The Aussie election was held over last weekend and the incumbent conservative government of Scott Morrison was tipped from office in favour of a ghost campaign from the Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese. There were very salient lessons to be learned from that election for the National Party and Christopher Luxon. But will they take heed?
Now, you will not see this on the ABC or hear it from any of the Liberal ‘moderates’, but it was a very good thing having all those Teals take out the inner core of the lefty-Lib gang – Zimmerman ‘I forgot about freedom once I was elected’ Wilson, Sharma, Falinski, and yes, even Josh Frydenberg (who I’m guessing was the driving force behind pushing Scott Morrison to sign up to Net Zero and to pay the ABC all that money just before the election).
These seats were always going to leave the column for any remotely conservative party. Many may not like that fact, but it’s already happened in Canada, Britain, and America. Our voting system merely slowed it down here. The truth is that the well-off rich (and I generalise of course) now vote solidly Left – maybe because they can afford to and like to virtue-signal? They vote more like Canberra public servants than anything else.
So in a losing election, it was good to lose these seats. Frankly, I don’t see them coming back for a long time.
Here’s an irony. If Morrison had refused to sign up to Net Zero and made rising energy prices and inflation an election issue, together with mining jobs, I think he would have won the election – this being the formula of Liberal wins since Tony Abbott took over as Opposition Leader. Instead, the Liberal Prime Minister, who seemingly had no core convictions and no strong commitment to freedom or to the presumption of innocence, let himself be pushed by the party wets into reneging on a promise made to Coalition voters at the last election in 2019.
By signing up to Net Zero, Morrison was snookered.
What happens when you purport to believe that there is an earth-endangering climate crisis (and former Obama Energy Department Undersecretary, Professor Steven Koonin, takes this apart in his new book Unsettled) and that Australia’s emissions make any difference at all, when the truth is that we could go back to the Stone Age tomorrow and China would pump out our emissions in a little over a fortnight? If you go down that road it’s not surprising that voters will vote for the real thing (in the shape of the Greens and Teals) rather than a half-hearted bunch of Liberal ‘moderates’. So the irony is that even for the so-called ‘moderates’, they would have had a better chance to win if the Liberals had stood up against the ABC worldview and not signed up to Net Zero. The appeasement strategy was never going to work, especially for them.
The Spectator
Christopher Luxon and his core team of Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis are so wet; people will vote for the real thing and not a fake. Morrison caused the party to lose its roots just like Luxon is doing right now.
Those Teal independents did a lot of damage (and will do more now that they control the balance of power). By far those that vote Green are white and female and live in the leafy suburbs with their rich husbands. Most have never worked a day in their lives except for their small money-losing businesses propped up by hubby. The problem is that these leafy-suburban mums add to the ‘Urgent Need for Climate Action’ voice. They voted for Jacinda Ardern last time because she apparently saved us all from Covid. That is their level of thinking. Their political nous is somewhat akin to that of a lettuce.
The lesson for the Liberals, and also for the National Party here, is simple: rich people vote left. Forget the old blue ribbon urban seats and concentrate on the regions. You know – the areas National lost at the last election. You don’t engender support in the regions by chasing unicorns and rainbows.
The other lesson too was that pro-lockdown politicians like Matt Kean got the arse card.
That said, I’m glad the Matt Kean-type faction of the Liberal Party has been decimated. Their one redeeming feature was supposed to be their commitment to freedom concerns (as the self-professed inheritors of the John Stuart Mill tradition), but the pandemic showed that to be a hollow lie. These moderates were at least as pro-lockdown and ‘we defer to the public health caste’ as the Liberal Party room’s conservatives. Make that more pro-despotism. And more big spending, big taxing, ‘let’s succumb to Modern Monetary Theory idiocies’. So good riddance to them all.
The Spectator
Chris Bishop, that message is for you in particular, and also for David Seymour. It is not a vote-winning proposition to lay claim to being a more efficient fascist than the despots currently in charge.
And here is another lesson:
First off, all of us conservatives were forced into needing our side to lose because it had accomplished basically nothing since Tony Abbott stopped the boats – nothing other than drifting ever further left every year. But there is a second stage. We now need to see the Liberal Party rediscover at least some of its conservative roots.
The Spectator
The Luxon, Willis, Bishop faction may as well change National’s colours to a deep red-tinged mauve. Currently, they are one side of a coin which has Labour on the other side. With the way this Government is going there’s a fair chance that Luxon will just sleepwalk into the top job. Which is a bad thing because he has no incentive to effect change and forestall a poll reversal after just one term.
The medicine for the Liberals is the same for the National Party.
What we need now is for the Liberals to move a good ways to the right and to do so openly. Recant on the Climate Change genuflecting, admitting it was a mistake while pointing out the huge energy cost rises coming. Go back to arguing for sane budgets with surpluses (which will mean disavowing the Frydenberg uber-Keynesian, defer-to-Treasury approach). Openly commit to some sort of belief in freedom, one that will involve walking-the-walk not just talking-the-talk until you get elected into Parliament. And be tough against Woke shibboleths a la Mark Latham.
Down that path – and it will be labelled as Right-Wing Populism or as ‘the Trump Party’ by lefty journalists – lies victory.
Using John Key’s strategy of being just like Labour, but less shit, is only a short term strategy. National needs to overturn the oil and gas exploration ban, unwind ridiculous and ineffective social spending, unwind race-based policies in Health and Water infrastructure and where ever else Labour has rewarded Maori elite rent-seekers, and vociferously oppose co-governance. Massive inflation and hard-Left populist policies will take care of the rest, eroding Ardern’s support over the next year. It’s not going to be pretty. National could win in a landslide assuming, of course, that they opt to go down the conservative renewal path and not the ‘let’s be Labour and the Greens but just more efficient’ path.
Sadly, I don’t think Christopher Luxon will learn those lessons from the Australian election. Then he will have to deal with a resurgent Act Party and Winston Peters rising from the crypt yet again to hold the balance of power. Those things may not be bad in the long run. Let’s hope that National stagnates so that Luxon will be forced to have David Seymour as Minister of Finance and Winston Peters as the handbrake to stop stupidity.
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