Guest Post: Cassie of Sydney – The Forgotten People


A Bush Burial, Frederick McCubbin, 1890

Over the weekend I heard the news that Scott Morrison is preparing to sign Australia up to zero emissions by 2050. It’s yet another slap in the face, coming after eighteen months of Covid and Morrison’s spineless and craven leadership.  I detest the man.  Once again, we have a situation where the Liberal Party of Australia, whether it be with Section 18C, NSW abortion laws, climate change, free speech and so on is actively pursuing progressive leftist talking points and, in the process, happily trashing its own base.   

My anger is palpable. I hereby accuse the Liberal Party of Australia, current PM Scott Morrison and every current and former federal and state Liberal Party apparatchik and politician for the last twenty years of the following crimes… 

  1. Betraying Liberal party voters,
     
  2. Trashing the legacy of Robert Menzies, and 
     
  3. Abandoning core Liberal party values such as celebrating, promoting, and protecting individual liberty, free speech, religious freedom, fiscal responsibility, the rule of law, small and medium sized businesses and those men and women of middle Australia, the people so aptly described by Robert Menzies as “the forgotten people”.  

In May 1942, Robert Gordon Menzies gave the following speech, a speech which still resonates today.  I recommend everyone read it and then weep. 
  

The Forgotten People 

Quite recently, a bishop wrote a letter to a great daily newspaper. His theme was the importance of doing justice to the workers. His belief, apparently, was that the workers are those who work with their hands. He sought to divide the people of Australia into classes. He was obviously suffering from what has for years seemed to me to be our greatest political disease – the disease of thinking that the community is divided into the relatively rich and the relatively idle, and the laborious poor, and that every social and political controversy can be resolved into the question: What side are you on? 

Now, the last thing that I would want to do is to commence or take part in a false war of this kind. In a country like Australia the class war must always be a false war. But if we are to talk of classes, then the time has come to say something of the forgotten class – the middle class – those people who are constantly in danger of being ground between the upper and the nether millstones of the false war; the middle class who, properly regarded represent the backbone of this country. 

We do not have classes here as in England, and therefore the terms do not mean the same; so, I must define what I mean when I use the expression “middle class.” 

Let me first define it by exclusion. I exclude at one end of the scale the rich and powerful: those who control great funds and enterprises and are as a rule able to protect themselves – though it must be said that in a political sense they have as a rule shown neither comprehension nor competence. But I exclude them because, in most material difficulties, the rich can look after themselves. 

I exclude at the other end of the scale the mass of unskilled people, almost invariably well-organised, and with their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. What I am excluding them from is my definition of the middle class. We cannot exclude them from problems of social progress, for one of the prime objects of modern social and political policy is to give them a proper measure of security and provide the conditions which will enable them to acquire skill and knowledge and individuality. 

These exclusions being made, I include the intervening range – the kind of people I myself represent in Parliament – salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on. These are, in the political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unself-conscious. They are envied by those whose benefits are largely obtained by taxing them. They are not rich enough to have individual power. They are taken for granted by each political party in turn. They are not sufficiently lacking in individualism to be organised for what in these days we call “pressure politics.” And yet, as I have said, they are the backbone of the nation. 

The communist has always hated what he calls the “bourgeoisie”, because he sees clearly the existence of one has kept British countries from revolution, while the substantial absence of one in feudal France at the end of the eighteenth century and in Tsarist Russia at the end of the last war made revolution easy and indeed inevitable. You may say to me, “Why bring this matter up at this stage when we are fighting a war, the result of which we are all equally concerned?” My answer is that I am bringing it up because under the pressure of war we may, if we are not careful – if we are not as thoughtful as the times will permit us to be – inflict a fatal injury upon our own backbone. 

In point of political, industrial and social theory and practice, there are great delays in time of war. But there are also great accelerations. We must watch each, remembering always that whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not, the foundations of whatever new order is to come after the war are inevitably being laid down now. We cannot go wrong right up to the peace treaty and expect suddenly thereafter to go right. 

Now, what is the value of this middle class, so defined and described? 

First, it has a “stake in the country”. It has responsibility for homes – homes material, homes human, and homes spiritual. 

I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole. 

I have mentioned homes material, homes human and homes spiritual. Let me take them in order. What do I mean by “homes material”? 

The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving “for a home of our own.” Your advanced socialist may rave against private property even while he acquires it; but one of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours; to which we can withdraw, in which we can be among our friends, into which no stranger may come against our will. If you consider it, you will see that if, as in the old saying, “the Englishman’s home is his castle”, it is this very fact that leads on to the conclusion that he who seeks to violate that law by violating the soil of England must be repelled and defeated. 

National patriotism, in other words, inevitably springs from the instinct to defend and preserve our own homes. 

Then we have homes human. A great house, full of loneliness, is not a home. “Stone walls do not a prison make”, nor do they make a house. They may equally make a stable or a piggery. Brick walls, dormer windows and central heating need not make more than a hotel. My home is where my wife and children are. The instinct to be with them is the great instinct of civilised man; the instinct to give them a chance in life – to make them not leaners but lifters – is a noble instinct. If Scotland has made a great contribution to the theory and practice of education, it is because of the tradition of Scottish homes. The Scottish ploughman, walking behind his team, cons ways and means of making his son a farmer, and so he sends him to the village school. The Scottish farmer ponders upon the future of his son, and sees it most assured not by the inheritance of money but by the acquisition of that knowledge which will give him power; and so the sons of many Scottish farmers find their way to Edinburgh and a university degree. 

The great question is, “How can I my son to help society?” Not, as we have so frequently thought, “How can I qualify society to help my son?” If human homes are to fulfil their destiny, then we must have frugality and saving for education and progress. 

And finally, we have homes spiritual. This is a notion which finds its simplest and most moving expression in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” of Burns. Human nature is at its greatest when it combines dependence upon God with independence of man. We offer no affront – on the contrary we have nothing but the warmest human compassion – toward those whom fate has compelled to live upon the bounty of the State, when we say that the greatest element in a strong people is a fierce independence of spirit. This is the only real freedom, and it has as its corollary a brave acceptance of unclouded individual responsibility. The moment a man seeks moral and intellectual refuge in the emotions of a crowd, he ceases to be a human being and becomes a cipher. The home spiritual so understood is not produced by lassitude or by dependence; it is produced by self-sacrifice, by frugality and saving. 

In a war, as indeed at most times, we become the ready victims of phrases. We speak glibly of many things without pausing to consider what they signify. We speak of “financial power”, forgetting that the financial power of 1942 is based upon the savings of generations which have preceded it. We speak of “morale” as if it were a quality induced from without – created by others for our benefit – when in truth there can be no national morale which is not based upon the individual courage of men and women. We speak of “man power” as if it were a mere matter of arithmetic: as if it were made up of a multiplication of men and muscles without spirit. 

Second, the middle class, more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress. The idea entertained by many people that, in a well-constituted world, we shall all live on the State is the quintessence of madness, for what is the State but us? We collectively must provide what we individually receive. 

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 have 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. If this is not so, then we had better put back the clock, and search for a benevolent autocracy once more. 

Where do we find these great elements most commonly? Among the defensive and comfortable rich, among the unthinking and unskilled mass, or among what I have called the “middle class”? 

Third, the middle class provides more than any other the intellectual life which marks us off from the beast; the life which finds room for literature, for the arts, for science, for medicine and the law. 

Consider the case of literature and art. Could these survive as a department of State? Are we to publish our poets according to their political colour? Is the State to decree surrealism because surrealism gets a heavy vote in a key electorate? The truth is that no great book was ever written and no great picture ever painted by the clock or according to civil service rules. These are the things done by man, not men. You cannot regiment them. They require opportunity, and sometimes leisure. The artist, if he is to live, must have a buyer; the writer an audience. He find them among frugal people to whom the margin above bare living means a chance to reach out a little towards that heaven which is just beyond our grasp. It has always seemed to me, for example, that an artist is better helped by the man who sacrifices something to buy a picture he loves than by a rich patron who follows the fashion. 

Fourth, this middle class maintains and fills the higher schools and universities, and so feeds the lamp of learning. 

What are schools for? To train people for examinations, to enable people to comply with the law, or to produce developed men and women? 

Are the universities mere technical schools, or have they as one of their functions the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly – the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary? 

One of the great blots on our modern living is the cult of false values, a repeated application of the test of money, notoriety, applause. A world in which a comedian or a beautiful half-wit on the screen can be paid fabulous sums, whilst scientific researchers and discoverers can suffer neglect and starvation, is a world which needs to have its sense of values violently set right. 

Now, have we realised and recognised these things, or is most of our policy designed to discourage or penalise thrift, to encourage dependence on the State, to bring about a dull equality on a fantastic idea that all men are equal in mind and needs and deserts: to level down by taking the mountains out of the landscape, to weigh men according to their political organisations and power – as votes and not as human beings? These are formidable questions, and we cannot escape from answering them if there is really to be a new order for the world. I have been actively engaged in politics for fourteen years in the State of Victoria and in the Commonwealth of Australia. In that period I cannot readily recall many occasions upon which any policy was pursued which was designed to help the thrifty, to encourage independence, to recognise the divine and valuable variations of men’s minds. On the contrary, there have been many instances in which the votes of the thriftless have been used to defeat the thrifty. On occasions of emergency, as in the depression and during the present war, we have hastened to make it clear that the provision made by man for his own retirement and old age is not half as sacrosanct as the provision the State would have made for him if he had never saved at all. 

We have talked of income from savings as if it possessed a somewhat discreditable character. We have taxed it more and more heavily. We have spoken slightingly of the earning of interest at the very moment when we have advocated new pensions and social schemes. I have myself heard a minister of power and influence declare that no deprivation is suffered by a man if he still has the means to fill his stomach, clothe his body and keep a roof over his head. And yet the truth is, as I have endeavoured to show, that frugal people who strive for and obtain the margin above these materially necessary things are the whole foundation of a really active and developing national life. 

The case for the middle class is the case for a dynamic democracy as against the stagnant one. Stagnant waters are level, and in them the scum rises. Active waters are never level: they toss and tumble and have crests and troughs; but the scientists tell us that they purify themselves in a few hundred yards. 

That we are all, as human souls, of like value cannot be denied. That each of us should have his chance is and must be the great objective of political and social policy. But to say that the industrious and intelligent son of self-sacrificing and saving and forward-looking parents has the same social deserts and even material needs as the dull offspring of stupid and improvident parents is absurd. 

If the motto is to be “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die, and if it chances you don’t die, the State will look after you; but if you don’t eat, drink and be merry and save, we shall take your savings from you”, then the whole business of life would become foundationless. 

Are you looking forward to a breed of men after the war who will have become boneless wonders? Leaners grow flabby; lifters grow muscles. Men without ambition readily become slaves. Indeed, there is much more in slavery in Australia than most people imagine. How many hundreds of thousands of us are slaves to greed, to fear, to newspapers, to public opinion – represented by the accumulated views of our neighbours! Landless men smell the vapours of the street corner. Landed men smell the brown earth and plant their feet upon it and know that it is good. To all of this many of my friends will retort, “Ah that’s all very well, but when this war is over the levellers will have won the day.” My answer is that, on the contrary, men will come out of this war as gloriously unequal in many things as when they entered it. Much wealth will have been destroyed; inherited riches will be suspect; a fellowship of suffering, if we really experience it, will have opened many hearts and perhaps closed many mouths. Many great edifices will have fallen, and we shall be able to study foundations as never before, because war will have exposed them. 

But I do not believe that we shall come out into the overlordship of an all-powerful State on whose benevolence we shall live, spineless and effortless – a State which will dole out bread and ideas with neatly regulated accuracy; where we shall all have our dividend without subscribing our capital; where the Government, that almost deity, will nurse us and rear us and maintain us and pension us and bury us; where we shall all be civil servants, and all presumably, since we are equal, heads of departments. 

If the new world is to be a world of men, we must be not pallid and bloodless ghosts, but a community of people whose motto shall be, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Individual enterprise must drive us forward. That does not mean we are to return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. The functions of the State will be much more than merely keeping the ring within which the competitors will fight. Our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less, more control, not less. 

But what really happens to us will depend on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middle-class – the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones. We shall destroy them at our peril. 

In 1944, two years after he gave that speech, Robert Menzies created the Liberal Party of Australia.  The party was founded on the principles in the above speech, and it was designed to give a voice to those forgotten people.  But it’s clear to me that our voices are now lost again, we’re in the wilderness. Robert Menzies wouldn’t recognise his party. The current Liberal Party of Australia, particularly over the last eighteen months, has unashamedly lied to, belittled, maligned, ridiculed and destroyed those strivers, those planners and those ambitious ones. 

 When you’ve stopped weeping, think about this. I believe the Liberal Party of Australia has forfeited its right to ever govern again. It must be destroyed and then, perhaps, a new party can rise from the ashes, a party that will promote Menzies’ values and a party that will care about Menzies’ forgotten people . But don’t hold your breath. 


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GreyRanga
GreyRanga
September 28, 2021 7:17 am

I doubt todays Lieborals have ever read Menzies speech little understood it. Craven best describes the majority of politicians today.

Kaos55
Kaos55
September 28, 2021 7:27 am

100%

I live in the commie-fascist state, formally known as Victoria.

The liberal party here is a joke. It has has sat back and done nothing to resist the destruction of this state over the last 20 years. They have done and said nothing about the destruction of our electricity grid and general infrastructure, the erosion of the judicial system (with lefty fanatics), the education system (with radical lefty systems ), and the gradual overall erosion of the economy, through the pile-on of more and more radical laws, rules and restrictions….and all this before 2020!

In the last 2 years, they have been beyond pathetic, while the the fascist Dan has accelerated the destruction of this state at the bequest of his overloads (Globalist and CCP).

The liberal party here and nationally in the last two years has actually been culpable and an accessory in the killing of the Forgotten People.

I will never vote for them again.

cuckoo
cuckoo
September 28, 2021 7:32 am

Regarding the prose alone, what politician today could write a piece like that? The work of your average Miles Franklin prizewinner reads like a urinal wall scrawling next to it.

And Cassie, don’t worry. Whatever Morrison promises or undertakes, nothing of the kind is going to happen. Certainly a great deal of economic damage will be done in the meantime, but reality is going to have the last laugh.

jupes
jupes
September 28, 2021 7:32 am

Excellent Cassie. Magnificent speech. If Menzies were alive today he would die of shame for what his party has become. They are going for ‘zero emissions’ now. Just who exactly do they represent?

Like you, I will never vote for the treasonous clowns again. I will put them below the Greens.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 28, 2021 8:00 am

and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs,

Those would be the suburbs now populated by the Green voting, tertiary credentialled (but not educated), taxpayer funded New Class.
The ones to whom the current Liberals (and Nationals) bow in obeisance, desperately seeking the love (and votes) of those who despise everything they stand for?

Time to look for real political leaders, away from the existing mob of self serving, cowardly, jellybacks.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 28, 2021 8:03 am

one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours; to which we can withdraw, in which we can be among our friends, into which no stranger may come against our will

A dream now destroyed by the arrogance of officialdom, with its increasing range of “warrantless” searches, building regulations and intrusive lackeys.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 28, 2021 8:07 am

Consider the case of literature and art. Could these survive as a department of State? Are we to publish our poets according to their political colour? Is the State to decree surrealism because surrealism gets a heavy vote in a key electorate? The truth is that no great book was ever written and no great picture ever painted by the clock or according to civil service rules

We spend hundreds of millions annually in an attempt to do just this. The results speak (poorly) for themselves.

Cassie of Sydney
September 28, 2021 8:08 am

“but reality is going to have the last laugh.”

True but the reality will also be that lives, businesses and a whole country will lie in ruins.

I believe climate change hysteria and the pursuit of zero emissions is a leftist concoction all designed to destroy the forgotten people of this country, those people Bob Menzies so eloquently described as the “great and sober and dynamic middle-class – the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones“.

I get tearful even writing Menzies’ words. Beautiful words.

Dot
Dot
September 28, 2021 8:09 am

Over the weekend I heard the news that Scott Morrison is preparing to sign Australia up to zero emissions by 2050. It’s yet another slap in the face

It’s quite insane without nuke and there has never been a rigourous cost benefits analysis that proved that mitigation had a net benefit.

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 28, 2021 8:21 am

But I do not believe that we shall come out into the overlordship of an all-powerful State on whose benevolence we shall live, spineless and effortless – a State which will dole out bread and ideas with neatly regulated accuracy; where we shall all have our dividend without subscribing our capital; where the Government, that almost deity, will nurse us and rear us and maintain us and pension us and bury us; where we shall all be civil servants, and all presumably, since we are equal, heads of departments.

You will own nothing, and you will be happy!

Dot
Dot
September 28, 2021 8:36 am

the Liberal Party of Australia has forfeited its right to ever govern again. It must be destroyed

YES.

calli
calli
September 28, 2021 8:36 am

In 2015, Mark Textor said that Conservative voters “don’t matter”.

At the time, I just thought it was big-noting hyperbole from a blown up puff-adder. I was wrong, and should have taken more notice.

We don’t matter.

Roger
Roger
September 28, 2021 8:54 am

We don’t matter.

We do matter at the polls. They can’t win without our votes. Ergo…

Now, I’d wager – if I were a betting man – that the covid response has accelerated the process whereby the middle class in Australia is shrinking. I don’t mean public servants, but the productive middle class, those who employ or are employed in the private sector. This process doesn’t bode well for the future of Australia’s democracy.

Rabz
September 28, 2021 9:05 am

I will put them below the Greens.

jupes, I’ll be presented with an interesting dilemma if casting a legitimate lower house vote next feral election. Let’s start with the assumption that I simply will not vote for the gliberals (at any level of government) ever again.

My local feral member is the loathsome Tony Burqa, whom I detest with a passion. If I put the gliberal candidate (most likely a moozley) last and Burqa second last, the greenfilth third last and it comes down to a runoff between Burqa and the greenfilth, I’ll have ended up voting for the latter, all out of a desire to destroy the gliberal party. If it’s between Burqa and the gliberal, I’ll have ended up voting labore.

How on earth is this an acceptable course of action? What an indictment of our ridiculous political system. Looks like I’ll have no other course of action than to vote informal (again).

P.S. Thanks Cassie, fantastic post. The “modern” gliberal party is an abomination. The (not so) slow inevitable decline into expediency, hypocrisy and irrelevancy began with that preposterous sawdust Caesar, Malcolm Fraser.

calli
calli
September 28, 2021 9:05 am

I take your point, Roger, and agree.

The “not mattering” part is around party policy. Why court people who you honestly believe don’t matter? The same old thing, time after time. When elections come around, they mouth the conservative shopping list, only to withdraw it all when in power.

I’m no longer married to the Liberal Party. Like a battered but resolute wife, I have left them to reel and rot in their own filth, and will never go back. Nor will I vote for their equally evil twin. I’m more than happy to spend the rest of my days politically chaste.

Roger
Roger
September 28, 2021 9:08 am

The “not mattering” part is around party policy.

Party policies are immaterial when you’re in opposition.

calli
calli
September 28, 2021 9:11 am

To take the analogy further…

The Liberal Party have been dazzled by a vicious but dazzling hussy called Progressivism. While I have been at home, faithfully cooking, cleaning and raising children, the Libs have been sleeping and partying with another, then coming home to give me a good thumping because I object.

They can have her and all the pox-ridden baggage that goes with her.

calli
calli
September 28, 2021 9:12 am

Too much dazzling…but you get the drift.

Fat Tony
Fat Tony
September 28, 2021 9:17 am

Strong middle class = strong democracy

No middle class = Feudal system (Lords & serfs)

GreyRanga
GreyRanga
September 28, 2021 9:26 am

The private sector are the only ones that actually pay for the country. The public sector pay for nothing. Where does the money come from except for excessive taxing of productive citizens.

min
min
September 28, 2021 9:31 am

Unlike women, men do not seem to be able to handle multi tasking so look at Scomo in this light . Scoring that major alliance with AUKUS , followed by the Quad would have taken enormous thinking, processing and then getting it put in place . Less so than Abbott had , he has also got all the wets to jolly along , a pretty powerful group who were Abbotts’s downfall . All of you who complain what would you have done in that situation can’t throw them in prison on trumped up charges , behead them , poison in the tea so one is left trying to appease them ion some way so you can get on and do the important stuff .
So let’s look where Australia is now , ripe for sneaking in nuclear ,even more so with what is happening in UK , Germany, Spain ,lack of gas and huge energy costs . Greens and lefties will be concentrating on transgender, renewables , and the usual rubbish.

Tom
Tom
September 28, 2021 9:44 am

The Liberal Party believes in nothing except the bigger the government the better — the exact opposite of its founder.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 28, 2021 9:46 am

The (not so) slow inevitable decline into expediency, hypocrisy and irrelevancy began with that preposterous sawdust Caesar, Malcolm Fraser.

Fraser – elected in a landslide and given a clear mandate to undo the excesses of the Whitlam years – to my mind, he seemed too timid to exercise that mandate.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 28, 2021 10:03 am

My local feral member is the loathsome Tony Burqa, whom I detest with a passion.

Said Tony Burqa was Minister for Agriculture when I “had the farm.” Completely disinterested in the portfolio, no attempt to confront or deal with any of the issues, and always gave the impression that the whole issue was beneath one of his towering intellect. I detested the man, as well.

Timothy Neilson
Timothy Neilson
September 28, 2021 10:33 am

Thanks for reminding us, Cassie.
There are two things in the speech which I think need to be footnoted for a modern readership.
First where Sir Robert refers to “… a world which needs to have its sense of values violently set right. ” To Menzies, who had grown up in the Edwardian era, “violently” meant merely “vigorously”. He was not advocating force as a political tool.
Second, not all of us would be attracted at first sight to the following statements: “The functions of the State will be much more than merely keeping the ring within which the competitors will fight. Our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less, more control, not less.” Sir Robert was writing at a time when the waterfront unions were actively sabotaging the war effort against the Japanese, because Stalin wasn’t at war with Japan. It’s not surprising that he was thinking about the desirability of some more “industrial laws”.
But those are minor technicalities in what must rank as the finest speech ever by an Australian politician.

Shy Ted
Shy Ted
September 28, 2021 10:55 am

minsays: September 28, 2021 at 9:31 am
Unlike women, men do not seem to be able to handle multi tasking so look at Scomo in this light

Line of the century, min. We’re just here to do the hard, heavy, shit jobs without which you wouldn’t have any of the things that surround or sustain you. All the villains in the piece have been schmoozed (read compromised) by the UN and moneyed elites for who knows how long. You don’t have to go too far to read about Scummo’ dubious history and dodgy deals. What have they got on them all? All those UN and other gigs. Likewise big pharma banquets. All those fancy meals and fine wines. And the after meal entertainment provided by the nice ladies. And men. All filmed for security purposes. Arky in his bouncer story gave a little insight yesterday. He could have been talking about Adelaide. What? Melbourne!! They’re everywhere. Have you already forgotten Brittany and the aftermath, here in Parly House, Canbra? Loads of nobodies getting in on the action. As in all “closed” communities.

Old School Conservative
Old School Conservative
September 28, 2021 11:02 am

Thanks Cassie.
So much of Menzies’ words are applicable today. I especially looked at “there are great delays in time of war. But there are also great accelerations” in the context of rapid changes to society during the government responses to Covid.
Many have just seen those changes as a blur of public announcements, but the underlying change is real. And not good for us.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 28, 2021 11:18 am

Still nothing much happening in the climate data (the real stuff, not the fraudulent terrestrial temperature datasets).

More Evidence Antarctica Has Been Cooling, Regional Sea Ice Increasing For Over 40 Years (27 Sep)

At the same time Arctic sea ice has been trending higher (ie. colder) for 14 years now.

So despite a large rise in pCO2 in these time frames the globe has steadfastly refused to get hotter, or at least no one told the ice in the polar regions.

WolfmanOz (just existing in Melb. now)
WolfmanOz (just existing in Melb. now)
September 28, 2021 11:48 am

Great post Cassie, and I share all the anger and frustrations written and in the replies here.

But . . .

When the Libs are thrown out they’re replaced by the Labor/Green (filth), who will be worse (after all the only redeeming feature of the Libs is that “they’re not as bad as the other mob”).

Then what ?

The reality is you need the organising structure of a political party to challenge the left, and starting from scratch (or near enough, eg. the Lib Dems) is going to take 10-20 years, at least, especially as political commitment by the general Australian populace is very weak.

Being pure, but not in govt., is not something that is sustainable or desirable.

Pragmatically, probably better to re-build within the Libs – hopefully after a fearful mauling, which I hope (and pray) will see the casting off and damnation of people like Morrison and his ilk for their hollow and unprincipled way of politics.

However, I feart we’re in for a decade of untold misery . . .

Intractable
Intractable
September 28, 2021 12:09 pm

WolfmanOz (just existing in Melb. now)says:
September 28, 2021 at 11:48 am
‘When the Libs are thrown out they’re replaced by the Labor/Green (filth)’

“Libs” ARE Labor/Green (filth) – FIFY

Intractable
Intractable
September 28, 2021 12:15 pm

WolfmanOz (just existing in Melb. now)says:
September 28, 2021 at 11:48 am
‘Pragmatically, probably better to re-build within the Libs’

Nope! Not without the knock-down and fumigation first.
Anything less is wallpapering over a termite-infested mess.

A vote for Libs circa 2021 leads to the very same place as voting Lab/Green.

Lee
Lee
September 28, 2021 12:23 pm

Excellent post, Cassie.
I will never vote for the Liberals again either.
And I will not vote Labor or the Greens.

Tom Atkinson
September 28, 2021 2:06 pm

Excellent, thank you Cassie. Love your values and love hearing your views.

I have often been known to say, “the biggest problem Australia has at the moment is the ABC. Fix the ABC and everything else will come good”.

I believe the steady abandonment by the Liberals of Menzies’ values is entirely at the behest of the ABC.

This is a perfect example of the effect the ABC is having on Australia.

Fix the ABC and everything else will come good.

Cassie of Sydney
September 28, 2021 3:26 pm

At the July 2016 election, Liberals voters, rightly disgusted with the knifing of Tony Abbott and clearly able to see through the fake that was Malcolm Turdbull, left the Liberal Party in droves. In 2019, these same voters returned…because they naively assumed that Scott Morrison, unlike Turdbull, was a true Liberal.

We were wrong and that mistake will not be repeated.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
September 28, 2021 3:37 pm

Too much dazzling…but you get the drift.

Calli, they can never have enough dazzlement. They are dazzled by the international elites; they are dazzled by praise and acclaim of the media that ordinary people fed with false ‘science’ have little choice but to read; they are dazzled by their own importance in being voted into power under false banners; and they are overwhelmingly dazzled by their dazzling vision of being, wrongly, on ‘the right side of history’ in their needless ‘saving’ of the planet.

One day they will wake up, look for all of the bright dazzlements, and ask ‘where did that go’?

The economy and society will lie in smoking undazzling ruins around them, due to their own efforts.

It could so much have been otherwise if they had kept their sights on Menzies’ vision.

Thanks for re-opening that window to the past for us, Cassie. That’s what I call a real roadmap.

Lee
Lee
September 28, 2021 3:53 pm

In 2019, these same voters returned…because they naively assumed that Scott Morrison, unlike Turdbull, was a true Liberal.

We were wrong and that mistake will not be repeated.

If Morrison thinks that, and that the conservative base will support his fence-sitting and his ignoring of what Dictator Dan is doing in Victoria, will win him the next election, he has another think coming.

Fat Tony
Fat Tony
September 28, 2021 4:17 pm

This on-going talk about elections…….Pffttt…

There will be no more free elections in this country.
On-line only due to States of Emergency because of the terrible COVID pandemic, where the Uniparty will be returned with 130%+ of the vote.

a reader
a reader
September 28, 2021 6:24 pm

Stolen from twitter:

Has anybody considered hooking up wires to Menzies coffin? He must be spinning so quickly in there seeing what Gladys and her ilk have done to his party that he could offset the closure of
@AGLAustralia Mount Piper

vlad redux
vlad redux
September 28, 2021 8:24 pm

Consider the case of literature and art. Could these survive as a department of State?

If he’d never said anything else, this would have immortalised him.

Could they survive as departments of the State? No, and they haven’t.

vlad redux
vlad redux
September 28, 2021 9:28 pm

Richard Nixon was a big fan of Menzies as a man; he said (more than once – and not in any sort of suck-up local Australian interview – he said all this in America) that Menzies was the most interesting man he ever met and that he could have been a great Prime Minister of England, but that he was limited by serving a relatively minor country (which was true then and truer now).

Timothy Neilson
Timothy Neilson
September 28, 2021 11:24 pm

vlad reduxsays:
September 28, 2021 at 9:28 pm

Margaret Thatcher wrote in her autobiography that “One memory I treasure from this Australian visit was my only meeting with Sir Robert Menzies… one saw immediately the power and strength of character of Australia’s leading statesman…”.

Bruce in WA
September 28, 2021 11:39 pm

I grew up in a household that loathed “Pig Iron Bob”, and for Western Australians hated Sir Charles Court and Sir David Brand.

No wonder then my first vote ever was for the ALP (It’s Time). But never, ever, since then.

Now, I’m about to consign the LNP to the same dustbin of history.

I would say it’s sad; but it’s not. They’ve trashed the brand.

rosie
rosie
September 29, 2021 8:08 am

Interesting that Menzies went from being the supporter of a universal pension scheme in the mid 1930s that narrowly missed becoming law, to actively opposing such.
He was right.
Nothing demonstrates more the ceding of personal responsibility to the state than the response to the covid epidemic and the slavish support by so many of that government response.
The only political party that seems to still believe in personal responsibility is the LDP.

shatterzzz
September 29, 2021 8:35 am

Thinking on the pointlessness of the upcoming Federal election .. pointless because one or the other of the BIG two are gonna govern Oz .. meaning nuttin’ is gonna change .. not for the good of the small folk, anyway!
For reasons known only to the Electoral Commission I live in McMAHON (for all intents & purposes) but vote in FOWLER .. I very rarely go into Liverpool, conduct no business or personal life in Liverpool but vote for whoever cops the $200 000 plus freebies there! .. The majority of my life be it business or social is dun in Fairfield ( McMahon) and whenever I think Fed politics it is in relation to the Turtle not whoever is representing me in Liverpool (Fowler) which … brings me to my point …..
We are close to 2 years into the BRADBURY/GLADYS 15 days to flatten the curve fiasco and almost as long (or so it seems) lockdowns … YET .. in all this time I can’t recall once hearing/seeing anything public from either the turtle, whoever is currently troughin’ in Fowler or even the bloke who is supposed to cover me in the state seat of Smithfield apart from a coupla glossy brochures waffling various gummint approved BAT FLU advice ….. yet everyday I read & see the levels of plod brutality, read about the shifting goal-posts as to where & what BAT FLU is doing yet from a local representative point of view .. NUTTIN, ZILCH, ZERO ……!
Soooo what difference is the coming Federal election gonna have on my life and the only answer I can come up with is …… NONE!

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 29, 2021 8:55 am

Dot

What would the LDP version of the “Forgotten People” speech say?

struth
struth
September 30, 2021 2:10 am

People living under lawless communism for nearly two years talking about the way they are going to vote……….
The mass delusion has been the most depressing thing to witness.

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