In the interests of alerting us Kiwi 'smiling zombies' to the voting paper we must in conscience fill in on
September 19, here's Paul Collits, Sydney.
Feel free to
ignore the exclusively (or excessively) Ozzie bits ...
THE AUSTRALIAN RIGHT'S BIG MISTAKE
Australia's
battle of ideas - the culture war - seems lost, to the forces of progressive
liberalism. Those who would fight this battle seem preoccupied with
getting the Liberal party into office, and keeping it there. While the
bigger battles go by, without a fight. Understanding where we are going
wrong is the first task in understanding the war we are in.
The
Australian “right” – to the extent that such a term means anything in these
days of strange new political alliances, a largely non-performing and
factionalised Liberal Party with at most a third or so of members who could be
described even loosely as conservative, a National Party that is beyond a joke
and which has all but eschewed its own former conservative ideology, and a
shared woke globalist ideology that spans the ruling elites of all the major
parties – is a mess.
There
are many little mistakes made on the right of Australian politics. And
one big one. And here I speak largely of (and to) those on the right who
are outside the LNP tent, or who are tentatively in it, but strictly on
sufferance and without the remotest enthusiasm.
The
little mistakes are legion.
They
include putting up with disunity, indeed perpetuating it; backing wrong horses
– think Cory Bernardi – not presenting coherent, easily grasped philosophies to
voters and potential supporters; not turning political principles into
appealing, concrete policies that resonate with voters’ day-to-day concerns;
and refusing to accept Trumpian populism, aka national conservatism, as the
smart way ahead. You know – preserving Australian jobs, not selling off
the farm, putting Australia first, respecting tradition and family values,
pushing back against politically correct madness. Dare one say it –
making Australia great again. The Americans have cottoned onto
this. We have not.
The big
mistake is fatal.
It is
to mistake the battle for political office between the traditional parties for
the real battle, the battle of ideas, remembering that culture is upstream from
politics, and, as a result, to place all the strategic and tactical effort in
party political games and elections. Backing the
Liberal Party at all costs. Winning elections.
Having
placed all the chips on this battle, certain consequential mistakes
follow. Primarily, thinking that the main game is getting “conservative”
parties into office and getting left-of centre parties or coalitions out of
office. Hence those who mistakenly choose this course support the
Coalition reflexively and to attack the ALP reflexively, without any reference
to the bigger canvas. In summary, the Big Mistake is to keep backing the
Liberal Party, absent strategic thinking about what ultimately matters.
The
goal becomes winning office, at all costs and with all other things parked
while we pursue the main game. Except that it isn’t the main game.
This is the essential folly of the right. Getting strategies and policies
in place to effect genuine change in society, to reverse engineer the take-over
by the progressive left of the key institutions of society, simply never gets
prime attention.
Having
clueless, non-ideological twenty something apparatchiks from marketing and
public relations running the main parties seals the fate of the conservative
hopefuls. Apparatchiks for whom “political management” is all.
Messaging. This is all they know. The short term will ALWAYS out-do
the long-term, and these young guns are mostly only there to get their career
going anyway. Through the usual, seedy factional channels.
When
you hear someone say, “I only vote for the Coalition because the other mob are
worse”, which you will hear every other day, then you have lost the real
battle. Every time, you hear – “but this election is more important than
all the others. We CANNOT have Bill Shorten”.
This is
the Liberal Party’s get-out-of-gaol-free card. They have been living off
this since 1944. In other words, their entire life. Yes, it is
difficult when you have a compulsory preferential voting system. You end
up having to decide whether the Coalition comes in front of Labor, whoever you
put first or last. Those bits are the easy part. Are you forced to
vote informal?
This
form of argument and its attendant voting behaviour is simply a race to the
bottom. We all lose. Big time.
Or they
say, “I vote Liberal in the House of Representatives and for a real right wing
party in the Senate” to “keep the Libs honest”. Well, clearly that hasn’t
worked. We have a rag tag mob of log-rollers in the Senate who have their
own policy peccadillos but scant philosophical sense or big picture focus.
Or they are merely chancers looking for their fifteen minutes of glory.
Think Clive Palmer and his acolytes.
The
people who speak and act in this way do not get it. They have yet to
realise the basic Breitbartian principle about the ordering of culture and politics
mentioned above.
They do not
understand that the ruling elite, the political class, is the enemy of the
people. That the new war is between the people and the ruling class. They
fail to see that the odd rhetorical, even policy, victory over the left counts
for nought in a polity where the left occupies ALL the commanding heights
institutions, and where half to two thirds of the Liberal Party agree with the
core positions of that left.
And
they believe, utterly naively, that the Liberal Party can be “reformed” and
that simply getting more of “our people” into the Liberal Party will sort
things out. They probably believe the “broad church” nonsense still
peddled by John Howard and, astonishingly, by Tony Abbott, who was thrown onto
the scrap heap of political history by his own beloved Party.
And
they – “Discons” once but seemingly no longer – probably think, again, without
any semblance of recognition of reality, that now that Turnbull has gone, all
will be well. Getting Jim Molan up in a factional pre-selection battle is
seen as a major win. Really? Just look at New South Wales, where
the Liberal Party is an embarrassing mob of seedy, factionalised
developer-buddies who roger the punters royally and line their own political
pockets as part of a totally corrupt system of crony capitalism. This is,
incidentally, the state that has produced every one of the last four Liberal
Prime Ministers.
The
“big mistake” has consequences for the right.
It
means that the right loses every fight going. Certainly all the big
ones. It means that resources are wasted, are mis-deployed. It means
that a little more political capital, and trust, are blown, as great numbers of
“silent Australians” who now are beginning to realise, for example, that the
Covid pandemic is a giant con.
It
means that yet more opportunities are lost. The leftist revolutionaries,
under the cover of “Black Lives Matter” who are currently running amok in the
streets are merely critiqued for being “irresponsible” for health reasons, not
for their bald faced challenge to our way of life and our previously tightly
held traditions. These rabid ratbags get a pass, without pushback from
the leaders of the so-called right establishment.
We have
a Liberal led coalition that doesn’t have the three things needed by “the
base”. First, they are not right wing. They are mostly left-leaning
liberals, not at all conservative, or populist for that matter. Look at
who gets pre-selected. Folks who are as socially liberal and as woke as
anyone. They are genuine leftists who are allowed to take seats at the
high table.
Second,
they do not in any way represent or reward the “club sensible” folks who are on
the right, the men and women of struggle street so much-better-represented by
Alan Jones, the “silent Australians” much referred to but little considered by
those in power. They HATE politicians. As well they might.
For them, politicians always disappoint.
Third,
the Liberals have no spine for the fights that matter, if they were somehow
able to disentangle themselves from their endless, debilitating internal
battles for sufficient time to see what the big war is. They are content
to do all the party-political things that will help them attain “office” –
never power. They are, ultimately, not remotely interested in wielding
power in the cause of bigger goals, or in pushing back against what their base
considers to be the enemy.
The
current Covid malaise provides a classic case study in the right’s big
mistake.
The
Andrews Government provides a hideous example, yes, of incompetence, but also
of being on the wrong side of the Covid issue. But here is the
thing.
Andrews
is merely a marginally worse example of the same mistake made by ALL Australian
governments, of all political persuasions. That is, to have been spooked
into thinking that they need to do anything much about Covid, a mostly mild, if
unusual, virus that affects most people, including those it infects, not at
all.
The big
mistake is to take Covid seriously, as a pandemic that means all societal bets
are off, and that requires brutalising freedom, jobs, businesses, indeed, the whole
freakin’ economy. The little mistakes include hypocrisy, bungles, and so
on.
So what
does the “official right” do?
It bags
Andrews in a party political way for the little mistakes he has made. It
can’t attack him over the big mistake – because they made it too! All
the Liberal led governments have signed up fully for the Covid scare. They
have decided – “we are all in this together” – and so Andrews, being part of
the egregious “National Cabinet”, can’t be attacked for being a Covid
fascist. The only form of attack permissible is related to
incompetence.
Not to
making the big Covid mistake, a category error, in mistaking a mild “epidemic”
for a world shattering “PANdemic”.
The
Australian right doesn’t have a clue about Covid, and what it means. They
have missed the big story. And the big philosophical opportunity to
create space for its own, once followed, core business – that of freedom,
rights and prosperity. That is, to support the silent Australians who
will be absolutely stuffed by their own craven, political decisions about
this virus.
I often
refer to the Australian right-of-centre in-group. These are the
well-networked, impeccably connected, media performing cadre of slightly
conservative, slightly disgruntled-with-the-Libs types whose main focus is on
the longevity and security of their careers. They are never too edgy, and
always prioritise bagging their party political opponents over seeking policy
truth.
Consider
here the Think Tanks, impeccably connected and configured to provide a source
of personnel for future Liberal Party pre-selection. Fingers in all the
right (in both senses of the word) pies. They are the Australian
equivalent of the US GOP (Republican) establishment, aka the Washington DC
swamp. They are the insiders. Even the “outsiders” – think the Sky
News program of the same name – are really “insiders”. In fact, Sky might
be regarded right-of-centre insiders central. Whatever they might think
of ScoMo privately, they remain religiously on message and signed up to the
political and electoral welfare of the Liberal Party.
The
comfortable persistence of the RoCIG (right-of-centre-in-group) is actually a
bulwark to forward progress on the right. It preserves the establishment.
The
authentic, people-centred Australian “right”, again, noting “whatever that
means”, has a series of urgent tasks if it is to break free of the consequences
of its big mistake.
One,
the rightist groups need to talk to one another. To recognise the
problem, and to discuss it. To form serious power groups interested in
The Fight as I have described it. Use the Liberal Party,
by all means, but don’t obsess over its electoral welfare. Getting good
people into the Liberal Party, indeed into all parties, is not without merit as
one part of the strategy. Just do not expect miracles, or a quick pay
off. And the task IS rather urgent.
Focus on culture, ever upstream
from party politics. Speak boldly, like the original Apostles and Church
Fathers once did, counter culturally and in the face of existing power
structures, all those centuries ago. Meet in secret.
Pressure groups like Advance Australia to get with the program and be way more
visible. Engage Mark Latham, Australia’s only current politician who is
focused on the main game and who thinks clearly about the things that count for
those of us in struggle street.
And the
folks struggling are our friends. The working class has been abandoned by
the New Class. The Marxists and progressive liberals absolutely HATE the
workers. Make peace with One Nation, and collude with it, where this
makes sense.
And –
remember Reagan! Yes, we on the right were at times critical of him during his
time in office. And critics since, like Christopher Caldwell in his minor
masterpiece The Age of
Entitlement, have pointed out BIG mistakes. But Reagan was
the complete conservative, with utter belief, sunny optimism, rhetorical
skills, masterly communications skills, a unerring connect with the folks,
common sense and a nuanced understanding of the big picture. Lessons
remain.
There
IS one group in Australia, to date well under the radar, led by Glenn O’Rourke,
starting a process along these lines. It is called the Australian
Federation Party. It has emerged out of the failure that was the
Australian Conservatives. It is attempting to at least get the Club
Sensible people talking to one another, and beginning to act in a coherent,
strategic, political manner.
It may
or may not be the answer to the questions I have raised above. But it is
worth our attention, in crazy and, for the right, sadly non-productive,
times. In times where the main game is – speak truth to power.
 |
| St Thomas Apostle and MartyrJuly 3
"My Lord and My God!"
Speaking truth to Power
"Father, let our celebration of the feast of St Thomas the Apostle be the source of his unfailing help and protection. Fill us with your life-giving grace through faith in your Son, Jesus, whom Thomas acknowledged to be his Lord and God."
|
No comments:
Post a Comment