With Angus Taylor as Leader, Abbott in the back room and Hanson now the legacy media's new pet, the Liberal Party is experiencing an existential crisis, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
IT MUST BE HARD being the party of the Right when your entire raison d'être is under threat.
Once the enthusiastic proponents of “stopping the boats”, there is no doubt today's Liberal Party has lost its mojo.
Even insipid member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, felt compelled to announce :
“We’re getting our mojo back, and part of the reason I ran for public office again is because I thought we needed to get our mojo back in this space.”
MULTICULTURE/MONOCULTURE MANIA
Tim Wilson’s delusions of grandeur aside, the Libs are in crisis. And there is no clearer example of this than the recent bizarre floundering and disparity of comments among key Liberal Party figures over something Liberal Leader Angus Taylor can’t even bring himself to say: “multiculturalism” — let alone the even more challenging, "monoculturalism".
In answer to the question, "Do you support monoculturalism for Australia?" Angus ducked and weaved, mentally calculating just how many cultures he would be offending, the perspiration beading on his forehead, as he attempted to find a way out of answering the question, and finally mumbling something about “core values”, before asking the term be defined for him.
Only the term “Please explain” could have made him sound more like Pauline Hanson, prompting Treasurer Jim Chalmers to quip that Angus Taylor was attempting to:
“Out-One-Nation One Nation.”
Others within his party did not support Taylor's comments, which were supporting Pauline's comments, more or less, including gin-loving Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume, who said she rejected:
“The politics of identity of the Left ... [and] the policy of cultural fear from the Right.
We are a multicultural society. Let’s face it, we already are. I had my three children christened in an Anglican Church. My mother goes to Catholic Church on Sundays, and I go to Greek Easter and crack little red-dyed eggs.”
Well, that clears things up, then.
This all comes in the wake of Pauline Hanson’s recent National Press Club address in which she claimed:
“We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural.”
Given that ships literally sailed here from the UK in 1788, almost wiping out the native inhabitants, and then around 70 years ago, also hailing from many non-Anglo countries and creating a land filled with many cultures, it seems odd that this single nonsensical Hanson comment has now created an existential crisis for the Libs.
Nonetheless, multiculturalism (we have no trouble saying it), or at least its avoidance, appears to be consuming the establishment media, which have made it, together with “monoculturalism”, their new favoured buzz words. Having also embraced Hanson as their latest “populist” poster person, members of this media cohort are now obsessed with throwing variations of this question into every interview: Do you support monoculturalism for Australia?
BUT WHICH BOAT CAME FIRST?
But how did we get here? What factors created Hanson’s rise? And what precipitated this Liberal Party identity crisis?
When Tony Abbott exited stage "Right" as Turnbull took over the prime ministership back in 2015, there was an audible, albeit fleeting, sigh of relief.
Many Australians, hailing from a swathe of ethnic backgrounds, religious denominations and sexual identities, were optimistic that the draconian, bigoted, misogynistic and divisive ways the “Mad Monk” had imported into the Liberal Party and the parliament, which were pervading our national conversation, would finally take a back seat.
It is not insignificant to note that while Abbott continued with the same worn playbook, spruiking White Australia and anti-climate policy, and trying to bring back knighthoods, Australia managed to move on, as evinced by his unceremonious booting from parliament altogether in 2019.
Alas, apart from a couple of progressive changes, Turnbull was not the answer for the so-called “broad church” of the Liberal Party, which by then consisted of more and more extreme conservatives, a few not quite as extreme conservatives, and those remaining in the middle now able to be tallied on one hand. Love him or hate him, Turnbull’s prime ministership was a massive disappointment, not least because he was rolled by Morrison, who took up where Abbott left off and tried to take Australia even further back in time.
Forget Abbott’s Western Civilisation rants, Morrison was powered by the Pentecostal Seven Mountains Mandate, where women didn’t just stay home to do the ironing, they managed to influence prime ministers while they multitasked. Morrison’s agenda was now way beyond mere conservatism and approaching the realms of the batshit crazy.
It took voters a while to catch on, however, as Morrison often outwardly appeared to be moving with the times, preferring to effect his agenda surreptitiously — even going as far as secretly taking over five ministerial portfolios.
But it turns out Scotty was too extreme for Australia after all, finally losing to Albanese in 2022.
Now it seemed the regressive policy framework, favoured by the Coalition for a decade, had finally come to an end.
But it is important to remember that Abbott and Morrison’s effect on the Liberal Party resulted in the broken shell of a party we see today, flailing between "Should we follow Pauline?" or "Should we try and beat her at her own game?".
ANGUS, THE MAD MONK AND THE NEW MEDIA PET
All of which brings us back to the resurrection of Tony Abbott, who was elected unopposed as the president of the Liberal Party in May — just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse for the downtrodden Opposition.
At least the pretence of presenting the party as “centrist” while consistently moving further Right, died with the toppling of Sussan Ley as leader. Now, it’s obvious that the “centre”, along with any semblance of being “sensible”, has left the building.
Abbott, who got elected primarily on the “Stop the Boats” policy (despite not actually stopping them) and has never attempted to hide his Far-Right-crazy, has echoed Pauline's hateful, divisive comments and encouraged the Liberal Party to make preference deals with One Nation. This, of course, has already led to the once safe Liberal seat of Farrer going to the PHONies. Abbott himself was born in London, but no matter — there are immigrants ... and then there are the right immigrants.
However, Australians, racist though many of us may be, overwhelmingly don’t wish to appear so, especially when it comes to sport. Thus, now that the Socceroos – many of whom are immigrants and refugees from 15 different ethnic backgrounds – are flying the Aussie flag as they achieve great things, perhaps the tables are already starting to turn.
Even Pauline "Monoculture" Hanson walked back her previous hate-filled comments about immigrants and different ethnicities with:
"The Socceroos, in fact, represent my vision of a monocultural Australia. People from different backgrounds and cultures and nations all wearing the green and gold and representing one nation under one flag and succeeding under the same set of rules."
Under Angus Taylor, with Tony in the back room and Pauline the media's new pet, the Liberal Party is now ricocheting between remaining firmly on the Right and going so Far-Right as to become disciples of Trump. (Oh, wait, they already tried that with Peter Dutton.)
In any case, it appears that for now, the point of difference between the Libs and One Nation is that the former can crack red dyed eggs at Greek Easter, while still pushing for undefined “shared values”, and the latter can drone on about monoculture and still cheer on sporting teams made up of different ethnicities ... as long as there’s no egg-cracking or indulging in Halal snack packs.
Follow managing editor Michelle Pini on Twitter @vmp9 and Bluesky @michellepini.bsky.social, and Independent Australia on Twitter at @independentaus, Facebook HERE and Instagram HERE.
