“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning”.-Adlai Stevenson
Peter Dutton and the Liberal National Coalition are flogging a dead horse, desperately hoping it’ll carry them to victory in the upcoming Australian general elections. Their brand is a relic—obsessed with dismantling the hard-won gains of Aboriginal people, sneering at “Welcome to Country” ceremonies and land rights claims through a colonial lens frozen in time, three centuries in the past. If this is their flagship policy, they’re finished before the race even starts.
In a clumsy bid to claw relevance, they’re pandering to cashed-up, self-interested white middle-class feminists (and white landowners)—flush with government handouts from the $4 billion anti-domestic violence campaign and a slew of women-only assistance schemes in equal spend. It’s a calculated play, but it reeks of hypocrisy from a party with a track record of disdain for women and people of color.
Yet there’s not a whimper from Dutton & Co where it concerns the extravagance of government spending on exclusive identity politics -feminist- indulgences. Why “feminist” indulgences? The majority of women, women of no privilege, get little benefit if at all any, out of this government largesse designed and directed to the ‘needs’ of the ME2 and allied lobbies.
Meanwhile, the Liberal National ranks remain stagnant with the aged and a sprinkling, a miniscule number of the converted for members. Many of these are irrelevant and undecided. Some, recycled candidates—privileged white, female and male, often election losers and political ‘bedwetters’. Their candidates? they who speak to ordinary Australians as if everyone hails from the privilege of private grammar schools. Their disconnect with the general Australian community is palpable, their ignorance of working-class struggles glaring and embarrassing.
SILENCE IN THE FACE OF BILLION DOLLAR EXTRAVAGANCES WHILST THE HOMELESSNESS & JUDICIAL CORRUPTION GROWS
Take the multi-billion-dollar Olympic budgets both sides indulge in—extravagance masquerading as necessity amid economic turmoil. More Australians are turning to the Salvation Army for help than ever before, yet the Coalition’s silence on this and other reckless spending by government on luxuries masked as necessities such as sports facilities is deafening.
They offer no fight for the aged, unemployed, disabled, or working families. Their policies on tackling Australia’s crippling drug problem- the biggest in the OECD in comparatives terms-is non existent.
Urgently needed policies on desperately needed judicial and justice reforms are restricted to populist slogans of “fighting Youth Crime“. No creditable policies in tackling the scourge of judicial incompetence and corruption- Dyson Heydon stands out as an extreme of the example but his isn’t an isolated one. Their policies mirror Labor’s, just with a different flavor of crumbs from the same shrinking pie. So why bother switching governments? The ideological gap is a mirage.
Australia is fracturing—more than any Western nation its size. Class and race cleave it first, then gender widens the chasm. Add the multi-million-dollar push to convince kids they’re trapped in the wrong bodies, creating a third gender, and the legacy of no-fault divorce shredding families—the first thread in a tapestry of division. Religious, social, political, economic, and class rifts pile on. The Coalition’s response? Stale tactics and branch-stacking with out-of-touch insiders.
Until Dutton’s crew unveils bold, honest, original policies, they’re wasting their breath against an Albanese government awash in cash, tossing it like confetti to the ageing, unemployed, feminists, and at every opportunistic “charity” with a catchy name and a hand in the taxpayer’s lucky dip. It’s not just Aboriginal benefits at play—they’re a drop in the bucket. It’s the entitled average Australian, once Labor’s base, now infiltrating Liberal ranks as part of its DEI (Diversification, Equality, Inclusiveness,) strategy. Aboriginals excluded.
Prediction? Labor romps home before July, by a country mile. The Coalition’s not even in the race.
Pat Meehan and Jan Dubrovnik
“I am coming to the belief that conservatism merged with philosophy breeds bigotry”.- Michael Matogo