The writer is in Australia.
When the so-called ‘moderate’ MPs in a Westminster conservative political party remove a sitting Prime Minister from their own party, one who has delivered a majority government but is to the right of these moderates, the long-term effects are not good. Back in 1990, and after delivering 11 years of majority governments, Maggie Thatcher was knifed by the wets or moderates in the British Tory party. It is arguable that the party has never recovered. Sure, it won elections – we had 14 years of Tory governments in the UK until Keir Starmer won for Labour last year. But those Tory governments under David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak governed full on as Labour lite (to not so lite) ones. Liz Truss was almost immediately forced out for trying to shift direction. Spending, up. Taxes, up. Total capitulation on the culture wars that relate to schools, patriotism, free speech, massively over-powerful unelected judges, attacking the democratic parts of the constitution, over-the-top huge immigration, being prepared to appoint actual conservatives to anything and being afraid to take on the worst aspects of multiculturalism. And don’t forget for two-and-a-half years a stunning willingness to travel down the path of lockdown thuggery, weaponising the police, embracing ‘nudge’ propaganda, closing schools and spending on steroids, all to ape the approach of the Communist Chinese politburo. Right now it’s an open question whether the world’s oldest political party, the British Conservative Party, will be able to survive the coming electoral inroads of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party – such is the total lack of trust that its base voters have in anything the Tory leaders promise or pledge. (It’s not easy to run the line ‘okay, we made these promises four times in the past and never delivered, in fact did the opposite, but this time guys, well, we double-promise-cross-our-hearts that this time it’ll be different’.)
My claim is that something a little bit similar has happened to the Australian Liberal Party. It has not recovered from its axing of the man from the Right-side of the partyroom who was one of the most effective Opposition leaders ever and who had delivered the party a large majority government in 2013. He was defenestrated by his own party MPs. (And yes, I know Tony Abbott was a disappointment on free speech and a bunch else beside when in office but as I said back then, “if your answer to Abbott is Malcolm Turnbull then you are the problem, not Tony”.) Since then we have seen the same pattern as in Britain. The partyroom is hopelessly divided between Black Hand Gang wets and what I would call ‘actual conservatives’. The former want to park the Liberal Party an inch to the Right of Labour and then move Leftwards as soon as Labour does. They revel in focus groups and shun value-based campaigning. Truth be told, many were quietly for ‘Yes’ as regards the Voice, at least until the writing was on the wall. Very little concern for free speech. And as with the British Tories, we had myriad supposed ‘liberal’ MPs who disgracefully embraced lockdown thuggery at least as enthusiastically as their British cousins.
All of which brings me to the current Coalition election campaign. It has been pretty woeful. But why? My guess here is that it boils down to trying to drive down the middle between moderates and conservatives in the partyroom. If Team Dutton had come out bravely and run an election on pulling us out of Net Zero, with all the massive economic advantages that would entail, I think the Coalition would have romped home – despite the vitriol the ABC and Fairfax Press would have thrown at them. If it’d come out way earlier and harder on immigration cuts (because 100,000 isn’t that big a cut and anyway, do you believe they would follow through?), taking on the big business and university lobbies that disgracefully funded and full-on supported the ‘Yes’ Voice campaign, it would have romped home. A values-based campaign would have been more like Pierre Poilievre’s in Canada. (And if Poilievre’s Tories win and Dutton loses the attempt to blame Trump will be patently laughable, remembering that Trump has relentlessly mocked Canada and that three-quarters of Canadian exports go to a US putting tariffs on them. Actually, a Poilievre win should shame the Dutton campaign team for the rest of their working lives.)
The incoherent half-matching of Labour spending pledges and refusal to fight the culture wars that so desperately need fighting all seems to stem from trying to keep both camps in the partyroom if not happy, then not incandescently angry. Call it the ‘let’s try at all costs to win Tim Wilson’s seat back from the Teals’ strategy. And boy oh boy do I hate that strategy and think it worthless.
So, Dutton’s campaign launch praising of the Morrison government approach to lockdowns won not a single vote but sure got an awful lot of Right-of-centre voters like me thinking we might preference a minor party before the thuggish Libs. Ditto for Dutton evading the ‘what’s a woman?’ question, as though there wasn’t loads of political capital in being honest and not cowardly and afraid of people and groups who’d never vote for you. Ditto for Dutton’s support of the eSafety Commissioner and for Kevin Rudd as ambassador? Why support them? And why hasn’t Labour’s failed Voice referendum self-indulgence been front and centre in the campaign? (You win if you think it’s because an awful lot of Lib MPs wanted a conscience vote and don’t want to drag that up again.) Why give Jacinta Price the Musk-like job of finding budgetary waste rather than a big-ticket cultural role? (You could be forgiven for thinking the idiots in campaign central were deliberately trying to sideline her.)
Likewise, why is it so hard to make political hay out of an Albanese Government that has seen living standards drop nearly 8% and electricity prices skyrocket? Correct answer: because you haven’t got the cojones to tell voters the truth. That Net Zero is impoverishing and totally stupid with the US now abandoning it and joining China (two new coal-fired plants a week) and India. No, Albo, Australia is not some moral beacon whose economic suicide any other countries will mimic. But commit to this idiocy, only 20 years slower, and your whole set of policies becomes incoherent. ‘You’ve agreed the world as we know it will end so tell me why we should be going slowly-slowly?’
Back on April 5th in the Spectator I argued that every Coalition campaign advisor should be fired. Three weeks on and the case for that is now blatantly clear, such is the value-free vacuum and incoherence of what we voters are being offered. Sure, maybe we can limp over the line. Let’s hope. But it beggars belief that a Government like this Albo one has the Liberal Party so afraid of its own shadow. Actually, make that afraid of the shadow of the Tony Abbott wing of the party, the one that Mr Dutton was supposed to represent.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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