gains some momentum, Bragg will be found rowing in the wrong direction. His own.
Beyond redemption, whistling in the dark.
My membership of the Libs has not been renewed, and that is not part of the problem.
The whole nation needs to repent.
The whole nation needs a change of heart and Spirit.
Even those who see the problem are still thinking that they can do it themselves by “unity” without Divine help.
They might well be united in what they are against, but they are anything but united in what they are for, let alone who they are for.
Until we know to whom we owe allegiance, and willingly give it, we will ipso facto still be on a path of self destruction.
Amen. Preach it!
Hawke & Richo didn’t want him, but JH you did & look @ the damage he has caused with all the Labor-Lites now infiltrating the LP.
Believe millions like me have left the no longer genuine Conservative party, 60 years a member,voter except for 2016 & 2022,sad.
Most voters have abandoned the Abbott style right of politics. That’s why every State government on the mainland plus the federal parliament has a Labor government.
My prediction is that Labor will, over time, lose touch with voters and lose government to the LNP and Politicom will trumpet its tired old self justification that voters have seen the right wing light.
So, why are you here? I should remind you that the “Abbott style of politics” won an election in 2013 in a landslide, and that the Turnbull style of politics lost 14 seats three years later. But clearly you don’t do facts, do you?
Carry on troll.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott led the Coalition to victory in 2010, Labor lost all the seats they gained at the 2007 election and were forced into an alliance minority government to remain in office until the landslide defeat in 2013 that resulted in the Abbott Coalition Government taking over from Labor.
“Troll”
Good grief.
That’s a fascinating take given what we know in hindsight, I.e. Abbott is the last leader of any major party to genuinely run from the right, and he swept 90 seats, taking something like 25 from the ALP across 2 elections. Since then, a soppy-wet LNP has held on by the skin of its teeth before eventually losing. No robust conservative agenda has been argued for by the LNP for a decade.
How do voters abandon an option not presented to them? Certainly not offered by the Libs in any meaningful way. Stand for nothing wets remain the unelectable option in everywhere but the minds of woke focus groups.
If any reader has a vote in this NSW libs election on saturday for a new President, don’t vote for Falinski, vote for the dynamic Philip Argy. There’s simply no comparison. Falinski and his friends Sharma and Zimmerman all lost strong Liberal Party seats, just as the Lib left in WA lost 50 out of 52 seats in their parliament. Bragg likewise is a walking disaster for the party. Don’t go there!
The political ineptitude displayed by Andrew Bragg leaves me wondering why Peter Dutton doesn’t silence him. Bragg does good work in challenging the superannuation “industry”, and this is the knitting to which Dutton must make him stick (whilst he’s still there, as a coalition senator).
Great idea in theory, but that’s not how the inner workings of the Liberals operate. It’s a numbers game where the wets have the numbers. NSW libs are run by a backroom gay mafia, Dutton has his hands tied before the first engagement.
There’ll be no knights in shining armour emerging from within Liberal ranks, because while there are still talents there, they’ll get taken out internally at the first suggestion the wets wont get their way. Abbott was taken out as has been every potential representative voice since. The Braggs of the party will burn the joint to the ground before they concede even a millimetre towards the established values of Menzies.
The Liberal party is cooked, beyond its best before date. John Ruddick worked out how to make the Liberal party great again, let it die and represent the majority via a better more representative party.
We on the sensible centre right need to get our acts together and consolidate our efforts, there is nothing to be gained from hitting the Liberal Party with the defibrillator, it’s already brain dead and so riddled with parasites it stands no chance of ever recovering. Leave it to the Braggs and other unelectables. The last of them can switch off the lights and save the atmosphere from further wasteful emissions.
I’ve always thought that these Wets should be culled from the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party should admit that they made a mistake in pre-selecting them. It is politically do-able to dis-endorse these members’ Liberal status. I don’t care that they do on the cross bench. Don’t care if they then vote with Labor … they will show their true colours.
Preselect genuine Liberals to run the next election against them. Preselect early so that the candidates have time to canvass their electorates.
Yeah! Good old Cory thought that too.
Liberals: decimated in WA, SA and useless and irrelevant in victoristan. Lesson not learned. The issue is not being infiltrated by lefties, they are, the issue is not having integrity, guts, conviction or purpose. Even someone like our Tone who had plenty of conviction, when push came to shove, had no guts; and little johnnie is well in the running to be Australia’s worst PM.
For me the death knell was the Moira Deeming crap in victoristan. Unforgiveable.
Absolutely. Let’s hope Moira Deeming sets up a crowd-funding page. She’d be swamped with the cash neèded to fight her legal matter.
“Labor’s Plants Inside Liberal Party, the history timeline published at this link is interesting reading;
https://web.archive.org/web/20180815221759/http://stopturnbull.com/seething-for-power-1980-2000/
And consider the LINO left – Liberals In Name Only.
Dear ****,
You’ve heard it again and again from Labor and Voice activists.
They wrongly claim that Indigenous Australians have asked for the divisive Voice.
They wrongly claim that it’s a modest proposal that Indigenous Australians want.
You’ve heard me say time and again that this is a lie.
The Voice is not an invitation from all Indigenous Australians.
The Voice is not a modest request from all Indigenous Australians.
The Voice is not a modest proposal that Indigenous Australians say will help.
The Voice does not have overwhelming Indigenous support.
And now we have proof of their lie.
Polling done by GetUp’s Voice advocacy group ‘Passing the Message Stick’ proves it.
Their own polling shows almost half of all Indigenous Australia know “little or nothing” about the Voice.
Their own polling shows a full 25 per cent of Indigenous Australians DO NOT WANT the Voice.
Their own polling proves just how out of touch they are with the Indigenous Australia.
It’s also shown how desperate they are getting.
As the polls show the Yes vote drop below 50 per cent, Yes groups are resorting to nasty and divisive tactics.
One plan involves alienating, ostracising and dividing Indigenous Australians to the point that they feel so isolated that they begin to lash out and say “racist” things.
That’s the Yes camp’s plan to win over undecided voters.
It’s disgusting.
If you need to resort to tactics as gross as this, it’s just proof you have no faith in your own proposal.
It’s proof they don’t believe their own arguments for the Voice.
More than that, it’s proof of how this Voice is already dividing us.
It’s doing nothing for the REAL problems, it’s offering no REAL solutions, and it is doing REAL damage to our country.
It’s dangerous, it’s divisive, it’s a mistake, and Australians are saying NO.
Yours for REAL solutions,
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
Senator for the Northern Territory