The conservatives could sure do with some renewal, if you believe the latest polling.
A contribution to that renewal is claimed to have arrived in the shape of Kelly O’Dwyer, who comfortably won preselection for her former boss Peter Costello’s old seat of Higgins. The preselection battle attracted extra attention when claims of sexism in the campaign were floated by MP Sophie Mirabella. I’d just note that Mirabella is a veteran of hardball student politics and, however antediluvian the comments made, nothing in the story actually identifies how closely the person making them was to the preselection campaign of the other candidate.
In any case, O’Dwyer is undoubtedly bright, hard-working and articulate. With luck on her part, she is indeed likely to go far within the Liberal ranks before too long. But a few high-quality candidates in inner-urban seats isn’t likely to solve the conservatives’ problems on their own. While their hard-right rump continues to pull them away from anything that might be a) sensible policy, and b) electorally saleable, it hardly matters who’s lumbered with the job of selling it.
Is this O’Dwyer hard right also? She was an understudy of Costello, and has his full backing, so it stands to reason she might be. That being the case, her preselection isn’t likely to help with the problem of the party being laden down with cranks and right-wing types.
Mirabella is very much a Costello/Kroger person. Undoubtedly her comments were intended to protect O’Dwyer from negative commentary in the media from those supporting her primary male competitor in the preselection. I think it might be the first time in her life that Mirabella (usually on the social-Right of Attila the Hun) has played the gender card to her advantage within the Liberal party.
The bigger story in all this is to what extent the exception proves the rule in terms of the Club Fed Libs. When was the last time in the last ten years that a talented female was preselected to a winnable Federal seat in the Liberal party?
I suspect that the Club Fed Libs will have the largest percentage of males in winnable seats on their slates in recent memory. Dumb politics considering the strength of Club Fed ALP in attracting the female vote at the moment. Surely Turnbull would be desperate to follow David Cameron in forcing the membership to consider selecting a more diverse range of candidates but is completely hamstrung by the Minchin dinosaurs.
It’s hard to know, to be honest.
I should add that she is an acquaintance, but by the time I got to know her she was already a Costello staffer and consequently said very little about anything political anywhere near me.
My guess is that she’s as dry as dust economically, but where she lies on the social policy spectrum I really do not know.
On the diversity front, it’s worth noting that aside from her gender she’s very much in the tradition of inner-suburban Victorian Liberals.
Merchant banker, lawyer, Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne University.
“When was the last time in the last ten years that a talented female was preselected to a winnable Federal seat in the Liberal party?”
If you take ‘Liberal women who have won a seat and held it longer than a single term’ to be a decent match to ‘preselected in a winnable seat’, and go back to the last change of government, the list is:
Nola Marino (Forrest, 2007)
Louise Markus (Greenway, 2004)
Sophie Miribella (Indi, 2001)
Sussan Ley (Farrer, 2001)
Margaret May (McPherson, 1998)
Julie Bishop (Curtin, 1998)
Dana Vale (Hughes, 1996)
Sharman Stone (Murray, 1996)
Jackie Kelly (Lindsay 1996)
Teresa Gambaro (Petrie 1996)
Kay Elson (Forde 1996)
Trish Draper (Makin 1996)
I’ll leave the identification of ‘talent’ to others.
d
Pollbludger says:
• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports a decision by the state council and convention of the New South Wales Liberal Party to bring forward federal preselections so they are conducted on recently published draft redistribution boundaries is likely to secure preselection for Bronwyn Bishop in Mackellar and Philip Ruddock in Berowra. In further exciting news on the Liberal renewal front, Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Alby Schultz and Pat Farmer will again seek preselection in their respective seats of Hume and Macarthur. Farmer launched a spray at his constituents on the night of the 2007 federal election for failing to give him the margin he felt he deserved, and has since moved to the expensive north shore suburb of Mosman. Macarthur has been made a notionally marginal Labor seat under the draft redistribution.
Ah well darryl, there’s the rub. The only women I can identify on that list are ones taht I’d not instinctively put the talented tag onto.
Sophie Mirabella – a wannabe Tony Abbott. My mother’s electorate – god the country people hate her, they just can’t help themselves but vote conservative. Surely decent Nationals campaign would knock her off.
I wondered about Ms O’Dwyer when Michael Kroger was singing her praises on Friday’s Lateline. Robert, your thumbnail description of her as merchant banker, PLC and Melbourne University educated sounds very like her NSW counterpart Turnbull – merchant banker, Sydney Grammar and Sydney Uni. Two differences – he’s a man and she has party apparatchik experience. I’m sure there are others and your article has prompted some thoughts……..
One can imagine Kelly as a latter day Joan of Arc reigniting hopes and rekindling the Liberal flame. But once she’d united the French against the English wasn’t St. Joan burned alive at the stake by French bishops? Actually it’s Malcolm who’s having trouble with some Liberal Bishops – singed, scorched and scarred by their ineptitude rather than slain by evil intent. Still he is undergoing something of an ordeal by fire and may well not survive.
Is this because no one checked out his pre-requisites for pre-selection as detailed by Michael Kroger on Friday? He certainly didn’t hold office in Sydney Uni Liberal club and never made up a quorum at a suburban branch meeting. Nor is there a proud patron he can point to who served him as mentor. No evidence anywhere at any level of a long-term political apprenticeship. Is Malcolm Turnbull to be consigned to the flames of oblivion because he never stuffed and delivered envelopes in John Howard’s electorate and doesn’t know how to work a photocopier?
Seriously though it doesn’t matter how many shooting stars appear on the Liberal Party horizon there will be no new dawn until the party organisation undergoes root and branch reform with parallel renewal at parliamentary level. That needs a wise head and a warrior’s heart. And charisma too if the voters are going to move with the party.
Andrew Robb springs to mind. Yes, he of the melancholy mien. If he can beat his depression and come back refreshed and lighter of heart and presence he could well be their phoenix rising from the ashes of Howard’s holocaust.
I have to stop. Alliteration is worse than verbal diarrhea with me. But I am serious. You talk of Liberal Party renewal. Andrew Robb could be the man.
Robert Merkel says:
We hear so much about the L/NP’s “hard-Right rump”. But this RWDB’s status is more a product of Left-wing fever swamped imagination, as mythical as the Loch Ness Monster. In reality the Howard-L/NP was, by and large, a moderate Centre-Right government, which only ran into real trouble when it messed with industrial awards.
No doubt the L/NP retains some other Right-wing views – wholehearted support for the Intervention and opposition to People Smuggling. But these policies are both “a) sensible policy” and “b) electorally saleable”. The general population does not like child rapists to go un-corrected and it takes a dim view of assylum seekers leaking through borders and scuttling their boats.
The failing electoral fortunes of the L/NP are not grounded in any Right-wing policy eccentricities. Since the 2007 election the L/NP have ditched their two most unpopular Right-wing policies – committment to enforcing Work Choices and lack of committment to a Emissions Trading Scheme.
The L/NP on WC:
The L/NP on ETS
More generally, the policy differences between the two parties are minuscule to all but unreconstructed ideologues or committed partisans. AUS has only one political party – the residential property party – which has two factions, the ALP and L/NP.
K Rudd is, if anything, the most earnest exponent of this bi-”partisan” policy. He is also, easily, the most “c”onservative politician in AUS political history. In every important respect – immigration, ETS, intervention – he is a faithful follower of his the master’s voice, JW Howard.
If the L/NP’s political fortunes are not slumping due to policy failings, then they must be slumping due to either poor personnel or a change in the demographics of the electorate.
I cannot really see anything particularly awful about the L/NP’s personnel. If anything Turnbull is clearly a more impressive speaker and achiever than Rudd. The rest of the ALP’s front bench, Gillard aside, is not exactly brimming with talent.
It follows that the L/NP’s political failings are due to some change in the demography of the electorate. The most plausible explanation is the ALP as Natural Party of Government. Over the past decade or so there has been a gradual dying-off of the “Daddy Gloomer” cohort that voted so reliably for the L/NP in the aftermath of WWII. It is being replaced by the seemingly immortal “Baby Boomer” cohort, which has fairly reliably voted for the ALP since it gained elecotral majority in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
The pro-ALP Baby Boomers are not noticeably Left-wing, simply anti-L/NP. Their hegemony over culture in the seventies and the economy in the eighties and nineties is now being reinforced by a hegemony over politics in the noughties.
The implication is that nothing the L/NP can do will drastically improve their political fortunes. They had best resign themselves to fault-finding and position-staking – which is basically what they are doing now.
Liberal Party renewal?? ROFL. This is a contradiction in terms from a Party that should be renamed the Jurassic Party since it hangs onto such old dinosaurs as Tuckey, Ruddock, & Bronnie Bishop and has more fossilised deadwood (Coonan, Ciobo, Andrews, etc) than the Australian Museum! It will take a further two election losses before there is sufficient renewal to allow the Liberals to begin to be competitive again.
Turnbull is a lame duck leader who is only tolerated since no one else wants the poisoned chalice of OL. He has no authority, otherwise he would demand that the dinosaurs holding safe seats move on to allow more new blood into Liberal seats. Interesting to see if his preferred candidate gets up in Bradfield, highly unlikely though.
The inability of the Liberals (& Nationals) to renew is bad for parliamentary democracy but good for Labor.
Ms O’Dwyer seems like a strong candidate, especially for that electorate. She would have been even stronger had she gone to MLC not PLC, but that is just a quibble.
Victorian Old School Discussion Warning:
I think the current Fed Health Minister Nicola went to MLC, didn’t she?
Dunno about Roxon, but Brumby is a Melbourne Grammar boy if I recall correctly. Jeff Kennett was from Scotch.
Don’t get me started!
Melbourne Grammar: John Brumby, Thwaitesy, Ted Baillieu; Malcolm Fraser, and (I think) Wilson Tuckey
Scotch College: also Andrew Peacock
But quite likely the ALP & Liberals not as replete with private school persons as the UK Parliamentary Labor Party and Conservatives.
Renewal will come fom many quarters: state high schools, Catholic schools, Greek Orthodox, etc.
1. You wouldn’t have to go too far to find someone to the right of O’Dwyer. Keep in mind that the sort of raps she’s getting now were also showered upon her ex-boss and soon-to-be-predecessor in the late ’80s/early ’90s, with the important difference that KO’D has known a day’s work or two.
2. The shitstorm over gender underscored the whole theme of renewal, of appealing to a different demographic, just as there was a swing on toward a chap with grey hair and understated wealth and clubbability.
3. The Vics can do what they like, it’s NSW and Queensland where the action is. Regardless of who you credit for the economic reforms since the early ’80s, everyone agrees the end result has been to thoroughly bugger Melbourne as the heartland of Australian conservatism. The claque surrounding Costello hoping to ride his coattails into the Lodge never got this.
4. Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong) is not anyone’s idea of renewal. He’s a cream-puff, an intellectual and moral lightweight, the sort of person who makes Chris Pyne look like Pericles. Expect Prime Minister Gillard to be picking bits of Josh from between her teeth if he gets ahead of himself.
5. The Libs can’t offer the next PM as a woman, so this notion of competing is a crock. However, give Labor a good dose of hubris and watch younger Liberal women step up.
6. Darryl’s right: Howard came to office with twice as many women as Beazley. You know women have achieved real equality when mediocrities like Jenny Macklin have their arses stuck fast to a seat that could be put to better use by almost anyone else of either gender (except, that is, her shadow minister, who – mark my words – is cracking up).
7. Kellie O’Dwyer’s background is pretty similar to that of Nicola Roxon, as Ambigulous points out. I know we’re talking Melbourne here, but let’s not get caught up in School As Destiny, shall we?
8. The last three Prime Ministers (incumbent included) came from two state schools and a systemic Catho. Gillard went to Unley High.
9. The fact that there are 20 preselection candidates for Bradfield means that NSW is the place to watch. When party membership is small and dwindling, worms like David Clark can keep a lid on it – but when a veritable Cabinet runs in a single preselection, stand back because things are going to get very interesting, very fast.
School is most certainly not destiny.
No doubt K O’D is a brick.
She’ll continue the Libs’ utter domination of Higgins and for that matter every tree-lined avenue south of the Yarra. Sandy Stone’s grandchildren respect robust gals in serious black suits. For them it is a major concession to modernity.
K O’D's box office appeal in Uteland is questionable but. Utelander women will resent her. Utelander men will disparage her.
Libs cannot win without a majority of Utelander votes.
This is a bit speculative, because I’d like to see some research on it, but I think you may have a point, Katz. Howard always an appeal (often described as avuncular) to the burbs, as does KRudd in a different way. I wonder if those who come across as complete toffs – Chris Pyne, for instance, and Turnbull and Julie Bishop, and Downer in the past generation, quite frankly, do. I can’t comment on Kelly O’Dwyer – never heard of her before this preselection.
I’m not endorsing the “School as Destiny” hypothesis, though it doesn’t hurt.
The point I was trying to make is that aside from being younger than average and female, Kelly has a thoroughly typical background for somebody the Liberal Party would preselect for Higgins.
As for Ms. O’Dwyer’s appeal in Uteland, it’ll be interesting to see how her media personality develops as she gets a profile. In person, she does have the knack of empathy, though whether that comes through on television is another question.
O’Dwyer’s job is to win socially progressive upper middle class Higgins, a seat which is ordinarily safe Liberal but which could go to Labor in a good year and with a weak Liberal candidate. O’Dwyer will go down a treat with the ladies who lunch in High Street Armadale. That doesn’t mean that O’Dwyer would be the right candidate in the stolid bourgeois electorates further east that the Libs have to win. It’s horses for courses.
Sam, she hasn’t been installed in there to be a backbencher forever.
Maybe there is a used car dealer somewhere on the outer fringes of Malvern who can set ‘er up with a second hand Toyota ute, just for campaigning, like.
Hmmm, if this O’Dwyer woman turns out to be the David Cameron-type who puts the tories back into contention at the national level then Sophie will be kicking herself, won’t she?
Correct Robert. The Libs don’t want another Petro Georgiou.
I know Kelly on a personal level, and have done for a number of years. She has always seemed like a decent, intelligent woman to me. I’m not a fan of the Libs, but I like her. Of course, we disagree on various things, but we could always have a perfectly amicable discussion about it.
I always thought Costello was a “softer” Liberal comparatively speaking? but I’m not really down with the political party divisions.
As a legal Eagle, Legal, does “Dollar Sweets” ring a bell?
Is this a knee jerk to Julia Gillards grenade tossed at the Libs about the Liberal Party and women, and the scurry to disprove the claims over true talent, Kelly way well be very talented and it is good to see more women involved but putting Kelly in a safe winable seat isn’t going to fix the real underlying problem with the Liberal Party
Ostermann, this was set in train many months ago, and she was always heavily favoured to take the seat; a number of other people were apparently “advised” not to run.
Greenway is certainly questionable on that list, because the 2006 redistribution was a windfall gain for Markus. When she was preselcted the seat was clearly marginal, but by here second election it was quite safe.
More arguable is the situation of Lindsay, Hughes, Forde, Petrie and Makin. These were Labor held seats when the female candidates were preselcted. So while they were clearly winnable, and may have been tuyrned into more or less safe seats over time it is difficult to argue that they were clearly considered safe Liberal seats at the time of first preselection.
In The Age at least, the commentary has largely been in terms of women preselected for (vaguely defined) “leadership seats”. One of the criteria for these seems to be inner metropolitan. Of the seats listed above only Curtin is an inner metropolitan seat.
Others will be able to comment more insightfully about the significance if any of this.
“a number of other people were apparently “advised” not to run.”
John Roskam was the favoured candidate of Penbo at The Punch. Apart from the profile below a special place was made on site to constantly remind any who ventured there what a top bloke Rosko(Xavier boy) is. Bucket please!
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/john-roskam-is-this-the-next-member-for-higgins/
If Roskam had got the pre-selection for Higgins then Labor would be in with a real show of winning it. The Liberal Party isn’t that stupid.
I used to think John Roskam’s Opinion pieces in The Age were ridculously argued. That was until Chris Berg got that gig instead.
Andrew E @ 15, a small quibble on your point 8. I thought Gillard went to one of the high schools out Elizabeth way. Craigmore springs to mind.
Robert Merkel says:
My general sense is that the AUS is evolving towards a loose one-party state, with the ALP being the Natural Party of Government.
Basically, ambitious people follow the easier money. If one is an ambitious “Left-winger” with not much business ability then one goes into politics. If one is an ambitious “Right-winger” with no stomach for politics then one goes into finance.
The NSW ALP have shown the way for Left-wing political operators who want to make big easy bucks. The Four Corners expose Dirty, Sexy, Money shows how far the ALP has descended into a mire of corruption, scandal and dodgy deals.
But most talented Right-wingers are likely to emigrate to OS, London or New York, to get on the financial band-wagon. This explains the gradual decline in relative L/NP personnel ability over the past generation. (Turnbull proves this rule, although he is also the exception.)
The L/NP will only get a real go at office if national security or cultural identity issues become prevalent. Otherwise federal L/NP administrations will be infrequent occurrences for the next generation, once every 10 years or so. Mainly when an ALP admin goes on the nose through corruption or staleness, as per the NSW ALP.
There is nothing much the L/NP can do at the moment to improve its electoral fortunes. Its just going to have to cool its heels in opposition for at least two and probably three terms. Waiting for the electorate to get sick of the sight of Rudd, Swan & Gillard and for the economy to turn sour.
In Feb 2009 I predicted a three term ALP government lasting until 2016, based largely on the Baby Boomer demographic pro-ALP bias, the probable low magnitude of the recession and the evident competency of the ALP administration:
It should go without saying that the ALP’s political hegemony will continue irrespective if Nelson, Turnbull or someone else is leader of the fed L/NP. The situation for state L/NP’s is even more parlous due to the statist bias of these agencies.
“I always thought Costello was a “softer” Liberal comparatively speaking?”
The media liked to put that out there but we are talking about the architect of WorkChoices here. Howard was of the far-Right so almost everyone appeared “softer” than Howard.
David @ 33,
I always thought Gillard went to a HS around Unley way, not 100% sure but you might be thinking of Rudd’s wife Therese Rein? I’m pretty sure she grew up in Elizabeth.
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RM: comment disemvowled
This is one of the all-time greats of heartless dickheadery. Please take this insult personally: f**k you.
Jaques, I’m pretty sure Ms Rein isn’t even South Australian.
I am pretty sure Gillard’s from Elizabeth. The low bullshit threshold’s a bit of a giveaway.
Sure, it is important that Liberals move on the dead wood to become more attractive. Much more critical is to start shifting policy away from the harsh Howard approach to all things and move away from a default negativity to everything Labor proposes.
Two recent good examples are changes to proposed refugee criteria to include fear of torture/ genital mutilation and the possible creation of super military bases within Australia as a money saving measure. In both cases opposition spokespeople appeared quick to criticise the new approach rather than even just look thoughtful.
Who would not consider that these matters deserve proper consideration rather than a dead bat? They just look cold hearted in the first instance and hypocritical, again, about their so called expense blowout concerns on the latter issue.
Please note that the comment 36 has been disemvoweled. Further discussion along these lines will be summarily deleted.
How come the character “i” remains, RM?
Liberal Renewal: Queensland Style
Michael Johnson (who? Long term Lib
PlaceholderMP for Brisbane Leafy Horsey Acreage Suburbs ) shows there’s no flies on him in sniffing which way the local greening wind blows, and can strategicallly respond by spending someone’s money to put on a Green Lib Re-Branding show (catered) next Sunday at the Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens Lakeside Cafe under a banner of a Renewable And Alternative Energy Symposium.Just to show how wide ranging this powerhouse of the Libs Brain Trust’s thinking is, the collection of oddities he is assembling includes The Ambassador of Brazil, Bob Katter and …. Paul Howes, National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union. How’s that for radical Lib renewal, getting into bed with the AWU?
Could the penny have dropped for the Fed Libs and they’ve twigged they ain’t going nowhere without capturing some Queensland flags, and had a look around the local Lib scene to see what they’ve got to work with? Especially in the context of a redestribution that puts Peter Dutton, the only Qld Federal Lib with any brand recognition, on very shaky ground, along with Laming and Lindsay.
Oh the dispair Kroger et al must feel: they can get as many bright shiny southern O’Kelly’s up as they like, but them nambour boys knew what they were doing when they built fortress queensland labor, with the essential albeit witless help of a string of conservative clowns. If they were vicious, Labor’d run dead in Ryan, so it was the remarkably-ex-parrot-resembling Johnson, running 2-horse against a credible Green candidate, a la a reverse Freemantle, Kev and Wayne risking putting up with a qld green in the house as the price of finishing off the tories in Qld.
Because I missed them the first time when I did the job semi-manually. They should now be gone, fingers crossed.
Not quite There may be no i in team but there are two in the above.
Shouldn’t it be spelled disemvowelled?
There are a lot of people here who don’t vote Liberal but spend a lot of their time analysing the Liberal Party. Why is that?
Know your enemy?
Several reasons:
1) an effective opposition is important to good government.
2) Yes, knowing the “enemy” is important to see how they might be defeated.
2) The Labor Party won’t be in government forever. So it’s worth at least idly considering what the next conservative government might be like.
Points 1 and 2 sound like they contradict one another. If you want a Labor government, then why would you want the Liberal opposition to be performing effectively, because then they would present as a serious alternative government.
I don’t recall many Liberals spending a lot of time in the late 90s and early 2000s wanting to advise the Labor Party on how to get its act together.
A Labor government is not an end in itself.
Terry, you’re right that points 1 and 2 do contradict if we’re talking about governance rather than longevity.
But point 1 is especially important. The current condition of the NSW Government is a direct result of the appalling condition of the NSW Liberals for most of their reign. With the opposition unelectable it lays the groundwork for those property dealers to take over, which is what happened.
Robert is right. The priority is accountability.
Re the other comments on Gillard: I’m pretty sure she was Unley High. The origins, may possibly go back to Elizabeth. The family came out (with Julia and sister as small kids) as “Ten-pound Poms” (though from Wales) and most of these , at least in SA, began their Oz life in Elizabeth or nearby.
You may all be correct about Gillard going to Unley High, although I have a vague recollection of the current headmistress of Craigmore claiming her as one of their achievements.
The only people I know well who have an association with Craigmore (one of whom went to Unley, then taught the other at Craigmore) are both considerably older than Gillard, so they wouldn’t know. Anyway, one of them’s in China at the moment, so it’s difficult to ask him. I could ask the other bloke at work tomorrow, I suppose. (Adelaide’s like that – even when we’re not related, we all know each other.)
Perhaps someone who has direct personal knowledge may be able to settle the question.
Not that it’s particularly important.
Unley High it is! Give that man the cigar.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2006/12/14/1811877.htm
David @ 38,
Rudd’s wife is South Australian and I watched the recent Community Cabinet in Elizabeth on A-PAC and Rudd said his wife was from Elizabeth which wikipedia backs up. There was no mention of Gillard being from Elizabeth and according to wikipedia again, she graduated from Unley HS in 1978.
Therese Rein went to school at Firbank, a private girl’s school in the wealthy Melbourne suburb of Brighton. Nothing wrong with that of course, but those are the facts.
I think the “winnable” seat argument is a bit of a furphy. If you look at that list of Liberal women, what you see is lots of women who had to work very hard to hold their seats at every election (and some who have since lost them).
Any party who is serious about getting more women in parliament will be preselecting them to SAFE seats, not merely ones that are winnable one election and lost the next …
Clearly I shouldn’t have relied on my (failing) memory for the details of Gillard’s schooling
I hate being wrong.
Because (a.) they’re important, inasmuch as they have the ability to fall into government every now and then,
and,
(b.) traditional Liberal culture is about de-emphasising ideology (& even process). A party that strongly inclines to believing it isn’t involved in that dirty pusuit, politics, is in need of people other than its natural supporters to try and provide analysis of itself.
Helen @ 26 – yes, of course he was anti-union. But still softer than someone like Howard. It’s a matter of degree, as Jacques de Molay says.
When it comes to renewal, the best thing the Liberal Party could do is to recognize, as the Communist Party of Australia did in 1991, that it essentially had all been one big mistake and dissolve itself.
Sorry Benedictus, I’m under your name again. The blogging pixies have mysterious powers.
Legal Eagle: I suppose it depends on what your priorities are for a government. For some Labor types, being anti-union is pretty high on the list of what they dislike about the conservatives!
More broadly, it’s the rare Tory that appreciates the concept of relative poverty, and the structural nature of the disadvantages many of the worse-off suffer. That includes the “moderates”.
The constant, unremitting vituperative treatment of the L/NP by the intellectual classes of this nation is something that continually staggers me, a former rusted-on ALP voter. (Ten years of living in Sydney cured that particular addiction.)
The previous L/NP govt was by most standards a moderate Centre-Right administration which achieved a remarkable successful record. It presided over the longest boom in Australian economic history, effective prosecution of multiple wars and a revival of a sense of pride in the nation, long sapped by a generation of intellectual white anting.
Its a “pretty rare” intellectual who has a good word to be said about the historic nation of Australia. Most of the sympathy for the L/NP comes from Australian nationalists, who comprise a pretty fair whack of mainstream voters. They are “silent majority” that provide a stable ballast for this country’s more hysterical liberal ideological superstructure.
To be fair, it did have a couple of unforgiveable blemishes that blotted its copybook. Long delaying a much needed climate change policy and the hasty implementation of a punitive industrial relations policy. It paid for these in the 2007 election and these errors have been more or less rectified.
(The asylum-seeker issue is one which opinion differs, given the obvious moral problems about letting unseaworthy vessels make unauthorised arrivals with undocumented persons.)
It would be nice if Left-liberals for once conceded the plain facts in this case and gave the L/NP a fair go. Especially as AUS evolves towards a more or less one-party ALP ruled state. As long-time observer of the NSW ALP, a one-party state if ever there was one, this is not a prospect I view with great relish.
I think that unions need to be kept in line from time to time, just as employers need to be kept in line. To my mind, unions are very necessary parts of the industrial relations system, and I did not agree with WorkChoices. But some unions can go too far, particularly if members use violence or intimidation. I am a union member, but if my union ever did things like that, I’d leave.
That’s why I’ve never really gotten involved with IR law – it seems you have to be 100% pro-union or 100% anti-union, not admitting that there are good and bad things about unions. The faith and fervour of the two camps is almost religious, and I just don’t have that.
Yes, I’d agree with that – one of the reasons I get into fights with Tories. I think that structural disadvantage has to be addressed – you can’t just say “pick yourself up and better yourself” – you have to give people the resources to do it.
Viv’s hoyden blog seems to have packed it in at the moment, so I can’t link to it, but Flop Eared Mule Amanda had a cracking comment about Andrew Robb there, and his Party’s attitude to industrial relations.
It was along the lines of:— “It’s great and laudable that Robb can take three months off without pay to take care of his health but in the industrial relations climate his Party created the vast majority of workers can’t even imagine doing such a thing, and he’s been involved in fighting against the rights of workers to enjoy the benefits he’s taken advantage of.”
Perfect encapsulation of the “moderate” liberal IR viewpoint, IMO.
Liam – I call it OMBYism – only in my back yard.
How true Liam @ 63. In all the commentary praising Robb’s decision to go public with his depression there seems to be no mention of this salient point.
I love how even people on the Left – who should know better – fall for the distinction between “moderate” Libs and hard-right Libs.
On the thing that really counts – economics – there is no such thing as a moderate Liberal.
Name one current Liberal in Parliament who has ever said that a union might be justified in taking industrial action? Or come out in favour of progressive taxation? Or that inequality has gotten out of hand? Or that unemployment has causes other than laziness? Before Thatcher, people who held these kinds of views were common in the Liberal Party – now not even the wettest moderate suscribes to them.
Being for a republic or going on a reconciliation march or not being bigoted against homosexuals does not make you a moderate – not if your economic views are to the right of Ayn Rand. It simply means you have prejudiced Tory views around class instead of race or sexuality.
Ginja, recently Joe Hockey supported CFMEU industrial action in his electorate. Over the past ten years there have been some cases where Liberal State Oppositions have supported Industrial action to varying degrees by the police, teachers and nurses.
Please be a little bit more specific about what you envisage “progressive” taxation to be so I can perhaps try to counter your assertion?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by inequality either. Do you mean asset equality? Equity equality? Wage equality or equality in some other way?
I think that if you read Hansard carefully you will find that many (particularly non-urban) Liberals have spoken about the relatively high levels of regional unemployment and the lack of any connection to so-called “laziness”.
As it seems to be working now, Amanda’s comment can be read here.
That’s touching Antonio. Are you talking about a CFMEU “green ban”? If so, that’s not about economics, it’s about heritage issues and pretty suburbs for the upper-middle class.
Is that the same Joe Hockey who said just the other day that keeping inflation and interest rates low was more important than unemployment. And he’s supposedly a moderate.
Thanks for proving my point.
The problem Jack, is that the intellectual honchos have been altogether too generous to the L/NP government. Even by the absymal standards set by official conservatives, they were a very poor government, arguably the worst since WW2. The others had their problems but no previous Liberal-led government did so little with so much and so debased and debauched the public culture as did the Howard regime of 1996-2007.
On the handful of occasions I travelled abroad, Australians I met generally tried to distance themselves from Howard’s Way, if only to avoid embarrassment. We went from having a reputation as honest brokers who were at some distance from American perfidy in 1990, to being, at least in Europe, a pariah regime in 2002. Few could understand what Howard was on about or why Pauline Hanson was so influential.
To be fair to Howard (did I really just say that???) the McMahon government takes some beating on that score.
Martin@72
No way. McMahan got the hospital pass from Gorton and wasn’t in long enough to be responsible for very much. And it was actually McMahon that initiated withdrawal from Vietnam.
He hardly “initiated” it. McMahon only started withdrawing – reluctantly – because the US was. It wasn’t like he was taking leadership on the issue.
The McMahon government might or might have been the worst since WW2, but it was certainly the most ridiculous.
“I wonder if those who come across as complete toffs – Chris Pyne, for instance, and Turnbull and Julie Bishop, and Downer in the past generation, quite frankly, do. ”
Dr Mark, ai suggest one reviews the votes received by Malcolm Fraser in said ‘burbs, though ai am the first to admit times have changed since then. Peacock did surprisingly well there too.
Robert: O’Dwyer is the same age as Costello was, and older than Holt for that matter, when preselected.
David: says Unley on the official and unofficial (Wiki) bits I’ve seen.
Jack: Yeah, but we’ve been here before. They were saying it in 1986, and five years ago the reverse case was being put. Baby boomers put Howard in and out of office, and the same will be true of the current lot.
Terry: I recall Tony Abbott doing little else but lecturing the ALP on how they should get their act together, while acting as a bollard over which three of Rudd’s cabinet have climbed.
Nickws: (c) as a former Lib I can tell you, the left do political analysis of the Liberal Party better than all but a few Liberals. The filleting of the seemingly invincible Greiner government taught me that.
(for the first and last time) Jacques Chester is right. (excuse me while I go and have a shower)
Trivia is more fun than analysing the Libs at the moment (though some might say it is the same). Sam, it might be right that Rein attended Firbank, but her origins also go back to SA.
I seem to remember one bit of useless information that Julie Bishop, Rein and another political figure (I think) Natasha Stott Despoja all attended St Peters Girls in Adelaide (albeit not together). That’s 3 different parties and now residing in 3 different states.