Dear Mr Dutton,
Millions upon millions of Australian citizens are willing you to win this election.
Among that number are those of us who will not put a Liberal candidate first, but rather a minor party or independent who carries the baton of Liberty and Freedom. Then your candidates will follow – above Labor, Greens, and any left-leaning independent, as we exercise our right to the preferential voting system designed so the people are assured of having a fair political outcome.
We will do this because politics is the battleground of ideas. And for the best ideas to rise to the top, it means allowing an array of them to enter the forum. The public have a right to watch that battle take place, and an obligation to participate in its outcome.
The idea is what fuels democracy. But it appears that your party, along with Labor, have shut down any new, interesting and indeed, controversial ones which need to be debated.
If the Colosseum is shut down to the public, then ideas cannot do battle.
How can our country prosper if you join hands with Labor at every turn in an attempt to out-politic them? The same old ideas that have managed not only to see us stagnate but are sending us backwards are well past their use-by date and will ultimately shrivel and rot until all that is left is a carcass of what we once knew as a democracy.
You do us no favours by allowing this to happen. Better that you open it up to the fight. Go into battle with those who you may disagree with, or that you see as not part of your political tribe but who are on the same side, and forge an alliance with the people, where a Liberal government can restore our essence of greatness.
Only one of you can govern. And those millions I write of do not want Labor in charge for another three years for fear that we will not have a country left by the time they are through with their devastating agenda of socialism-by-stealth. The roots of that devastating project are being pushed ever further into the ground.
But all is not yet lost.
If you just throw off the yoke of appeasement and put on the one of courage to speak what needs to be spoken, you can win.
Australia is one of the oldest and most successful democracies in the world. You have the power to ensure that that continues.
I encourage you to remember these words from the Greek statesman and historian, Polybius, as he describes the uniqueness of the ancient Roman Republic’s constitution from which our inheritance is derived:
‘It is the people who bestow offices on those who deserve them, and these are the noblest rewards of virtue the state can provide.’
Yours sincerely, Gerardine Hoogland, Citizen – Voter – Historian
