The Death of the Real Right

It has been three weeks now since the Australian federal election where the Labor party won in a landslide. Since then the media has been full of finger-pointing, navel gazing, and blame attribution. There have been some thoughtful articles about what went wrong but the conservative side of politics has now disintegrated into an unseemly slanging match. Hopefully the kids in the playpen have realised they’ll have to play together nicely if there is to be any hope of preventing Australia from becoming another Venezuela.

I vote, therefore I have an opinion. Here it is.

Let’s start with why the conservatives (the Liberal and National Party (LNP) were creamed by Labor (ALP). It comes down to one thing: there was no real difference between the policies of the two parties. The LNP has become Labor Lite. Robert Menzies would roll in his grave.

Here’s what I would have liked to see the LNP offer:

A more sensible approach to energy generation.

Get out of the Paris accord – Net Zero is pie in the sky nonsense that is never going to happen. Build HELE power stations to replace our aging coal-fired stations to tide us over until we can move to nuclear power. Use solar and wind by all means, but recognise you can’t run a 24/7 Western society using renewables. No other country in the world has even come close, even with reliable hydroelectricity. We’ve gone from having the lowest power prices in the world to among the highest – and that affects everything we buy.

An overhaul of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

It’s a great idea and should provide assistance to profoundly disabled people. But the definition of ‘disability’ has become so vague that the cost has ballooned. Now expected to cost A$50 billion by 2025, the NDIS will overtake the cost of Medicare or defence. Basically, we can’t afford it in its current state.

Reduce the size of the public service

By that I mean the layers of administration in places like Canberra, the people who don’t actually provide a service. Not doctors, nurses, fire fighters, teachers etc. It doesn’t have to be by firing people. Malcolm Fraser did it after the Whitlam government was voted out in a landslide. He just stopped any new recruitment and let natural attrition do the rest. The thing is, the public service doesn’t produce anything, it does not generate income.

Reduce the burden of red tape and green tape

We need to encourage people to set up small businesses, get involved in innovation. But there is layer after layer of regulation to wade through. How much of it is really necessary? Today, farmers spend almost as much time filling out paperwork as they do growing our food. Sure, some regulation is necessary but surely it can be streamlined.

Reduce the immigration intake

Immigration is fine – as long as it can work properly. Sure, encourage people with the skills we need from cultures which will integrate into our way of life. But if too many people come too quickly they will put a strain on the already struggling schools, hospitals, road networks, public transport, and housing affordability. Multiculturalism was a pipe dream that has failed. Back when my family immigrated to Australia we were expected to assimilate and we did. That’s how it should be. Oh – and overseas students should go home when they finish their studies. Buying an education shouldn’t be an automatic pass to the front of the immigration queue.

Here’s a quote from Menzies’ famous ‘forgotten people’ broadcast from 1942.

“The middle class, more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress… The great vice of democracy – a vice which is exacting a bitter retribution from it at this moment – is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else’s wealth and somebody else’s effort on which we could thrive. To discourage ambition, to envy success, to hate achieved superiority, to distrust independent thought, to sneer at and impute false motives to public service – these are the maladies of modern democracy, and of Australian democracy in particular. Yet ambition, effort, thinking, and readiness to serve are not only the design and objectives of self-government but are the essential conditions of its success.” That’s a quote from his ‘forgotten people’ broadcast. [source] It’s as true now as it was then.

Let’s hope our politicians get their act together and offer an alternative to Albanese and his union mates. Otherwise Paul Keating’s ‘banana republic’ is looming. In an interview in 1986 he said that Australia was living beyond its means. It was not earning enough from the world to support the lifestyle it was enjoying. [source] That’s also as true now as it was then. In spades.

And let’s finish with a moment in time.

‪I have been to the beach at that very moment when the tide is at full ebb. The bay holds its breath, just for a moment, and the sea is silent, unmoving. And then, like a sigh, the first sparkling ripples begin to roll toward the shore.

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