Chris Bowen played no small part in Labor’s devastating election loss, but he is also one of the few Labor politicians who seem capable of taking a long, hard look that the party’s lurch to the far-left.
Labor’s policy platform was Corbynism-lite, tax’n’spend, gender ideology and class warfare nonsense. Far from being prepared to rethink their leftist follies, most Labor MPs, including likely new leader Anthony Albanese, are signalling their intention to carry on regardless.
Bowen is urging the party to think again. quote.
Religious Australians believe the ALP has abandoned them, Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen warned yesterday, while bowing out of the party’s leadership battle. end quote.
Religion has rarely played a huge part in Australian politics. Australians have always regarded a politician’s religion as their private affair. When Kevin Rudd made a habit of doing Sunday pressers on his church doorstep, it came across as awkward and insincere.
This time, though, was different. The left has ratcheted up their assault on religion (or, at least, Christianity) to fever-pitch. Australians, even non-believers, arked up. quote.
Mr Bowen, who suffered a 5.4 per cent swing against him in his western Sydney seat of McMahon, said the issue of Labor’s stance on religious freedoms had been raised with him in the wake of the party’s crushing election defeat on Saturday.
“I have noticed as I have been around during the election campaign, and even in the days since … how often it has been raised with me that people of faith no longer feel that progressive politics cares about them,” he said yesterday…“I think this is an issue from the federal election that we haven’t yet focused on.”
theaustralian
Education and religion commentator Kevin Donnelly concurs. quote.
While the ALP’s failure to cost its climate change policy, its massive increase in taxation, and its threat to the living standards of older Australians were significant issues explaining last weekend’s result, freedom of religion and freedom of expression also played important parts […]
For the more than 12 million Christians across Australia, [Israel] Folau being victimised demonstrated that religious freedom was threatened as things stood; under any Labor-Greens coalition those freedoms would cease to exist. end quote.
Not just Christians. Even many non-believers were appalled at the bullying meted out to Folau by Rugby Australia and their elite cheer-squads.
Unable to see past its inner-city, social media bubble of “progressive” elites, Labor promised to go even further. quote.
The ALP…signalled that once in government it would appoint an LGBTIQ commissioner…[and] also intended to increase funding to the AHRC and to further undermine freedom of speech by strengthening section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Add the ALP’s acknowledgment that legislating for same-sex marriage “wasn’t the end of the road” and that an ALP government would implement an even more radical gender and sexuality agenda […]
Only the Coalition guaranteed religious freedom. end quote.
Australia has always been a remarkably secular nation, where the sort of religious tub-thumping that characterises American politics, for instance, has been regarded with suspicion and disdain. But Australians also value the “fair go”. Israel Folau did not get a fair go. Neither, Labor clearly signalled, would the rest of Australia’s Christians.
The backlash against Labor’s anti-Christian agenda was ultimately cultural rather than fervently religious. quote.
Similar to the Brexit result in Britain and Donald Trump’s success in the US, the re-election of the centre-right Morrison government signals an important shift in the culture wars.
While there’s no doubt that the cultural Left’s political correctness movement is still a force, so it is clear that middle Australia has reasserted itself.
theaustralian end quote