From Shanghai: Sir Robert Menzies is my political hero. I’ve written about him for the Robert Menzies Institute and to this day I carry a copper keyring with Sir Robert’s embossed profile from my time as a member of the now-defunct Queensland Liberals in the late 1990s (in Dickson, as it happens). Back in the day, I had to get permission from my commanding officer to join. I left when I became a political scientist but have recently been a supporter after so many ‘wackademic’ colleagues went full Woke and anti-Australian.
I can’t stand Wokeness or anything it entails. It is naïve and dangerous in the extreme.
That’s why the Nats need to split from the Liberal Party. The National Party have not been electoral losers like the Liberals have been since Malcolm Turnbull messed with the algorithm.
The wets in the Liberal Party have gone full Woke. They have destroyed the most successful political party in Australian history. If the Liberals had held true to Sir Robert’s vision for the Forgotten People, the Liberal Party would not have forgotten them like the United Australia Party did in 1940s.
The fractured conservative vote of the last election would not have occurred to the same extent if the Liberal Party had spoken to its base. I don’t care what self-professed psephologists say, there were so many of my conservative colleagues who wanted to punish the Liberal Party for abandoning them that, against all my hoping, the election outcome was a fait accompli.
Instead, by being Labor-lite, the Liberals thought they might instead speak to Labor’s base. It is so unintelligent there must be a myriad of reasons that such obviously counter-productive policies must be benefiting someone, somewhere.
I live Menzies’ Australian dream in real life. It’s glorious and I thank God every day for the opportunity. I live in regional Australia in a double-brick federation cottage on a quarter-acre block where the local pub is the centre of our community and I go to the Anglican church the street over. We grow our own fruit and veges and we have chooks and a rooster, and dogs and cats and our neighbours are our friends, and our community digs deep to help each other out. I am one of four generations of my family that served in the Australian Army.
I fly the Australian flag in my front yard (as do two others in my street) and we commemorate Anzac Day in growing numbers and with growing conviction. I have travelled the world, I have studied politics and theology, I am not ignorant or averse to how others might want to live, but I love our country as did my Kamilaroi great-grandmother. Always have, always will.
Our local community doesn’t agree on everything, either, but we are cohesive. Our local council tried to go full woke, but the previous Wokerati councillors complained themselves away, and the new councillors are at least cautious about going full Woke ever again.
In the metropolitan centres, punters like to talk about how the Liberal Party lost the cities. They didn’t lose the cities; Labor gave the cities away. It’s plainly obvious and Labor-lite was too witless to notice and too cowardly to do anything about it. They won’t get them back unless they address the underlying causes like immigration.
The UK is a shining example of such ineptitude coming to roost, as Sir Keir Starmer is realising at the very last moment. Almost too late, Starmer suggested that the UK will become an ‘“island of strangers” if immigration was not tackled’. The UK mainstream media disagrees, but following the MSM’s advice is a surefire way of attracting electoral defeat time and again.
Like Sir Robert, who, no doubt after much agonising and gnashing of teeth, came to the conclusion that the UAP was no longer the vehicle of his vision for Australia, I have come to the conclusion that the Liberal Party is no longer the vehicle of my vision for Australia.
I feel no joy in this realisation. Indeed, it is extremely disheartening, but it is a fact I must face. As must the National Party.
Australia’s pursuit of Net Zero is a farce. Renewables on the scale imagined by inner-city Labor minister Chris Bowen is nothing short of energy vandalism. Without nuclear, Australia will become a backwater. Politicians who think a few windmills can power artificial intelligence are talking through their hats. Only unlike Sir Robert, modern politicians don’t wear hats unless they are trying to con regional Australians.
As much as it pains me to say it, the Nationals must ditch the Liberal Party. While I doubt the Nationals’ newly re-minted leader David Littleproud has the ticker to do so, I hope Matt Canavan’s recent victory in defeat over Net Zero makes the Liberal Party’s wets ‘pack Besser blocks’. Because they should.
As I sit here in Shanghai sipping my Coca-Cola so easily through a plastic straw, I can’t help but think how the Liberals are adopting the full extent of Chris Bowen’s naïve and dystopian world view and at our peril. I hate to say it, but Sir Robert would not be pleased with his offspring’s recent behaviour.
It’s time the National Party left their petulant Woke Liberal partners to fend for themselves.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is The Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. All opinions in this article are the author’s own.
