The federal Liberal Party is to be commended for its commitment to transparency: in an unprecedented move, its post-election review seems to being held entirely in public.
Today the party newsletter carried detail of how the review will examine the extent to which alienation of Chinese-Australian voters affected the loss of key seats. Last week the Young Liberals unveiled their submission to the review, arguing that climate change and gender equality were key issues in the loss.
The public can presumably look forward to further blow-by-blow accounts of the post-mortem. The tradition is that such reviews are conducted by party elders in secrecy in the hope that real light will be shed on what worked and what didn’t. This review starts off somewhat crippled by the fact that it’s led both by party elder Brian Loughnane and Victorian Senator Jane Hume, who is no one’s idea of a party elder, has zero political nous and is from a branch that is fundamentally dysfunctional.
This review, more than most, is turning out to be the continuation of internal party conflicts — thus the leaking to the party journal. Peter Dutton is the target of this leak, with the suggestion his hyperbolic rhetoric about China alienated Chinese-Australian voters, who swung hard against the Coalition in May.
The primary perpetrator of the anti-Chinese-Australian rhetoric, however, is sadly no longer with us politically. Eric Abetz, who in 2020 demanded that Chinese-Australians condemn the Beijing regime, grew so objectionable that his own party branch dumped him down the Senate ticket to an unwinnable spot. He thus won’t be joining us for the rest of his already overlong career.
Abetz’s McCarthyist actions infuriated other Liberals and prompted NSW Senator Andrew Bragg to immediately call them “degrading and regrettable”.
Bragg cops plenty of grief from all sides, including his own, and usually with good reason, but he was well aware nearly two years ago the rhetoric coming from the then government about China and its apparent refusal to distinguish between Chinese-Australians and the apparently existential threat of Xi Jinping was alienating Chinese-Australians.
It wasn’t a one-off from Bragg, either. In March last year, he released a statement deploring attacks on Chinese-Australians.
By early this year the penny had dropped in more senior circles than Bragg’s that the government was in trouble with Chinese-Australian voters. In February, Scott Morrison told his MPs — under the cover of promoting national unity — to go and spend Chinese New Year with Chinese-Australian communities in their electorates. Only a few days later, SBS ran a story about how Chinese-Australian voters were “aghast” at the government’s rhetoric towards China.
Morrison’s suggestion that MPs join in new year festivities was too little, too late. In the last week of the election campaign, even Chinese-Australian Liberal members were lamenting Morrison’s rhetoric in seats like Bennelong, suggesting, correctly as it turned out, that it would lead to the loss of such seats. Morrison was asked on the campaign trail about it and insisted he had always distinguished between Chinese-Australians and the Xi regime.
Nowhere near enough, it seems.
This was a problem Bragg detected back in 2020, one the Morrison government was warned about, one it knew was a significant problem, and about which it did virtually nothing.
Which, funnily enough, describes most of the major reasons why the Liberals suffered a massive defeat. Liberal MPs and party members at all levels warned them how toxic Morrison was, they knew how toxic he was, even to the extent of confining his campaign to regional areas and outer-suburban electorates. But they did nothing about him. Ditto climate policy. Ditto the ructions in the NSW Liberal Party and its dire impact on preselections, caused by Morrison and has-been-who-never-was Alex Hawke. Ditto integrity. Ditto gender issues.
There are no great secrets for Loughnane to uncover, with or without the “help” of Hume. The causes of the defeat are all clear, because the Liberals were told over and over about them and ignored all the warnings.
Perhaps the review should really be about why nothing could convince a party heading for a train wreck to change course.
Can Peter Dutton stop beating those drums of war? Let us know what you think by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
There’s no point conducting any reviews while Dutton is still at the head of the Parliamentary party.
There is zero national or political interest in coming out saying Taiwan is an independent nation, and that’s exactly the kind of thing that is going to entrench the sense among Chinese-Australians that the LNP not only doesn’t get their concerns, but might also one day happily lob missiles at their friends and relatives in the motherland.
So why do it? Because just like Morrison, he physically cannot stop with the ideology. He and most of the parliamentary LNP rump are completely bonkers and live in a kind of ‘Sky After Dark’ fantasy world. If there isn’t a political revolution in the ranks of the liberal party before the next round of preselections, then they’re finished as a political force.
Yes The Sky After Dark Comedy Show appears to be like some strange US sitcom.
Set in a TV station where the inmates appear to be mendacious, paranoid, scared of the other, black/brown/yellow/aliens of any sort, people who have the temerity to present facts and question them and are all very shouty at such and that even at their own cohort.
The inmates consist of right wing to libertarian current and ex politicians, their enablers, media hacks of no particular worth as well as the odd RWRNJ, the second R being for Religious
Out here in regional Australia Sky has been inflicted on FTA , in a desperate attempt to increase its dismal ratings, so no need to subscribe to the stupidity it pops up while going through to other channels.
Dutton is a Drummer – he can’t help himself.
He’s got the mentality of a schoolyard bully when it comes to Foreign Affairs; unfortunately his rhetoric cannot match his/our capability. He doesn’t come across as a very nuanced politician; making him a coalition match for Barnaby.
My mate in the Liberal Party knows I no longer support it. When Dutton was elected leader he rang me and said “We’re doomed”. It was hard to be sympathetic.
Within my extended family we span the full political spectrum from ultra left to fairly right-ish. My extended family has a trans mid-teenager. Family support for our trans teen and cis sibling is very strong and Morrison’s support of the ignorant Deves had all of us voting against the LNP. Quite an achievement really – my long-gone parents would be amazed at such political unity.
All Brian Loughnane needs to do is ask his wife. She knows everything in Politics, just ask her.
The coalition could not ‘change course’ because they lack any talent for the necessary policies to set another course. They visionless and stupid, representing only the worst reactionary parts of society. That talent vacuum and genetic security has led them to the irrelevancy they now occupy. On all current indications, they will remain permanently irrelevant.
Truth is the Liberal Party was only formed to keep the Australian Labor Party out of opera in Australia. The IPA was a major force in the founding of the LP and as as John Roskam has stated, “Big business created the IPA”. Assisted by the Agrarian Socialist Party( the National Party in all its iterations) it succeeded.
Aided also by the DLP it was able to hold onto power for well over 20 years under Menzies, who managed to survive by adopting ALP policies more or less wholesale.
Under The Lying Rodent© Senator George Brandis it left reality and gained speed further and further to the right to the move into areas much beloved by the IPA
And now where has the LNP gravy train arrived on its excursion under Smirko and his Crew…at the buffers!
Short of a steady reversing back out into spur and then rejoining the mainline having uncoupled all of those vans containing the baggage of Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison it might be left hussing and puffing at the buffers for a while.