For a leadership crisis supposedly at least partly about ideology and policy issues around energy and climate, the Liberal Party’s current implosion is strangely confusing. The Liberal right wants to kill Turnbull’s Prime Ministership because he is too moderate. Connie Fierravanti-Wells last night complained that Turnbull had taken the party too far to the left. Fierravanti-Wells — whose sole contribution to public life has been her insightful examinations of Umbrian tourism — is a right-wing hardliner from New South Wales. Another extreme right-winger, the IPA’s John Roskam, also lamented the party’s drift to the left today in the Financial Review.
Except, the right has been pushing Turnbull to go even further left. It was pressure from the right that pushed Turnbull to embrace the most ferociously interventionist program of competition law in Australian history in energy, to the dismay of economists and industry. It is the right that wants to cut immigration — anathema to liberal economists and big business. Peter Dutton this morning called for a royal commission into energy companies — an idea that originated with Labor. He wants to exempt power bills from the GST — the sort of cherrypicking that would (rightly) mortify Peter Costello and John Howard. The right wants Turnbull to abandon his signature company tax cuts. And it was the right, of course, that preferred a big-government, anti-free-market approach to climate action.
Is it possible to make sense of this confusion? Partly it’s the toxic effect of Tony Abbott on his party — his lingering DLP worldview, his hollowness and opportunism, his inability to effectively develop positive policy (a requirement John Howard shielded him from — important policy in Abbott’s portfolios was always directed from elsewhere). And it’s partly that the right/moderates split within the alleged “broad church” Liberal Party is now about social issues, compared to the ’80s, when the wets/dries split was over economics. That means the right is now the advocate of Big Government, command-and-control intervention in personal lives. And that has also placed them at odds with many in the business community, who are either genuinely socially liberal or simply don’t care about such issues. With sections of the Liberal Party, such as the Victorian branch, increasingly being controlled by Christian fundamentalists, this tension will only grow. There’s also the perceived need to accommodate voters tempted by Pauline Hanson, who presents a populist and economically illiterate platform entirely at odds with the agenda sought by big business.
But most of all, the party has been caught on the hop by the tidal shift against neoliberalism in the electorate. Labor has responded more effectively, partly because shifting leftward economically is what many in the party have long wanted anyway, partly because being in opposition gives you more policy freedom. The Liberals have faced a more difficult task of, in several cases, abandoning positions they fought tooth-and-nail for in government: opposing a banking royal commission, intervening in the gas export market, imposing a special bank tax and, now, embracing corporate divestment powers for the ACCC.
That has also required a reset of Turnbull’s entire agenda as PM. He’d planned to be Hawke-Keating Redux — pursuing further economic reform, leading a nuanced and intelligent debate, explaining Australia’s economic challenges and opportunities and bringing voters with him on a voyage to a more exciting, more liberal and more global economy. All of that is now a smoking hole in the ground; even the jokes about “agile” and “innovative” are now forgotten. Turnbull’s prime ministership will go down as that of the Last Neoliberal.
Like Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton has little grounding in policy or economics. He has never managed a central portfolio, only reaching assistant treasurer in the Howard years. To the extent that he has demonstrated any economic thinking in the opening hours of his campaign to airbrush his image, it has been straight populism. Business is already muttering darkly about his impact on the economy should he become PM. But such ideological confusion is perfect in the leader of a party that has little idea where it sits ideologically any more.
Christ, we so need an election to get rid of these people. They need to be shattered into pieces, then work out what they actually stand for in the 21st century. Nothing urgent is getting dealt with while they stand there uselessly trying to hold back the future.
“Except, the right has been pushing Turnbull to go even further left. ”
It’s about time people abandoned Cold War-era notions of right and left. The ideological fault line is not communism vs capitalism anymore.
For the Liberal conservatives, Turnbull is insufficiently SOCIALLY conservative, and never mind that he disgracefully did their bidding on the SSM vote and even parroted their talking points about opponents of SSM have “genuinely held beliefs” and respecting them and left wingers not being nice enough to the bigo… the genuinely held believers. He said he would personally vote yes; he allowed the whole shebang to go through once the vote was done instead of allowing even more excuses, although only after the Dean Smith group made clear they WOULD cross the floor if there was any more delaying tactics. For people like Fierravanti-Wells, anything short of promising to criminalise homosexuality again wouldn’t be enough.
For the most part they are not economic ideologues like their allies at the IPA and like Turnbull. You can see it with Dutton’s populist claims about removing the GST on energy. They can be flexible and populist in that area, even protectionist a la Trump.
As Waleed Aly wrote last year, if political parties started in Australia now we would not have the ALP and the Libs and the Nats. Their “bases” in the communities have drifted apart. There’s no longer the same harmony between progressive social cause warriors and some working class people in the ALP; there’s even less harmony between the people whose priority is social conservatism and the people whose priority is economic conservatism in the Coalition.
An economically conservative, socially progressive party would dominate the Australian centre, surrounded by two satellites (a more equity-based economy, socially progressive party and a social conservative party, vaguely economically conservative party) who the centre party would work with on various things.
Thanks again Arky, you can speak for me anytime.
agreed, to an extent.
whats left whats right?
whose judgement or definition determines whats conservative or progressive?
This is such a distraction, results of the RC Banking, absolutely should be the subject of ALL headlines and opinion pieces. Australia’s Parliament is run by the Corporations for their benefit/ profit, not Australian society in general.
Don’t kid yourself. All this hard nosed conservatism is actually just a cover for their usual brand of neo-liberalism. Tax cuts for the rich, screw the poor & foster enough racial hatred & downward envy to keep the poorer members of the population distracted about who the real causes of their woes are.
It’s “ideological confusion” only if you think of economic policy as ideological. But that’s never been entirely true, and now is less so than ever. The Abbott/Dutton/News Corp axis is thoroughly consistent ideologically: nativist, authoritarian, obscurantist. That’s right-wing through and through. The fact that they have no particular vision for economic policy is neither here nor there.
Totally agree Charles. The theory that they have moved from their ideology assumes that they had an underlying ideology. Menzies’ party was as practical and non-ideological as they come, the purpose only to stay in power to make sure the other side didn’t get into power. Howard took his ideology as far as it would go, and only strayed from the practical intent of staying in power when he had the senate to put through IPA sponsored IR laws, which the nation largely rejected, along with that Gollum.
The LNP’s ideological underpinnings are reactionary and authoritarian. The NP was never anything but agrarian socialists. They haven’t moved at all.