Larvatus Prodeo

Monash academics Nick Dyrenrfurth and Paul Strangio in retelling the story of the “fusion” of the non-Labor parties at the end of the first decade of federation make an explicit comparison with the formation of the Liberal National Party in Queensland a hundred years later.

The Deakinite Liberals of 1909 entered into fusion in a spirit of sorrow rather than enthusiasm. One declared: “I feel very strongly that we are about to make a mistake and yet, I am sorry to say, I see no possible way of preventing it.” The Age, self-appointed guardian of Liberal-Protectionist faith, was dismayed by coalescence: “Fusion is not a political blend in which liberalism and conservatism give and take, fusion is a sort of political boa constrictor (that) has swallowed liberalism whole.”

Writing in Crikey on Friday, Richard Farmer believed he had cut to the heart of the reasons why the foundation of the Pineapple Party has been accompanied by so many alarums and such bitterness:

Underlying the problem is clearly the impossibility of combining liberal thought, free market believers, Neanderthal agrarian socialism and intolerant social conservatives.

Incidentally, one might note that exactly the same problem has been evident in the post-Howardian Liberal Party, absent the dead hand of Howard himself and the glue of office.

In Queensland, of course, the political traditions and electoral and social geography of the state make both the free market strand and the social liberals very much minority constituencies, and there’s no doubt they will now be swamped by the social conservatives and the agrarian socialists within the LNP. This, of course, raises the question of whether ideology matters, a question posed by Andrew Bartlett in commentary on the contemporary Queensland fusion. Continue reading ‘Queenslandism’