Why I’m Done With the Faux Centre

In July this year, Jack Snelling and Tom Kenyon, both former ministers in South Australian Labor governments, resurrected the defunct Family First Party (FFP). The party intends to contest the next state election (to be held on March 13, 2022) and, possibly, the subsequent federal election. For me, at any rate, the idea of traditionalists emancipating themselves from the PC strictures of the ALP and joining forces with conservatives more generally aligned with the Liberal Party was compelling. Though I have never joined a political party, I signed up for this new incarnation of Family First without a moment’s hesitation.

The assumption that erstwhile Labor and Liberal stalwarts working together would result in an opportunistic compromise of a party could not be further from the truth. The FFP’s social platform is conservative through and through, while its economic policies – as articulated by Tom Kenyon at its first public forums – are textbook centre-right: the wages…