The Liberal Party is being seduced by the uniparty — should it say “yes” or “no”? By Peta Credlin in The Australian.
Perhaps the real problem for the Liberals all along has been less that they have been insufficiently left wing, or insufficiently right wing, but that they’ve been nothing much at all.
The last time the Coalition won big, in 2013 with a 46 per cent primary vote under Tony Abbott, the LNP was a clear contrast to a Labor government that had lost control of our borders, lost control of the budget, and was climate obsessed. Not only did Abbott, an unapologetic conservative, have a laser focus on the problems that even Labor partisans had to admit were being mishandled, but he had a clear way forward: scrapping the mining and carbon taxes to revitalise the economy; Operation Sovereign Borders to stop the boats; and budget rules such as no new spending without cuts to existing spending to restore fiscal discipline.
The Liberals’ subsequent malaise, under Malcolm Turnbull, was that a centre-right party was being led from the centre-left; and then, under Scott Morrison, that the party of smaller government and greater freedom presided over health authoritarianism and pandemic spending on an unprecedented scale. And Morrison’s embrace of net zero removed another key point of difference.
At last year’s election, despite being well placed six months out, Peter Dutton (and his team) failed to fight for his energy policy, or to campaign against Labor’s unrealised capital gains wealth tax, or even to drive home the collapse in living standards that Labor’s policies had made worse.
For a decade now, the Coalition has consistently let down its voters, who are typically economically liberal and socially conservative, so it’s no wonder they’re angry. And as for this idea that the Liberals have to “return to the centre”, there’s nothing that the Liberals have done over the past decade that’s remotely “right wing”: the AUKUS nuclear submarines decision was promptly me-too-ed by Labor; and even the belated repudiation of net zero reflects a general move against energy self-harm even in Europe.
The Liberal Party kicked out Pauline Hanson in 1996 because she called for welfare to be handed out on the basis of need rather than race. The rot goes back a long way.
Given that 34 per cent of voters currently think that the party best placed to handle immigration is actually One Nation, on this issue, at least, perhaps a tougher Liberal Party is exactly what voters want. …
What they see in Hanson is less about a viable alternative PM than someone who has at least been consistent in her opposition to net zero, mass migration, and the nonsense of three flags and welcoming people to their own country.
Latest polls put One Nation at 26%, Labor at 31%. One Nation never made the mistake of trying to please the ABC.