As Brendan Nelson contemplates the slow walk to the scaffold this week to deliver a Budget reply that no-one will listen to other than those in his own ranks seeking yet another reason to get rid of him, he can at least take comfort that his party everywhere in Australia is in the same shape as his leadership – ghostly pale, feeble pulse, seriously ill, perhaps terminally.
Some six and a half decades ago, the ramshackle United Australia Party (a joke: it was never united, owed more allegiance to British bondholders than Australian workers and was a party in name only) sulked mightily at losing office in 1941 and then raged against itself when the electorate gave John Curtin’s Labor government a resounding win in 1943.
The UAP, of course, had no factions; it was all about personalities. Sound familiar? As it slowly but spectacularly disintegrated, it even turned to 80-year-old Billy Hughes to lead it – not that there was much left to lead. Then Bob Menzies rose from the political dead and put Humpty together again – and called it the Liberal Party. (Wilson Tuckey, are you there? Your time has come!)
A similar pall of death now hangs over what is left of the Liberal Party, and Labor everywhere can concentrate on governing knowing that it doesn’t have to bother about attacking the Liberals as they do it so well themselves.
In NSW, where extremists rule the party, they have missed a golden opportunity to take advantage of Labor’s woes over the power fiasco. In WA, the less that is said about Chairman Sniff the better, and in Victoria traitors have been found inside the Liberal bunker and the Baillieu-led operation to expose them has rebounded in farce, uncovering potty-mouth anti-Semitism amidst the foot-stamping (which will probably deter the remaining two donors to the party there). And it makes for some interesting politics when former state director Julian Sheezel lines up for Higgins post-Costello: did he know his senior staffers were undermining the Leader, and if not, why not?
In Queensland, the farcical on-again off-again merger with the Nats looks set to submerge the Libs. In Tasmania, Liberal support is hard to find beyond the Hodgman family, and in South Australia the party is vainly striving for relevance with a tax summit stunt as it rages ineffectually against Australia’s most popular Premier.
Menzies, they say, would turn in his grave, but I think not. He would be mightily pleased: after all, the Labor Party is looking more and more like that party that Bob built.
Oh Tony please!! Even you can’t really believe that the Liberal woes in WA are due to an anti-Liberal media.
If there is a more right-wing, anti-Labor newspaper than the West Australian then I have yet to read it. It continually bags Labor at both Federal and State level, often through the printing of misleading information. The Labor government in WA has been riven by scandals, has many poor quality ministers and lacks the ability to make decisions but the plain fact is that the Libs are even worse. This is why they have been forced to keep Buswell – who will never win an election – because they don’t have anyone else fit to replace him (although I think Hames would be better). The trouble is that nearly all State governments are completely talent challenged and are kept in power by oppositions that are even worse.
Ah yairs. Well politics is about power and the acquisition thereof, and the Jewish diaspora are both admirably close and organised and accomplished and indeed respected in the main, with real business success. These are not people to insult, not least with cheap nasty names. Truth is adversity has made these folks some of the toughest and innovative people a country is lucky enough to have and the Libs know it. As for the general scene well one needs a little perspective really – they still got 46 or 47% 2PP. O’Farrell is still staring down Iemma on 28% as dumb as privatisation really is (just ask Betty and Bob Walker, public finance experts), WA Inc just won’t die for Carpenter. I mean I will surely always vote Green but it’s no ALP monolith …. yet.
Here’s a clue to Lib problems (WA style). There is a raid by 16 police officers on our Sunday Times paper on seemingly nothing more than a whinge from a Labor political operative. Token outrage in paper. Libs ask questions of government, no answers given, Libs push for inquiry. No media coverage, even when Green agree to support the move. Even the Sunday Times refuses to run a single word about inquiry, for fear of giving Libs any kudos, despite running edirtorials about attacks on democracy. Makes it easy for same journos to run stories about irrelevant Libs if they choose to censor them out of the public arena.