Politics, Strategy, Campaigns, Elections

Hint: the answer is in the name

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) does lots of things it shouldn’t.

Restrict the trading of others

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) helps to enforce sanctions.

It contributes in varying degrees to efforts to enforce sanctions endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, like sanctions against North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and various countries in Africa, as well as other sanctions like those against Russia, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe.

Sanctions impede and redirect, rather than stop, trade involving the targeted countries. They rarely bring about regime or policy change in the targeted country, and any impact in this regard is more often negative than positive. Sanctions amount to a diplomat’s response to a call to ‘do something’ without the commitment of ground troops.

Deterring and countering restrictions on our own trade

Some say the ADF can and should defend Australian trade by ensuring the ADF can project power including through a long-range navy.

This is wrong.

The likelihood of any attempts to stop Australia’s trade is low, the likelihood of success of any such attempts is low, the impact of a successful attempt to stop Australia’s trade would be far from catastrophic, and the ADF can do little to deter or counter any of this anyway.

Firstly, consider the likelihood of attempts to stop Australian trade. Here are some scenarios, from less to more likely.

The United Nations Security Council agreeing to impose sanctions on Australia in an attempt to stop Australian trade.
An assortment of powerful countries defying the Security Council and attempting to stop Australian trade themselves.
One country, such as China, unilaterally attempting to stop Australian trade, including through war.
Pirates attempting to stop Australian trade.

Each scenario is unlikely, except perhaps the risk of piracy, for which traders can arrange their own security.

The federal government should not have supported this illiberal state policy

Secondly, consider the likelihood of success of any attempts to stop Australian trade. As we see with current sanction efforts, and even at the height of the last world war, even the most sophisticated campaigns against a country’s trade tend to impede and redirect trade, rather than stop it.

Thirdly, consider the impact of a successful attempt to stop Australian trade. Despite popular impressions that Australia is heavily trade dependent, Australia has a below-average reliance on trade. We are more self-sufficient than you think. So a successful blockade of Australia would cause some hardship, but any claims beyond this are hyperbolic.

Finally, even in the unlikely event of a successful trade blockade against Australia, what would be the optimal ADF response?

Nothing.

The point is, the cost of having a military powerful enough to counter such a blockade would be greater than the cost of living self-sufficiently.

The ADF as foreign aid

The ADF is building infrastructure in PNG, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomons, doing maritime surveillance to defend the fisheries of various Pacific Islands, and training military and police forces in various Pacific countries.

Such action may fail to deliver political stability and prosperity to the Pacific, and may fail to deter the establishment of Chinese military bases in the Pacific. Moreover, Australians suffer little from instability and poverty in the Pacific, and Chinese military bases in the Pacific would do little to increase the risk of, or damage from, Chinese aggression to Australia.

The ADF’s actions in the Pacific are essentially foreign aid, the funding of which should not be forced on all taxpayers.

Despite popular impressions that Australia is heavily trade dependent, Australia has a below-average reliance on trade.

Other overseas operations

The operations of the ADF beyond the Pacific are unwarranted too.

The ADF is training Ukrainians to fight Russia and remains in a fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, with a current focus on training Iraqi forces. The ADF dons blue berets to police the borders of Israel and the Koreas and to provide security in South Sudan, having recently provided security in Mali.

These are not our fights. Interested Australians should be free to engage in these conflicts if they so choose, without roping the Australian taxpayer in. The ADF’s engagement in these fights does not represent cost-effective training for defending Australian soil, which is best done through defensive exercises in Australian conditions. And while ADF personnel are overseas, they are not defending Australia.

Enforcing obedience to state law

During the Covid lockdowns, the ADF was used in support of state police to prevent travel beyond legally permitted limits and to keep state borders closed.

The federal government should not have supported this illiberal state policy, and the military should not have been tasked with law enforcement. In liberal democracies, we train and regulate our military primarily for the exertion of force on enemies, and our police primarily for the service and protection of citizens.

Disaster relief

The ADF is increasingly being used for humanitarian assistance following floods and bushfires. This is not its role; indeed, such activities are a serious distraction from its primary role of the defence of Australia.

State governments should bolster the ranks of volunteer organisations to provide humanitarian assistance.

Duncan Spender

Duncan Spender is CEO of Oysters Tasmania, having previously served as CEO of the Multicultural Council of Tasmania. He advised Senator David Leyonhjelm from 2014 and briefly served as Senator in 2019. Duncan’s early career was in local government and the Australian and New Zealand Treasury Departments.

8 Segments of the Democratic Right

Politics, Strategy, Campaigns, Elections

By

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23 March 2023

We don’t weaken our democracy by banning them.

Here’s the quick political segmentation for you to ponder.

The Australian political landscape has two overarching groups: the Extremists and the Democrats.

We must actively counter the Extremists in the public square regardless of their form or stripe. No exceptions. No nuancing or qualifying. Their idealogies are all abhorrent. This includes five sub-groups: the Communists and Socialists, the Fascists and Ethno-Nationalists, and the Militant Jihadists as well.

No! As Democrats, we must do the hard yards engaging and countering them.

We expose their dire histories, their graphic, heinous results, their intolerance, ulterior motives and their totalitarian DNA. We reveal and mock, we eviscerate and make them look odd and utterly untempting.

We built alliances among the Democrats in this regard, we unite with them against the Extremists and focus our message towards the disenfranchised, marginalised and dispossessed so they don’t drift to the Extremists.

As and once we win, we turn next to our fellow Democrats. With our democratic fellow-travellers, we reason and convert.

Now, inside the Democrats, there are two sub-groups both with long and proud traditions. They are the Democratic Left and the Democratic Right. As the names suggest, both are democratic but of different flavours. Both are ice cream, just one is strawberry and the other chocolate. Here the flavours are more government and more freedom.

We start with our great democratic opponent, the Democratic Left. This group comprises the Social Democrats with their penchant for the welfare state in the name of compassion. They are fairly united right now, sitting inside the Australian Labour Party, the Australian Greens and Animal Justice and representing a cohesive, fighting force. If we do not impune their motives but show them the results of their policies, we might have a chance. Far more effective is that we promote policies which contrast, wedge and split them. AUKUS is emerging as a wedge issue for the Democratic Left.

History suggests it will be hard to convince them. And if that be the case, so be it.

Next, we must strengthen the Democratic Right for future battles.

So what do we discover?

Well, the Democratic Right are highly fragmented at the moment. In fact, there are 8 segments, all fairly distinct sub-sub-groups if you look hard enough but with some smudging at the edges which reveals affliation across some of the grouping and that people migrate between them.

Here are the 8 segments:

The Moderates
We’re talking here about people who self-describe as small-l philosophical liberal or modern liberal. Moderates see themselves as fiscally responsible and socially liberal. Since 2007, if loyal party members, this segment hasn’t noticed they are frogs in the slow-boiling saucepan fiscally. If new to party politics, the ranks of the Moderates now include people who have a tendency to be big government spenders rather than economically lean, and that expenditure has often been on social projects they wouldn’t have chased in the Howard years. We are talking about Liberal Party members and Teals.
The Libertarians
This group, most likely you as a reader of Liberty Itch, sometimes self-describe as classical liberal or liberal. Like the Moderates, they see themselves as fiscally responsible and socially liberal. Unlike the Moderates, the Libertarians are philosophically-driven and so their policy prescriptions are consistent and predictable. And they are very dry fiscally, to the point of reducing the size of government. This sometimes results in a doctrinaire approach and an obsession for philosophical purity tests. We are talking members of the Liberal Democrats.
The Disaffected
These people are probably ex Liberal Party supporters, probably slow to leave, currently political refugees, probably moderate, probably white collar, and looking for a new party which expresses their values. They are confused and disoriented. They are upset. They feel the political rug has been pulled from under their feet.
The Populists
Here, we’re talking probably about former Liberal Party members who self-describe as conservative but, on closer scrutiny, their views taken in total show a mixed or inconsistent framework. This inconsistency can sometimes cause them to err into dangerous territory and be drawn to a charismatic leader. They are mostly blue collar, and have already migrated to One Nation and the United Australia Party.
The Conspiracy Theorists
This segment doesn’t know which political party they belong to, are skeptical of authority, and yearn to make sense of the world. They frequently latch onto theories about globalists and global bodies but, with emerging critical reasoning skills only and craving certainty in an uncertain world, cannot discern between fact and fiction. You can find these people in any of the parties but they are particularly concentrated in Australia One and the sovereign citizen movement.
The Agrarians
This segment lives in rural areas or regional towns with a strong agricultural influence. They are conservative, but fiscally slip into protectionist economics and bigger spending rural services. They are in the National Party, Liberal Party and the Shooters Fishers and Farmers.
The ConservativesAs I’ve documented, conservatives love to conserve whatever the status quo of the day. Since resistance to change is their modus operandi, the work tirelessly to halt or slow undesirable change. However, Conservatives rarely come up with new policy themselves and what they do come up with can be anti-freedom. Think bans, quick-to-judge court proceedings and higher taxes to fund conservative causes. This puts them on the back-foot constantly for lack of policy flair. You’ll find conservatives and self-described conservatives everywhere.
The Christian Right
This segment has no monopoly over right-wing Christians. The difference between the Christian Right and all other Democratic Right segments is that it is exclusively Christian and it seeks to assert Biblical authority into the state as a kind of theocracy of one potency or another. The other segments mentioned will assume a plural, secular, liberal democracy. The Christian Right is usually evangelical or orthodox, usually Pentecostal, always family-oriented. You will find members in Family First and the Australian Family Party.

The challenge for the Democratic Right is to bind these 8 segments to form a Centre-Right Coalition, win against the Democractic Left and put the Extremists out of business.

An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.

The New Gulag

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14 July 2023

In his famous three-volume masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the frozen wastelands of Siberia where political prisoners and dissidents the Soviet state considered dangerous were held (for their speech, not their actions). A gulag was a Soviet prison; an archipelago is a string of islands; hence the term ‘gulag archipelago’ – a string of camps, prisons, transit centres, secret police, informers, spies and interrogators across Siberia.

Today, people are frozen out of society in more subtle ways. The authorities no longer bash down your door and haul you off to a gulag for espousing the ‘wrong views’; instead, they silence and freeze you out of existence in other ways.

No-one describes the current situation better than Scottish commentator Neil Oliver in his Essentials of Life video clip here. More about that shortly.

Divide and conquer

As we know, the Left’s chief weapon is division. Unite the disaffected groups and those with grievances, and then ‘divide and conquer’ the rest of us. Divide along racial, generational, sexual, religious or economic lines. Any line will do.

What may have started as ‘the workers vs the bosses’ – ‘the proletariat vs the bourgeoisie’ – and ‘supporting the poor’, became just a ruse to gain power. Workers and the poor have long since been abandoned by the Left who now find other ways to divide and conquer.

In his excellent book, Democracy in a Divided Australia, Matthew Lesh writes:

“Australia has a new political, cultural, and economic elite. The class divides of yesteryear have been replaced by new divisions between Inners and Outers. This divide is ripping apart our political parties, national debate, and social fabric.

Inners are highly educated inner-city progressive cosmopolitans who value change, diversity, and self-actualisation. Inners, despite being a minority, dominate politics on both sides, the bureaucracy, universities, civil society, corporates, and the media. They have created a society ruled by educated elites – that is, ruled by themselves.

Outers are the instinctive traditionalists who value stability, safety, and unity. Outers are politically, culturally, and economically marginalised in today’s graduate-dominated knowledge society era. Their voice is muzzled in public debate, driving disillusionment with the major parties, and record levels of frustration, disengagement, and pessimism.“

For over a hundred years, Australia fought to remove race from civic considerations. Yet now we are being asked to permanently divide the nation by entrenching an Indigenous Voice into our Constitution. By the ‘Inners’, of course.

In the workplace, politicians are still treating workplace behaviour like a game of football. Australia’s employers (‘the bosses’) are on one team, and Australia’s employees (‘the workers’) are on the other. The game is then overseen by a so-called ‘independent umpire’ called the Fair Work Commission. But of course, this is not how workplaces operate at all. The ‘game’, if you even want to call it that, is played not by two teams of employers and employees, but by hundreds, even thousands of different teams, competing against hundreds and thousands of other teams of employers and employees.

Mark Twain observed, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example”.

Here’s one – the infamous Dollar Sweets dispute where unions were picketing Fred Stauder’s confectionery business. Other confectionery businesses were approached to support Fred but were rebuffed saying, “Why should we care if Dollar Sweets goes down? It will mean more business for us.” So much for ‘bosses vs workers’.

While paying lip service to free markets, property rights, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law and smaller government, the Liberal Party in Australia has all but abandoned these ideals in practice. As has big business, which, truth be known, was never on the side of free markets. Corporations have always wanted markets they can dominate, and to eliminate the competition. If that means aligning with the Left or doing the government’s bidding, so be it.

Which includes – and here we return to our ‘new gulags’ theme – closing a person’s bank account, destroying them on social media, or excluding them from employment. Business is right on board with this.

The Left will keep pushing its woke agenda until it is stopped. And it will not be stopped with facts, figures, logic, evidence or reason. It doesn’t care about any of that. It will only be stopped with political power.

Holding conferences, writing opinion pieces, producing podcasts and YouTube interviews in the hope of persuading people have, I’m afraid, had their day. The ‘Inners’ now rule.

Stopping the relentless march of the Left will require political power. Seats in parliament. Which means like-minded people and parties forming alliances and working strategically and tactically together to win seats.

In Neil Oliver’s video clip, he says, “When it comes to the state, that which it can do, it certainly will do” and “What can happen to anyone, will soon happen to everyone”.

So, if you belong to a think-tank, lobby group or centre-right political party, and want to stop the woke Left further ruining our country, then please encourage your organisation to place less emphasis on winning arguments and more emphasis on winning seats – as previously outlined here and here.

Thank you for your support.

Bob’s contribution to the Australian community has been reflected in a wide range of appointments including National President of the Housing Industry Association, Co-Founder and Inaugural President of Independent Contractors of Australia, Director of The Centre for Independent Studies, and Senator for South Australia.

The Everyday Libertarian

By

Nicholas Samios

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13 March 2024

In today’s politically charged atmosphere, evangelical libertarians often stray into polarising debates around topics like firearms or drug legalisation. Is there a subtler, more effective approach?

I suggest the “everyday libertarian mindset”. It involves reframing common complaints and concerns through the lens of smaller government and individual liberty.

I often hear myself responding to complaints about government by saying “that’s why we need guns”. When I say this, libertarians “get it”. But this phrase causes our “normie” friends to switch off.

Smaller government policies can foster the development of diverse and innovative energy sources, including nuclear power

How about a more congenial conversational pivot: “That’s why we need smaller government.”

Picture this: A friend laments Australia’s low productivity. Instead of delving into a heated debate about employment policies, you respond calmly, “That’s why we need smaller government.” This simple phrase opens the door to a discussion about the role of government in the economy and the importance of prioritising individual liberties over interventionist agendas.

Here are some instances where the everyday libertarian mindset shines:

1. Healthcare costs: Rather than blaming the system for rising healthcare costs, discuss how government regulations inflate prices and limit choice in the healthcare market. Advocating for smaller government and increased competition can give individuals greater control over their healthcare decisions and costs. Would there be a shortage of doctors, hospitals, and other services if the government got out of the way?

2. Education quality: When concerns arise about education quality, highlight how government monopolies limit choice and innovation in education. By advocating for school choice and decentralising control over education, parents and students can access a wider range of educational opportunities tailored to their needs.

3. Bureaucratic red tape: Encountering bureaucratic red tape or inefficiency? Emphasise the need for smaller government and streamlined regulations. By reducing the size and scope of government, individuals and businesses can navigate processes more efficiently.

4. Personal freedoms: Discuss personal freedoms and civil liberties, emphasising the importance of limiting government power to protect individual rights. Smaller government leads to less intrusion into citizens’ lives and greater respect for individual autonomy.

Rather than blaming the system for rising healthcare costs, discuss how government regulations inflate prices and limit choice in the healthcare market

5. Publicly funded broadcasters: When discussing the publicly funded government broadcasters, such as the ABC and SBS in Australia, consider the implications of government involvement in media. Point out that taxpayer-funded media outlets compete with the private sector, which do not cost taxpayers anything. By advocating for smaller government and media independence, individuals can support a diverse and free press that serves the interests of the public rather than political agendas. Encourage exploring alternative funding models, such as private sponsorship or subscriber-based models, to ensure journalistic integrity and freedom of expression.

6. Nuclear energy: Discuss the lifting of the ban on nuclear energy in Australia. Smaller government policies can foster the development of diverse and innovative energy sources, including nuclear power. Advocate for a free-market approach to energy production, where individuals and businesses have the freedom to pursue cleaner and more efficient energy solutions without burdensome government regulations hindering progress.

I find the phrase “that’s why we need smaller government” easy to apply to almost any situation. Any mistake a government makes – “that’s why we need smaller government – less for these people to stuff up”.

By incorporating these instances, we illustrate how the everyday libertarian mindset can be applied to a wide range of issues, promoting smaller government and individual liberty in everyday conversations. It’s about sparking thoughtful discussions and planting seeds of libertarian principles in the minds of others, one conversation at a time.

Nicholas Samios

Nicholas Samios is a fund manager and small business investor with a wealth of experience spanning three decades in commercial finance and SME capital raising. In his spare time, he puts on his “Austrian School” economist hat and utilises his insights from the commercial
world to analyse the economic landscape for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Senator Thorpe’s Shock Resignation

By

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6 February 2023

Lydia Thorpe is out!

The abrasive and race-obsessed Senator, who resigned in disgrace as Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens in 2022, now resigns from the Party which made her career and had her return in 2022.

You can understand Adam Bandt’s ashen face. Loyalty be damned!

Hemmed-in by a nation-destroying fence of her own construction, she’ll now enjoy a life on the crossbench, a lone political animal with an untested, so-called, “Blak” constituency. Oh, for spelling!

The ever-upbeat Senator Ralph Babet from the United Australia Party was characteristical swift in his reponse, telling Liberty Itch:

“I welcome Senator Thorpe to the crossbench and look forward to working with her in opposition to The Voice referendum.”

The Liberal Party, under the leadership of Peter Dutton, is the limp partner in the Liberal-National Coalition on The Voice. In contrast, the Nationals have offered stiff opposition to what many call a race-eligible third chamber, a principled position despite the risk of desserters.

Social media is saturated with a more blunt assessment of The Voice: apartheid.

Senator Babet’s enterprising bridge-building is work the Liberals seem long ago incapable of achieving.

Well may Liberty Itch subscribers wish the energetic Senator Babet good luck. He will need it. Senator Thorpe was initially against The Voice, then for, now uncommitted, hardly the history of a sure-footed politican with a clear voter-base.

An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.

Mind Your Language

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22 May 2024

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Everyone knows a suit is comprised of a jacket and a pair of pants. Two jackets are not a suit. Neither can two pairs of pants be called a suit.

This was an argument I often made during the marriage debate. Marriage, I argued, was the joining of a man and woman in a special relationship.

If two men or two women wished to be joined together then they can call it something else, but not marriage; not a suit.

This idea of insisting that words reflect their true meaning and that things be called what they are, is not a new idea.

As long ago as 500BC, Chinese philosopher Confucius said, “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”

Modern day politics has become largely about controlling the language.

As US preacher Chuck Swindoll says, ‘they adopt our vocabulary but not our dictionary.’

A person on 50 per cent of the median wage is officially on the ‘poverty line’.

Farmers used to drain water-logged swamp areas of their land, and no-one batted an eye.

Then swamps were renamed ‘wetlands’, and now can’t be touched.

We’ve re-named euthanasia ‘dying with dignity’; abortion is now referred to as ‘reproductive health’ or ‘planned parenthood’ or simply ‘pro-choice’.

Free speech is branded hate speech, local aboriginal tribes have become ‘First Nations’, power cuts are now called ‘load shedding’, tax increases are re-badged as ‘budget savings’ and denying one’s gender has become gender affirming.

A person on 50 per cent of the median wage is officially on the ‘poverty line’.

‘Safe schools’ and ‘respectful relationships’ are anything but – as evidenced by lessons in bestiality presented to 14-year-old schoolgirls in South Australia.

The Good Book says, ‘Woe to those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.’ – Isaiah 5:20.

Then there are the perpetual ‘straw man’ arguments – misrepresenting an opponent’s position in order to quickly and easily destroy their argument.

‘Trickle-down economics’ is a straw man argument. There is no such theory in economics. But opponents of free-market economics invented the term ‘trickle-down’ to suggest free-markets are all about favouring the rich and hoping some of their wealth will ‘trickle down’ to those lower on the socio-economic ladder.

Modern day politics has become largely about controlling the language.

Then there’s the ubiquitous use of the term ‘flat earthers’ when no-one, anywhere throughout history thought the world was flat. Not the Egyptians, not the Phoenicians, not the ancient Greeks; no-one thought the earth was flat. They weren’t silly. By standing on high ground and watching their tall ships sail over the horizon, they knew the earth was round, they just didn’t know how big it was. Christopher Columbus left Spain and headed west for India, not to prove the world was round, but to determine its size.

Or the phrase Terra Nullius, a term used to manipulate debate on indigenous matters.

‘Australia was founded on the basis of Terra Nullius,’ is one of those myths that survives by repetition, not historical fact.

Terra Nullius is a Latin term meaning ‘land belonging to no one’.

Yet no-one ever said Australia was not occupied.

The term ‘terra nullius’ was not mentioned anywhere in Australia until 1977!

Regarding exploration and occupation, the book 18^th Century Principles of International Law stated that, “All territory not in the possession of states who are members of the family of nations and subjects of International Law must be considered as technically res nullius and therefore open to occupation”. ‘Res nullius’ – land not owned by a recognised nation, is not the same as ‘terra nullius’ – land not occupied by anyone e.g. Antarctica.

And on a similar vein, that Aborigines didn’t get the vote, or were treated as ‘flora and fauna,’ until 1967.

All false. All examples of the mutilation of language to influence political debate. US author Michael Malice writes, ‘they’re not using language to communicate, they’re using it to manipulate.’

Bob’s contribution to the Australian community has been reflected in a wide range of appointments including National President of the Housing Industry Association, Co-Founder and Inaugural President of Independent Contractors of Australia, Director of The Centre for Independent Studies, and Senator for South Australia.

The New Coalition?

By

Max Payne

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27 June 2024

1

While falling well short on some key issues, it’s been heartening at least to see the Federal Coalition leading the discourse and taking some risks on genuine reform.

Left in ruins after being swept from office in 2022, many commentators questioned the viability of the Liberal party. But within two years they have surged back into relevance, and with a flavour less antithetical to libertarians.

It began early in 2023 when the National Party declared its stance on the Voice referendum, and Dutton duly followed, despite some resistance within the Liberals. This crucial first step allowed Australians to see that Dutton’s Liberals were delineated from Labor, and despite healthy early polling for the ‘yes’ case, Dutton’s gamble paid off handsomely and the Albanese honeymoon ended abruptly.

The Liberal state divisions are much slower on the uptake, as evidenced by their staunch refusal to adopt Dutton’s nuclear proposal.

Then, whispers on vaping prohibition, super for housing, an overhaul of immigration, and of course the big one: nuclear power. Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey was even floating the idea of income splitting between household partners! Recognising his lack of personability and charisma, Dutton has opted to take a series of policy reforms to the next election with an eye to vastly expanding the Coalition’s electoral map as its traditional base shrinks.

Lo and behold, they have already taken the lead in several recent national polls and, incredibly, Dutton overtook Albanese as preferred PM in the latest Resolve poll – something I thought I would never see. It may be that in time Dutton will again lose control of the narrative; Australians are typically sceptical of reform agendas from opposition (see Bill Shorten, 2019), but there’s some encouragement for libertarians here.

It appears the unfolding political realignment is presenting the Liberals with an opportunity to reinvent themselves as the party of working Australians. The ‘teal wave’ of 2022, that also saw blue ribbon seats such as Higgins and Ryan fall to Labor and the Greens, was a blessing in disguise. Many of the nagging progressive moderates of the party were flushed out of metropolitan strongholds, leaving Dutton with no choice but to devise a new path to victory. Thus, faced with poor prospects with young voters and the opportunity to re-home the politically jaded working class, Dutton is unveiling his new coalition.

As libertarians, we still have important work to do. Firstly, the Coalition maintains terrible policy in areas such as online safety, while their shadow cabinet currently boasts the leftovers of a government that completely failed to effectively manage the budget for a decade.

The National Party declared its stance on the Voice referendum

Secondly, the Liberal state divisions are much slower on the uptake, as evidenced by their staunch refusal to adopt Dutton’s nuclear proposal. Metropolitan centres still dominate their electoral prospects and the old risk averse attitude still prevails: in Queensland for example, LNP leader David Crisafulli is paralysed, terrified of losing an unlosable state election, while in Victoria John Pesutto and his inner city moderates still control the party.

Undoubtably, libertarians still have a major opportunity to shape public policy. While it’s encouraging to see the Coalition adopt a reform agenda with some sensible policy that promotes free choice and prosperity, they are still a long way from their classical liberal roots. At the state level, libertarians have a unique opportunity to help set the agenda and give voice to the aspirational working class. Imagine, for a moment, if the Liberal Party had spoken up on behalf of those campaigning against the excesses of Covid mania and mandates. Imagine also if they had meekly embraced bipartisanship on the Voice.

It is worth reflecting on the positive change we see in the Liberal Party. They are perhaps the most powerful vessel for libertarian policies, having proven under Dutton that they can take on the left and win. It’s indicative of our political influence in action. However, we must be merciless when they stray back towards populist authoritarianism.

Max Payne

Max Payne is the Australian Program Associate with Students For Liberty, a global non-profit that spreads the values of libertarianism on campus. He is also a twice former candidate with the Libertarian Party and maintains a keen interest in Austrian economics, classical music and organic gardening.

Caught! CCP captured in media sting interfering in the Adelaide City Council elections

Politics, Strategy, Campaigns, Elections

By

Fiona Hui

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2 November 2022