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The Garden State’s Liberals are offering a rather narrow range of explanations for their party’s sweeping defeat. As the tallying pushes several Labor candidates closer to taking seats their party has seldom or never held before — Caulfield, Sandringham, even Range Rover-infested Brighton — the blame game is in full swing.
As counting continues it appears at this Sunday morning after the night before that the Liberals will be reduced to something like a 28-seat rump in the 88-member lower chamber.
Senator Jane Hume sees the recent change of prime ministers as having repulsed voters, attributing the loss to “the disruption that was caused by the loss of Malcolm Turnbull.”
Liberal member for Kew Tim Smith, hanging on in the count by his fingernails, also cited discord amongst his party’s Canberra colleagues.
“When you’ve got federal politicians talking about themselves and their various ambitions that hasn’t helped our party like it didn’t help Labor during the Rudd-Gillard years and that’s damage that we at the state level have to deal with,” he said.
Shadow Attorney-General John Pesutto, who learned on-air that he will likely be turfed from the formerly blue-ribbon seat of Hawthorn, assured his approving ABC hosts that the road to a Liberal revival veers to the left, also painting the Turnbull garroting as the reason Victorian voters have told him and so many others to launch new careers.
“It is just the disruption that was caused by the loss of Malcolm Turnbull,” he said while praising Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy for being an inspirational team leader.
Then there was Upper House MP Mary Wooldridge, who also bemoaned a purportedly conservative party’s indulgence of members and functionaries on the right.
“There has been a takeover of the administrative side of the party — the membership side of the party — by a small but dominant group who are very right-wing,” Ms Wooldridge told ABC Radio Melbourne, while urging “genuine Liberals” to keep the faith.
Quadrant Online readers are invited to voice their opinions on why the Liberals lost and lost so badly, and what their party should stand for.
The idea that Turnbull was somehow the victim rather than the cause of recent Liberal Party upheavals is utterly perverse. That so many former Liberal voters could ignore the self-evidently wilful incompetence and apparent corruption of the Andrews regime and vote effectively to reward it leaves little hope of a return to political sanity any time soon.
Still, a lengthy term for the Libs in opposition in Victoria and, soon, right across the country will be their well-earned reward. They should use the time wisely.
I get the fact that the Coalition lost, but am less clear about the reasons for the thumping defeat. A smashing of this magnitude is indicative of a hopeless government being turfed out with a following kick to the backside (not the case here) or a ringing endorsement of the previous term of the incumbent with a loud “more, please!” (the case today). Points against the Andrews government – freeway link debacle, allegedly thieving red shirt party members, union control, CFA bashing, wanton spending and the like – was clearly wiped clean by targeted big infrastructure spending (much of which I heartily approved of) and a unified party room (Jane Garret notwithstanding). A lesson for the Coalition here – spend lots of other people’s money and smile heartily hand in hand for the cameras when Cabinet meets. I look forward to seeing the debriefing on the actual voter sentiments in coming weeks but one thing seems clear – don’t expect a slowdown of frantic debt accumulation by any side of politics, let alone paydown of debt, for generations.
As I understand it, 50% of Australian voters pay no net tax and therefore have no care for promises to reduce them – so massive expenditures by Labour are of no concern to, and enthusiastically supported by, large numbers of voters because the money is not coming out of their hides. I also observed many of those congratulating Premier Andrews on the night were of multicultural backgrounds – whereby imported cultures and populations are encouraged to see Labour as their home due to generous welfare benefits – mass immigration has transformed the demographic arithmetic. Those of us remaining here will be subjected to unprecedented heavy taxation and permanently entrenched union domination of the public and private economy. This is what my fellow Victorians have chosen for their future.
The conservative brand is now seen as one which is mainly about cleaning up Labor’s mess. If Labor aren’t making a mess the conservatives have nowhere to go except haggle at the margins over garnishing like safe schools and MPs who get their dogs chauffeured. Andrews is now seen as a safe pair of hands, and is doing the things the Victorian Liberals should have started eight years ago, like level crossings, roads, rails, etc. On top of that, 30 odd years of cut-style governments are seen mainly as the purview of the right, so Labor has been able to go to town on the deterioration of public facilities, schools, hospitals, child care, etc. Capping it all is the left’s far superior ground game, which is getting stronger, and which the right needs to do something about as more people become reliant on the public dime. Nor did the federal Libs fiasco, Brexit and Trump help, since, in Viktoria (not a typo) are all seen as confirmation of the crazy right. I dont know what drugs News were on spruiking a close result – from where I was looking, this result was more likely than a squeaker.
The proponents of that described as cultural Marxism are well practised at Keynesian political economics since an obvious majority of the populace likes new infrastructure on credit (repaying the loans is well out of sight) and cares not at all about the increasing, underlying, sinuous grasp of crony globalism.
I had previously hoped that catastrophic failure of our power grids may have short-circuited this delusional nexus but I concede I was wrong. The Keynesian response will be to add more windmills and solar panels at enormous, uncountable, expense, again on credit. This will actually strengthen the delusion.
We now have elections which merely squabble about who can borrow and then spend most. The only (very) minor consolation is that with the ALP and Libs squabbling over centre-left ground, the Greens will be forced hard left and so wither.
Initially, I found this election result entirely perplexing, then, after briefly reflecting on the state of the State of Victoria, it all started to become clear again…
Ordinarily, a government that presides over (to pick just a few): the bollardization of its capital city, an increase in car-jackings, violent robberies, and break-ins, a large increase in road-traffic and public-transport congestion, terror attacks (especially ones that occur 3-4 blocks from its parliament and kill one of its most well-known and loved restaurateurs), ethnic/gang riots (especially on ‘Moomba’ its civic holiday), declining education standards, social balkanization and fragmentation, the further commercialization and ‘dumbing down’ of its tertiary education sector, and the destruction of city amenity in the short-sighted pursuit of economic growth via the construction of moronic ‘castles in the sky’, etc etc, deserves to be thoroughly booted out of office, and to offer some kind of contrite apology on the way out and to swear never to let such things happen again should they find themselves behind the wheel at some future stage…
But, to have all of the above happen, and to then win government again in a landslide seems to be something in the realms of high farce and fantasy.
Why is this so? A foreign friend mentioned that (referring to Victorians) “you guys all suffer from a mass, collective Stockholm Syndrome” (I fear that she may be right)
But seriously, why did this happen?
a) Apathy and a reasonable economy? The fact that they kept the unemployment rate relatively low (albeit in precarious and transient hospitality and construction jobs) meant that most of the fine burghers of Melbourne town were employed, docile, and reasonably content.
Or
b) The essentially complete takeover of the whole socio-cultural sphere by the post-1968 Left? i.e. now that: the ABC, the tertiary education sector, the Fairfax press, the secondary education sector (primary too?), the public service, much of the corporate world, etc etc, have all been converted to good Left-liberals who are in favour of: multiculturalism, LGBT-ism, mass immigration, complete equality between the genders, non-judgementalism on matter political, cultural, aesthetic, dietary, etc, then the fact that a large proportion of the general electorate now hold these same views and hence vote an inept Labor government back in to power starts to make more sense. Actually, in hindsight: What did they expect? “Reap what sow’, etc.
It does seem that the 1968-ers and their descendants have won the culture war (especially, as Dan Andrews proudly said last night ‘in the most progressive state in Australia’) and that to call any of their bromides, pieties and clichés into question would be an act of high treason, akin to say, commenting on the fact that Tony Abbott is decent man with some very good policies, and that Donald Trump has a point when it comes to China, mass immigration, Islam, the destruction of the manufacturing base, etc.
I tend to think the later explanation is the correct one. People in Melbourne are so used to the left-wing water in which they swim that they’ve come to even question its mere existence.
And as one commenter above noted, the ‘ethnic gerrymandering’ in the Labor party is no co-incidence. All well and good from their point of view, until, well, the latte-sipping inner city types need to appear under the same tent as the Islamists &/or the culturally conservative Chinese in order to hash out an agreement on, say, gay marriage, the consumption of pork, or the role of religion in society. Good luck on that front.
The right-of-centre economic ‘growthist’ types are also to blame. In that, their short-term greedy desire to increase their profits via non-discriminatory and excessive mass immigration may appeal and work for them for a few years, even decades; however, by doing so, they essentially import a demographic tsunami and underclass that will be very unlikely to vote for them, will make perfect fodder for left-wing ethnic gerrymandering (see Hilary’s strategy in the last US election) and, in the worst case, may physically assault or steal from them (e.g. car jackings, robberies from Toorak jewellery stores, etc)
Solutions? Anyone?
The Liberal Party has been invisible in Victoria for the past 4 years.
Make that eight.
The size of the route was surprising. But the end result was never in doubt. The Liberal Party will continue to suffer while it picks Pewee Herman leaders that are a little like Labor, but almost, but not quite as bad.
Given that Liberals have to beat the Labor machine, Getup, the unions and the media, then trying to be a pale imitation of Labor without all the backing means they’re beaten before they even begin campaigning.
Donald Trump proved you don’t need to follow the herd, and if you break out and give people something to fight for, they will. So, the biggest test for the Libs is who they pick as their next leader – if it’s another wet willy leader they’ll be in opposition for years. If it’s a red-blooded table-thumper with real policy differences, they can punch back into contention.
Most self-destructive Lib comments: Scott Morrison should tilt more left to have a chance.
The reason the Liberals did so badly is because they know nothing and believe in nothing, they have no conviction about anything. Even though the ALP espouses madcap policies, they do so with conviction, and when you have a Liberal party that is essentially supporting the saqme causes, just a slight difference of degree, then who are you going to listen to? The ones who truly believe, or the ones that don’t look like they believe it, or anything much.
Federal politics played almost no role in this election in my view, and it is all just the central problem the Libs have at present, they are just public servants filling a role, they have no beliefs, no values they hold dearly to themselves, they don’t believe in anything much, apart from self-interest.
My solution would be for the few conservatives left to leave the Liberals, join maybe the Australian Conservatives and go and campaign on what they (should) believe in; lower immigration, pulling out of Paris, moving the embassy in Israel and having a strategy for dealing with the public service and making them accountable, as opposed to outsourcing decision making to them and giving them free reign which is all that they do now..
Have you SEEN the Victorian Liberal leader? Talk about a sheep in sheep’s clothing – as unimpressive a man as you could imagine. Perhaps Kroger himself should step forward and enter the arena – despite Kennett’s justified criticism, Kroger can get a point across. The Libs seem to have turned into a whingeing bunch of disgruntled losers who point fingers at Andrews and gangs of black Africans without spending any time at all developing their own profile and policies. Andrews has taken a leaf out of Neville Wran’s book and never talks about his “conservative opponents” whereas the Libs can’t stop talking about the Labor Party. As the Chinese proverb goes: he who throws mud loses ground.
There is little difference between secular conservatives and secular progressives – they both sing from the same sheet but in slightly different keys. Progressives offer more hand-outs and trendy ideas, which everyone knows are bad for us in the long run but are too exhausted to resist; while conservatives offer small government, which everyone knows is a lost cause because there is no underlying moral belief system upon which to argue the point.
Ultimately both sides of politics offer little more than a vapid path towards a random future, and a moral and cultural decline which seems now to have become the accepted reality. Voters can sense this, and so an election becomes a somewhat futile exercise in discerning which shade of grey most suits the current fashion. In the Victorian case, as people have noted above, why would you choose a disorganised rabble without meaning or purpose, over an organised rabble without meaning or purpose?
WAYNE COOPER: “Have you SEEN the Victorian Liberal leader? Talk about a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” — Spot on. How are you going to convince or excite swinging voters, when you can’t even convince or excite your base?
A majority of the COALition supported Dutton (The Flycatcher) in his ousting of Turnbull. But the big drought-related issue is climate change, which an increasing number of environmental and agricultural conservatives accept as real. (Thus the result in the Wentworth by-election.) Climate change is real, and is coming to get an antiscientific, coal-hugging denialist near you. So watch out, denialists of the COALition.
Ian, this thread concerns the Victorian election, what it says about the Coalition and what might be done to set things right. It has nothing to do with clime’o’gibberish. Stick to the point and behave or your thoughts will be locked in the attic
Ian MacDougall, most conservatives agree climate change is real – after all, we’ve had climate change ever since this planet had an atmosphere (psst, heard about the ice age). The only point of disagreement is what portion mankind is responsible for, and what to do about it. Sending a (western) nation broke for no significant reason, is ludicrous. But thank you for the attempt to put words in our mouth.
In my electorate I had a choice of Green, Labor or Liberal.
As I walked up to vote I was approached by a pensioner Green extolling me to ‘save the planet’. “You have to be joking” I commented. “I like electricity and we need MORE CO2. It is 24th November and 12C so we are going to freeze not fry!” She gave me a smile and a pitying look that indicated that I was a deserving case for some time in the Green gulag.
Next came the Labor volunteer (who looked like he had taken a paid day off work to help out). “Why would I vote for a UFU puppet, who wastes money, rorts the taxpayer and blows up a reliable power station?” No reply, but the scowl said it all.
The Liberal lady smiled as she recognised me from six-years ago when I resigned from the IlLiberal Lite-Green Left in disgust. I burst her balloon by telling her “I am not impressed with the party hack we have in this electorate who represents nothing, nor your election slogan of “The alternatives will be worse than us’. However, I did waste my vote on the incumbent Liberal as he has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
I saw all this coming nine years ago and harangued the party to move Right as the right thing to do. Instead the Royal Elite moved Left and put up even more Labor-Green refugees as candidates. They have reaped the harvest they deserve, but I do not.
In the upper house I filled out 16 selections with the 16th being the Liberal.
Will the ‘Liberal’ Royal Elite learn from this debacle and can the Liberals EVAAAA recover??
Absolutely not!
Yet Matthew Guy calls on the remaining 300 faithful to stick with him and to continue marching to the same tune. To the elite, this massacre is just an aberration as we can see with some of the losers blaming the Federal Party and like the Jacobean ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, plotting their return as even greater Greenfools. Yeah, right? 61 years later the Jacobite Revolutions finally admitted defeat. The Liberals will not be around as even a minor party for that long.
The Liberal Party is not capable of reform under its current ‘born-to-rule’ royalty. Conservatives either need a new party that vets incoming members to ensure no fungal green-red contamination infiltrates or the Liberal Party needs to completely remove all current Lite-Green Liberal hacks. As that will not happen, Option 1 seems the only alternative.
No, wait! there is another possibility … Join me in leaving the State.
Oh, Nooooooooooooo! The MacBot is back spewing the same climatecon line he always has. 12C in Melbourne on 25th November – yet he will tell us it is the hottest November month evaaa (after homogenisation. No matter the subject he can always turn it into a climate con comment.
Ian,
You were not missed, so keep your promise so solemnly made and permanently go away again. Now to light the fire and produce some wonderful CO2.
I live in a rural electorate, and am staggered just how many otherwise sensible farming folk
believe in climate change. Particularly the under 50’s; and find me someone under 25 who is not
completely convinced that the earth will dry out in 20 years.
Voting here is habit, although the nationals member is very good, but she really cannot achieve anything
for the electorate without the largesse of the labor government.
I do not know whether we climate deniers are now the silent majority, and that if the Liberals made policy based on
what we believe is commonsense that it will win them government.
I think we are going to have to sit it out and watch Australia crash and burn.
Unless there is an equally sensible and pragmatic President after President Trump,
then I don’t hold out much hope for them either.
Peter C The rot for the Liberal Party set in when achieving Tony Abbott was white-anted etc and back-stabbed by Labor/Green Turnbull & Co and then humiliated by most of the Liberal Party MPs at every turn. The rot has been further added to by Turnbull – who should be expelled from the Liberal Party – not helping Sharma win Wentworth and for the Liberal Party not ensuring that Jim Molan would have a safe position on the Senate Ticket The Liberal Party also needs to quickly withdraw from the Paris Agreement and ensure Tony Abbott is re-elected in Warringah.
However I consider the Liberal Party is finished and doubt that the Liberal Party will ever recover from the white-anting etc and back-stabbing of land-slide winning Tony Abbott for very dud Labor/Green Turnbull. It is no longer the Party I supported all my long life until Tony Abbott was unjustifiably back-stabbed for the proven dud Labor/Green Turnbull.
A great analysis Julian; but no solutions possible without electoral reform.
Herewith mirror images of some LNP and Labor philosophies, just to contemplate the political scenario differently:
point-blank refusal to address electoral reform, endorsement of the growth of the political lobbying industry as the main influence on government, hitherto virtually unfettered immigration, somewhat unlimited foreign acquisition of Australian property and assets until recently, permitting the so-called Financial Services Industry to gamble national savings offshore, blatant government support of predatory capitalism, absurd reliance on the property industry and foreign education as principal drivers of economic activity, commitment of the nation to foreign military involvements without parliamentary debate, allowing the US military industrial complex to virtually own and/or control Australian defence procurement.
There are many more similarities in philosophies between the 2 major political parties that have contributed to the weakening of our national integrity.
The major political parties really only govern for slightly differing objectives and both usually act to ensure that their supporters are rewarded via lucrative opportunities. GREED is overriding.
Even more fundamental; our federation model is a failure with no really effective national governance over a bunch of Sovereign States/Territories all running off in differing directions.
Victoria is flooded with low English language skills economic immigrants who of course seek to advantage political benefit when forced to vote. The outcome may be similar in NSW. The LNP smells bad because of Howardism – he cast the die for the demise of the Liberal Party in my view.
We are on the verge of a Labor Party return federally and the LNP are fading toward obscurity because they point blank refuse to heed input from the electorate. But I also foresee the Labor star dimming pretty quickly because it is in their DNA to continue making the same old mistakes. They just cannot resist big spend initiatives on ill-conceived propositions and this will very likely happen again in the renewable energy field; just as it did with insulation, the NBN and so forth. Labor will inherit a huge debt from the LNP, but are unlikely to adequately tackle that situation.
People have had a gutful of the self-interest of political careerists and the gaming of the electoral system so we are likely to see the emergence of more Independent candidates that might only slightly improve political outcomes. But the whole system is now so broken, that a very non-cohesive nation is the likely outcome over about the next 20 years.
It was foresighted Lee Kuan Yew who cast doubt about our future potential within the South East Asian community. All should take a reality check and realize that Australia represents only 0.33 percent of world population and less than 1.6 percent of world GDP. We need to stop chest beating and imagining that we are a medium regional power.
Melbourne has the second highest Greek population of any city in the world. Though only relatively small proportion of the electorate, well organised minorities can and do alter the election results.
The Greeks (among others) come from a society where the socialist attitudes play a big part in setting their mindset for government handouts and Labor governments oblige, hence Saturdays result.
Casual Observer
It wasn’t the stabbing of Malcolm Turnbull.
It is the abandonment of conservative values and the undermineg of true conservatives by the managerial elites who have replaced entrepreneurs and conservative minded people.
The values and attributes that were often in the past shared by many wirking people.
These bunch of ‘fake liberals’ have won the liberal party.
To them I say have it.
In Australia, as in America, a movement of entrepreneurs and wirking people will emerge, and will maintain our traditional values.
Advance Australia is the start of that movement.
Now watch that being taken over by the incompetent and ineffective Managerial Elites. Just as they have the Labor Party.
Watch Viktoria go the way of Venezuela, Cuba and all socialist states.
Someone will eventually emerge to repair the damage but it won’t be the Liberal Party … or the current National Party.
rathbeg – 26th November 2018
“I live in a rural electorate, and am staggered just how many otherwise sensible farming folk
believe in [ dangerous anthropogenic] climate change. Particularly the under 50’s; and find me someone under 25 who is not completely convinced that the earth will dry out in 20 years.”
.Here’s two reasons why “otherwise sensible farming folk” are becoming CC alarmists:
https://www.farmersforclimateaction.org.au/ & https://www.farmersforclimateaction.org.au/our_staff
Verity Morgan-Schmidt
Chief Executive Officer
Originally a farm girl from the sheep and wheat country of Western Australia, Verity is a former Executive Officer for Western Australian Farmers Federation. No stranger to advocating for agriculture’s interests in the political arena,. Verity holds a Master of Arts (Politics) in Sustainability and Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Politics and Global Studies.
Anna Rose
Strategic Projects
Anna Rose is an author and change-maker with a long family farming of history in the Hunter Valley, Liverpool Plains and North West Slopes regions of NSW. She is an Innovation Fellow with one of Australia’s major philanthropic funds, the Myer Foundation. Anna previously co-founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, a movement of over 120,000 young people. Anna is author of Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic, and co-starred in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary I Can Change Your Mind on Climate Change.
The Liberals went on about law and order, and then came up with a policy straight from the tabloid comments–they were going to target (wait for it) judges! Yup, those pernicious creatures getting around in their long robes and blowing us up, knifing us and breaking into our houses as we sleep while swinging baseball bats (as if). Judges. And how? Why, by putting a decontextualised summary of their allegedly vital statistics (sentence lengths, number of sitting days, days between conclusion of hearing and delivery of judgment) up on the internet to enable all the armchair jurists to pillory them. Meanwhile, Labor promised 3000 more police officers. So Labor won and gets to choose the judges for the next four years.
@ Bushranger71
Cheers mon amie. What you had to say is damn spot on as well.
Keep up the good work.
Recently former Prime Minister John Howard restated his vision of the Liberal Party as a ‘broad church’. He is almost an advocate of the-broader-the-better and this is the rabble that we now have. Equally balanced between socialists and individualists.
To the great detriment of the Party he persuaded Malcolm Turnbull into remaining and that broadened the left extension of the broad church and as PM, Turnbull trained acolytes Morrison and Frydenberg in his ways. The result Mr Howard is terminal decline of your church and schism.
There haven’t been any real liberals for years. If they can’t agree on some principles that will allow Victorians to prosper in peace we will fall into the bog of despair that will go along with the socialist creed of crony fascism that will drive all industry from the State as the lights flicker on and off as the wind ebbs and flows and the sun shines or disappears behind cloud or the other side of the world.
At least I will be dead and won’t see the despair of my grandchildren as they are forced to forage for food and burn the forests to keep warm in winter.
Roger:
“Quadrant Online readers are invited to voice their opinions on why the Liberals lost and lost so badly, and what their party should stand for.”
The Victorian results follow on the Karen Phelps victory in the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Wentworth, and Phelps has nominated the ‘conservative’ stance of the party on AGW as a major reason: like it or not. What you are saying is ‘don’t mention the war!’ That is, the climate war. So you contradict your own request of your readers.
Mr Johnson:
“Ian MacDougall, most conservatives agree climate change is real – after all, we’ve had climate change ever since this planet had an atmosphere…”
And I am pleased to add that an increasing number of political conservatives are abandoning the Ostrich School of Climatology and its fossil-carbon lobby patrons, and are supporting the position taken on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) by the CSIRO, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society and 198 scientific organisations world wide; as well as the Australian Government, which is a signatory to the recent Paris agreement.
CO2 as a compound is naturally of interest to chemists, and the American Chemical Society has published a statement on greenhouse gas changes since the Industrial Revolution and the scientific consensus on their AGW role, which you can read at:
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases/industrialrevolution.html
All well and good Ian. But if we are to forego our standards of living by moving away from cheaper, coal-based power (and not outsource our economy to Asia) we at least should be guaranteed key performance indicators which demonstrate the exact impact of reducing world temperatures from our actions. Anything less than those KPIs is virtue signalling and a demonstration of a belief system rather than fact. (Rather like the christians not accepting ‘facts’ which counter the biblical narratives!)
A commentator at The Australian suggested that the Liberal Party should follow the British model and split into two parties – the conservative and the left-centrist (perhaps with the conservatives forming up around the Nationals). They could then support their electorates appropriately, win more votes by presenting a clear agenda, as well as forming a coalition government. This seems to me to be a very insightful suggestion, and perhaps the only solution left.
Other than that I don’t see any path that is going to prevent our heirs from being driven into taxation slavery (yes, we are arguably already at that point).
pgang, my doctor recently commented to me that in 3 years the baby boomer generation will be overtaken as the leading demographic in this country, by the younger generation/s. He said ‘if that thought doesn’t terrify you what will?”. The commentator is wrong; either way there will be a Coalition of diametrically opposite values – equally unworkable.
I’m afraid the conservative brand is finished, especially in light of its aging so-called base. People want stuff and Howard’s middle class welfare handouts started the culture of entitlement. And the progressive (read regressive) Left operates just like this through political correctness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiU20QjKPCo
This is decadence on a level which only a society which hasn’t faced an existential threat could endure.
My son’s friend has a male child who spent 4 years at university studying engineering. Thereafter he went to the RAAF to enlist and was told (last year) ‘we are not taking any males this year’!!!
It works in Britain Jody.
Jody, the culture of entitlement took off under Whitlam, not Howard (of course it was already latent at that point – some would say it started in the 1930’s). Howard was deeply irresponsible, I agree. On welfare as well as Iraq and gun ‘control’.
I am an optimist regarding our young people – I’m generally impressed with what I see. For the most part they are sensible and grounded people with a deep desire to participate in our national life and work hard to become self sufficient. As you say, opportunity is being denied to them in ways that we didn’t have to face. Many young adults are financially trapped at home because they can’t earn enough to leave the nest. They have useless qualifications and their desire to get ahead is being frustrated. As they mature they will wake up to what has been done to them, and they will not be happy.
So I think there is a future there, if we can survive the legacy of the 1960’s, and before our enslavement to government takes us too far down the rabbit hole.
pgang; governance by conglomerates of minor parties might be the best way forward as is showing up in other parts of the world.
That could conceivably come about in Australia, if we could somehow achieve electoral reform.
This forum illustrates to me that there is wasteful focus in this land on pushing political ideologies rather than addressing national interest needs.
Belief has been lost in serving the nation and the people.
Some examples.
Melbourne Port was sold off and the money is being frittered on removing railway level crossings because Victoria has been deliberately over-populated and developers were allowed to run amok. Charges for use of the port have now soared astronomically.
Irrigated melon farms in the Northern Territory have now been sold off to Chinese interests. The National Party is pushing for development of more immigration projects, but for whose benefit?
We need to get refocused on national interest issues and shed the stupid overemphasis on political ideologies.
Peter C It is well past time for those who support Tony Abbott, say 44 or so, to leave the once great but no longer great and never will again be a great Liberal Party, and form a Coalition with the National Party so as to make up a new Party which those like me who supported the Liberal Party all our lives – until achieving and proven election winner Tony Abbott was white-anted and back-stabbed by 55 Lefties for dud Labor/green Turnbull – but which can no longer support the Liberal Party as it is now and still is the Turnbull Labor Party,
“And I am pleased to add that an increasing number of political conservatives are abandoning the Ostrich School of Climatology and its fossil-carbon lobby patrons,”Ian MacDougall
Folk who have convinced themselves that government/agency control of the planet’s climate/weather is both desirable and feasible.are in for a shock. No wonder Professor Richard Lindzen called such breathtaking hubris “unfathomable silliness” in a lecture last month.
He said something else too:
“So there you have it. An implausible conjecture backed by false evidence and repeated incessantly has become politically correct ‘knowledge,’ and is used to promote the overturn of industrial civilization.”(Professor R Lindzen, Annual GWPF Lecture, London, October 8, 2018)
For even if the alarmists are right, it is both financially impossible and technically impractical to prevent allegedly dangerous anthropogenic climate change or global warming by implementing their so-called “solutions”.
Dr John Constable, energy editor of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has done an impressive analysis of the IPCC’s latest Special Report, SR15. He concluded that:
“SR15, if thoughtfully read, should oblige policy makers to conclude that the obstacles to limiting global warming to 1.5℃, and indeed even to higher temperatures, are not just arbitrary blockages, rocks in the road to be removed, but fundamental and structural problems with the policy options currently available, which are almost certainly more harmful than the climate change they set out to mitigate.”
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/19/climate-catch-22-in-poland/
question from the bleachers – which actual MPs took more of a hammering, the faux-cons or actual conservatives? Or did the invisibility of the coalition mean that there was no discernable difference?
pgang; I’m NOT an optimist about young people. They’re fragile snowflakes with an inordinate sense of entitlement. They remain at home because they don’t want to spend money on rent and want to have all the rest of it at the expense of their parents. I see it all about me here where I live; legions of late 20’s living at home off the parents. Have every gizmo under the sun and still not lifting a finger. ‘Boomerang Kids’ they’re called. I ended up throwing my 29y/o daughter out because she was a boomerang. One day I just snapped and said, “get your stuff and get out’. Haven’t spoken to her since and that was almost 7 years ago. The boys are all working hard in busy careers and businesses and this is what they were encouraged to do. Life hasn’t been easy but at no time do they moan and complain that it should be (just that neither Coalition nor Labor are dealing with our real problems and that they should stop appeasing minorities – who have an asphyxiating grip on our nation!). So, young people are addicted to gimme, gimme, gimme….
How about the “Not Happy Dan” advertising campaign? Who authorised that?? That annoying little whistle; What’s it supposed to mean? It was like one of those infuriating dish washing commercials designed to work by insinuating themselves into our brains. Listen to that often enough and I’d vote Labour. It gave the impression of craven, defeatest whinging. Horrendous!
Guy had it coming. So does Morrison.
Andrews, to his credit (albeit the state’s detriment), is a conviction politician. The young are idealistic. In Australia they flock to the Left — almost universally — because the Left has a monopoly on conviction politicians.
When (if?) the Liberals find the courage to nominate a leader who has the courage of his (or her) convictions, watch what happens.
Others here think it is the brainwashed kiddies who will rule and those kiddies all believe in global warming and entitlements.
What happens as the big freeze, that is coming, arrives.
Industry will be finished because if a lack of sustainable electricity, their degrees will only get them welfare, and the welfare will diminish because there will be few producers and entrepreneurs to pay tax, the banks have imploded under their greed ethic, Mum and dad have spent their inheritance or the Labor/Greens governments have stolen it.
They’ll all freeze out on the park bench and good riddance. I wonder if they’ll blame the education/ propaganda they and the indoctrination they received or will they all blame Tony Abbott as they were taught he was the cause of everything bad that happens?
frjohncorrigan; oh that is funny!! “The young are idealistic. In Australia they flock to the Left — almost universally — because the Left has a monopoly on conviction politicians.” We’ve never lived in times here in the west so chock to the brim with resentful, radical collectivists. And what you’re suggesting paints a typical picture of the youth of Nazi Germany, the USSR and modern China and North Korea. Yep; they’re all ‘conviction’-based. That went well.
Are these the young people of conviction you’re talking about?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/11/28/the-sad-spectacle-of-climate-activism/