The current parlous state of the Liberal-National coalition parties in Australia has the mainstream media and the green-left (a tautology: I apologise) cock-a-whoop. “This is the end of the Tories!”, they crow. Certainly, it may seem that way — at least, if you ignore 100 years of Australian election results — and there’s no denying that the mainstream conservative parties have long drifted from their base.
Like National and ACT in New Zealand, the Republicans in the US, and the Conservatives in the UK, the Coalition in Australia have long surrendered to the “blue-green” “Wets” in their ranks. Rich people from the inner cities who desperately want to be Greens, while still pretending to be better than the scruffy oiks chaining themselves to trees.
As long as they keep chasing the electoral sloppy seconds of the left, they’ll keep losing.
Look no further than the abominable John Pesutto in Victoria. This bloke makes Chris Luxon look like Margaret Thatcher.
And the rank-and-file of his own party despise him.
Supporters of Victorian MP Moira Deeming have walked out of a Liberal party conference as tensions flare between members over the decision to expel her.
A small group clutching masks of Deeming’s face and a sign labelling the Liberal leader, John Pesutto, a “bully” shouted “shame, shame” as he took to the stage at the party’s state council in Bendigo on Saturday.
Pesutto was heckled and dozens of Liberal members stormed out as he kicked off the two-day event, with speculation rife that a leadership challenge is looming.
The members who walked out called for Pesutto to be replaced as leader, Nine newspapers reported.
The Guardian
Inadvertently, though, Pesutto and his ilk are showing exactly what the conservative parties must do to regain their standing with voters. Which is: precisely the opposite of what the likes of Pesutto is doing.
Pesutto gutlessly caved to the groomer left when Deeming attended Kellie-Jay Keen’s “Let Women Speak” rally in Melbourne. When a gaggle of edgelord neo-Nazis, with the suspicious co-operation of the blatantly-politicised Victoria Police, gatecrashed the rally, Pesutto nearly ruptured himself in his rush to throw Deeming under the bus.
If anything, though, Pesutto did Deeming a favour. Ordinary voters — many of them not even Liberal Party members — in the suburbs are packing out halls to hear Deeming speak.
Hundreds of supporters have attended a sold-out Liberal Party fundraiser in Melbourne’s western suburbs, headlined by expelled Victorian Liberal Moira Deeming, alongside a panel that included two federal shadow cabinet ministers and two Indigenous leaders.
Party sources say only about half of the 450 people who bought tickets were Liberal Party members, with Mrs Deeming appearing on a panel alongside senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Sarah Henderson, Claire Chandler and Alex Antic, Indigenous leaders and No vote campaigners Warren Mundine and Anthony Dillon, and state upper house MP Bev McArthur.
What do all these people have in common? They’re grassroots, genuinely centrist conservatives, who are speaking to ordinary Australians, about the issues that really matter, especially when it comes to culture war issues. They’re the heirs to Menzies. Naturally, they’re hated by the media — and, if bums on seats are anything to go by, catching the ears of voters.
Key issues discussed on the panel mediated by Sky News anchor, News Corp columnist and former prime ministerial chief of staff Peta Credlin included Mrs Deeming’s expulsion from the state parliamentary party, the Indigenous voice to parliament, women’s, children’s and parent’s rights as they relate to transgender issues, energy policy and freedom of speech.
Guests at the event – at the West Waters hotel in Caroline Springs – included representatives of the LGB alliance, which campaigns for sex-based rights for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, and members of Muslim, Indian, Croatian, Macedonian and Greek communities.
As you might have surmised, many of these are the very people whom the left have come to regard as virtually their “property”.
“It’s a long time since there’s been a Liberal Party branch event in Victoria that’s pulled a crowd of 450-plus, with such a broad cross-section of attendees,” Credlin told The Australian.
“These were not the usual Liberal supporters, indeed Moira encouraged people to bring along with them a couple of guests that had never been to a Liberal event before, and they did. If the Liberals ever want to return to government, these are the Victorians they must get to vote for them.
“After the event, I spoke with leaders of the Muslim community, women from LGB Alliance dismayed at the erosion of women’s rights, Australians of many different migrant backgrounds, young people, older people – it was an incredibly diverse crowd and that’s what the Liberal Party must attract if it hopes to be relevant and hold office again in Victoria.
The Australian
The same goes, in spades, for mainstream conservative parties, not just around Australia, but across the world.
Especially in New Zealand.
If the likes of Luxon and Seymour can’t draw the obvious conclusions from groundswell movements like these, they deserve to lose.