New Catallaxy

Real Liberal Leadership

Shame on Liberal leaders

Who didn’t have the balls to say this.

Something strange has been happening in conservative politics. The
Liberal Party is being told that the only way it can cling onto power
(or win it back) is if the party panders to the demands of women.
Women are out. Women are the reason Morrison lost the election.
Women are flocking to the left. Women are angry. Women have the
hots for pandemic doctors. Women are going Teal. It’s a never-ending barrage of excuses moderates encourage because they think the ‘fix’ for power involves the easy adoption of female quotas. That’ll do it, right?

If the Liberals keep up with this sort of nonsense, they really will have a ‘women’ problem.
The narrative did not originate from the blue-ribbon base. It was
started by a relentless Labor marketing campaign. The media quite
liked throwing pink click-bait around and so it persisted, but there
was never any detail behind the fiction.
Liberal leaders allowed the untrue accusation to sit unchallenged
through several election cycles until it was ‘assumed’ as fact. Which is what happens to those who refuse to fight the culture wars.
Before his loss, dozens of publications insisted that Morrison had a
‘women problem’ but none could cite what that problem actually was.

Toward the end of his time, Morrison foolishly accepted this empty
hashtag and decided to drag it through the election on some
misguided walk of atonement…

Alexandra Marshall

NB.

The narrative did not originate from the blue-ribbon base. It was
started by a relentless Labor marketing campaign. The media quite
liked throwing pink click-bait around and so it persisted, but there
was never any detail behind the fiction.
Liberal leaders allowed the untrue accusation to sit unchallenged
through several election cycles until it was ‘assumed’ as fact. Which is what happens to those who refuse to fight the culture wars.

Rafe Champion

29 responses to “Real Liberal Leadership”

  1. Roger Avatar
    Roger

    Shame on Liberal leaders

    Starting with John Howard.

    12
  2. Christine Avatar
    Christine

    Thank you
    I couldn’t understand why the accusation went unchallenged.

    9
  3. Cassie of Sydney Avatar
    Cassie of Sydney

    Alexandra Marshall nails it.

    The Liberal Party has been sick for years, the sickness began in September 2013 with Tony Abbott, who proved to be such a profound disappointment that I still feel intense anger towards him and my blood boils over when I think of his limp, wimp premiership and his abject refusal to fight about anything (remember his backdown over Section 18C), and then, after his knifing, the party was put on serious life support under Turdbull and Morrison, two men who should never have been allowed near the corridors of power and who, between them, basically destroyed the Liberal party. For nine years we endured useless, supine, craven, and spineless Liberal governments, Liberal governments that trashed Menzies’ legacy, Liberal governments that were ashamed of its core principles, and Liberal governments that stood for nothing and were happy to spit in the faces of its voters. As for Morrison, I struggle to find the appropriate words to describe this hideous, vile man….weasel, worm, slug all come to mind but I’m being unfair to weasels, worms and slugs. Morrison was and is a man lacking in any qualities and principles. But he did manage one thing, he destroyed the Liberal Party.

    I’m a conservative woman, I’m a conservative voter, I want a Liberal Party that stands up for Liberal values, we all know what those values are, those values and ideas once espoused so beautifully by Robert Gordon Menzies in his seminal Forgotten People speech of 1942, a speech that spoke to the heart of middle Australia, a speech that hailed and exalted Australia’s lifters, the middle class, and a speech that espoused the following….

    1. Free Speech
    2. Religious freedom
    3. Individual liberty
    4. Individual responsibility
    5. Fiscal responsibility
    6. The backbone of the economy – small and medium sized business
    7. The aspirational

    That speech called out to the “forgotten” Australians, the middle class, the strivers, the planners, and the ambitious ones. In other words, it was a cry to the lifters of this country, long ignored by left of centre governments. The speech still resonates, particularly since 2013 because those forgotten Australians were ignored by so called Liberal governments.

    I’ll end on this, and I know I’ve written this before but I’ll repeat myself. I genuinely ask, why should I ever vote Liberal again? Apparently, I’m “extreme right”. Yes, you read that right, two days after CPAC, a conference I had the privilege to attend (and I can’t wait for this year’s CPAC), Peter Dutton appeared on Sky News and described attendees such as myself as “extreme right”. Well Mr Dutton, I cannot in good conscience vote for a party that is happy to demonise me, so sadly I remain forgotten and my vote remains lost to you and your party.

    I weep for the forgotten people of this country.

    60
  4. WolfmanOz Avatar
    WolfmanOz

    Cassie of Sydney says:
    February 1, 2023 at 9:56 pm

    Absolutely brilliant Cassie ! ! !

    15
  5. Mother Lode Avatar
    Mother Lode

    There really is no Liberal brains trust. And absolutely no fight in them.

    My recollection is that the ‘women problem’ thing really came into its own when combatting Abbott.

    Labor is really not very bright. It is a barnyard of various beasts some of which “moo”, some “neigh”, some “oink”, some go “buk-buk”. There is a cacophony calling out for grass and hay and slops and grain. Gender, race, QWERTY etc. no coherent idea, no plan, no vision. Nothing.

    Albo’s Voice is floundering and Chalmers is making up an idiot economic plan.

    The Libs should be able to take these people to the cleaners but every time Labor says “BOO!” the Libs prostrate themselves and apologise, and promise to never again do whatever Labor said, regardless of whether it was true or whether it is one of their supposed core convictions.

    The only people the Liberal party will attack are their own.

    35
  6. Cassie of Sydney Avatar
    Cassie of Sydney

    Here are some Morrison casualties….

    Bettina Arndt
    Alan Tudge
    Christian Porter
    Andrew Laming
    Craig Kelly
    George Christensen
    SAS soldiers
    George Pell
    Christine Holgate
    The Higgins affair

    All of the above were political hit jobs orchestrated by the left, yet Morrison fell for each and every one of them. All had their careers/jobs/reputations, Morrison stood by NONE OF THEM. I still feel physically sick when I remember the senate censure of Arndt. Even the IPA, that so called bastion of free speech, refused to help her. On each occasion with each individual, Morrison sided with Labor and the Greens against his own.

    Oh and as an aside, Craig Kelly has been vindicated on everything to do with Covid, yet exactly two years ago, in a deliberate hit job, the MSM went after Kelly and Morrison sided, not with Kelly, but with the MSM and the left.

    I hope Morrison rots in hell.

    42
  7. Big_Nambas Avatar
    Big_Nambas

    Well said Cassie.

    The real problem is that the liberals are NOT a conservative party anymore. They are following the bed wetters to the left and now believe that if you don’t look like a socialist you won’t get elected.
    This means that everybody knows that the majority of liberal MP’s don’t have a conservative bone in their bodies.
    I can’t see a liberal federal government for at least 12 years, and if people get sick of labor in that period they will vote green or phon or national, until and unless the libs get some conviction and have a conservative platform they are dead.

    27
  8. C.L. Avatar
    C.L.

    That’ll do it, right?

    Er, no. The ‘woman problem’ is indeed a scam which the ABC (and other media) have all been perpetrating for years. The real ‘woman problem’ is the mob of affirmative action mediocrities on the Labor benches in Parliament. The best of them – the best, mind you – was Julia Gillard.

    The smart, principled stance would be to recruit good people – male or female. If that means most candidates are male, so be it. Better to have two Thatchers than 200 Gillards.

    The other handy thing about this left-wing calumny is that it’s self-fulfilling: the more women see of how non-Labor females are treated by the media (Hanson, Kitching, Deves, etc etc), the less likely it is they’ll risk being terrorised by Labor and its media thugs.

    32
  9. Cassie of Sydney Avatar
    Cassie of Sydney

    “The only people the Liberal party will attack are their own.”

    Yep, like me…”extreme right”.

    18
  10. Davey Boy Avatar
    Davey Boy

    well they’re not called the stupid.f-cking.liberals for nothing, are they.

    15
  11. C.L. Avatar
    C.L.

    Cassie².

    9
  12. billie Avatar
    billie

    Like the USA, UK and nearly all of Europe, we have no one waiting in the wings with any clue whatsoever

    The left have won and after the next war, we’ll reset

    The left in the USA and Europe is leading us to world war again, their egos and prestige won’t allow it any other way.

    9
  13. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    What the hell was Robert Menzies thinking when, as an aspiring young politician in the 1940s, he named the organisation he hoped to lead the Liberal Party of Australia?

    8
  14. Miltonf Avatar
    Miltonf

    I’d say the lieborals’ ‘wimmin problem’ was copied from the GOP’s alleged ‘war on wimmin’. The American left is the biggest threat to us which no doubt had a lot of help from the KGB.

    4
  15. thefrollickingmole Avatar
    thefrollickingmole

    You lose 100% of the battles you dont fight.
    Libs prefer to avoid the nastyness of holding or forwarding any positions not embraced by the Cabberaaah hivemind.

    11
  16. Cassie of Sydney Avatar
    Cassie of Sydney

    “The other handy thing about this left-wing calumny is that it’s self-fulfilling: the more women see of how non-Labor females are treated by the media (Hanson, Kitching, Deves, etc etc), the less likely it is they’ll risk being terrorised by Labor and its media thugs.”

    Correct. Almost two years ago, before the second lockdown here in NSW, it was March or April 2021 I think, I attended a Menzies Research Centre talk with the quest of honour being Nicolle Flint. Flint spoke about her experiences at the hands of Labor, the Greens, GetUp and the Unions, both before the 2019 election and since. Those experiences were, ahem, very unpleasant. At the end, there was a discussion between Nicolle Flint and a person by the name of Gemma Tognini.

    I put my hand up and asked two questions of Flint, the first question was, did Nicolle think that certain SA Labor luminaries, chief among them being our current Foreign Minister (then shadow FM), know what was going on before the 2019 election? Nicolle was circumspect with her answer, because as she said this woman is both litigious and nasty, but Flint said that she’d be very, very surprised if this woman didn’t know about the toxic campaign waged against Flint in the lead up to the 2019 election. In other words, these so called female warriors in the Labor party, who protest very loudly about verbal and physical violence against women, have zero problems using the same unsavoury methods to target conservative women, and this includes verbal violence and physical acts of stalking. Labor and Greens’ females are hypocrites of the first order. On winning the election back in 2019, the Liberals, if they’d had any cojones, and of course they didn’t and don’t, should have used that to attack Labor and in particular its well known female hypocrites, such as the woman from SA who’s now flying around the world lecturing the UK about its history. Anyway I digress.

    My second question was “why would any Liberal or conservative woman put her hand up to be targeted by Labor, the Greens, the unions and the MSM”. I thought that to be a reasonable question given what was done to Flint but Ms Tognini, who has a very high opinion of herself, interrupted me, spoke over me and Flint and said it doesn’t matter about such toxic campaigns, Liberal and conservative women must run for office regardless. Yeah righto, put your hand up to be abused, physically and verbally. No thanks. I was quite bewildered by Tognini’s interlocution and I said to Tognini “but I’m not asking you, I’m asking Nicolle”. The conversation ended and Tognini said “next question”.

    That’s the truth, why would any woman put her hands up for this? The left will stop at nothing to intimidate and attack the right and they particularly love to intimidate and attach right-wing women. We saw this last year with Katherine Deves and Deves wasn’t the only Liberal/National female candidate subjected to verbal violence and physical stalking in the lead up to last May’s election.

    Back to Tognini, since then I’ve never had much time for her. She thinks she’s clever, whilst she’s not stupid, she ain’t half as clever as she thinks she is. She’s rude and she has a massive ego, she needs to learn a little humility. Afterwards, other attendees came up to me and said that I’d asked two good questions.

    23
  17. Bourne1879 Avatar
    Bourne1879

    Cassie’s on fire today.

    8
  18. m0nty Avatar
    m0nty

    Personally, I believe you are all 100% correct and you should not listen to those who say the female vote is at all important. Keep ignoring women and their concerns, she’ll be right as they say.

  19. Cassie of Sydney Avatar
    Cassie of Sydney

    Speaking of weasels, worms and slugs, one arrives.

    21
  20. Hugh Avatar
    Hugh

    At the risk of seeming unecumenical: the Liberal Party is a mirror image of the Church of England.

    I say this through clenched teeth, given my appalling current Pope, who is doing his damnest to bring it about that through him, the successor of Peter, the gates of Hell will indeed prevail against the kingdom of Heaven.

    But for all her current woes, the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t officially, ex-Cathedra, contradicted herself on anything, unlike the Anglicans, who are now a Church of Woke. See Yes Prime Minister’s “Bishop’s Gambit” for a useful analysis.

    The Liberal Party is now also a Church of Woke. Not by positive choice, but by gutless fear and the overriding politics of seeming.

    There were two moments when I realized the Liberals were no more.

    1. When John Howard, after years of holding out, capitulated on no substantive evidence on global warming on the cusp of the 2007 election . Seeming.

    2. When he resigned after the 2007 election. Gutless. He should have stuck to his guns. So too his successors. “Work Choices is dead,” said Tony Abbott. What a disastrous message that sent out. “We were wrong. We were always wrong. We were wrong about everything. We will be wrong about everything. The ABC was and is right all along. All hail the ABC, and we’ll fund them in saecula saeculorum. We deserve to be thrashed. Here’s the whip. Do it now.”

    Work Choices was a needlessly cumbersome attempt to ensure that, surprise, surprise, wages should reflect productivity. Which they always do in a truly free market. (Hey, Libs, ever heard of that?) But at least it was aiming in the right direction. Why apologize and treat it like a lump of sh*t? Have you no self-respect?

    They should not have backed down. They should have asked for the receipts on global warming and gone in hard. They should have doubled down on Work Choices, maybe by attacking the corrupt union-state nexus itself, and interrogating the farcical minimum-wage concept altogether. (Is there a Minimum Price Commission for Paddle-pops? Why not?)

    It’s a paradox that the simplest solutions are the best, but the most frequently ignored.

    E.g. Make your bed in the morning. (Jordan Peterson)

    And politically:

    1. If you have a belief, go for it. Stuff what the majority thinks. No-one will respect you if you keep putting you finger to the wind and changing your beliefs accordingly. No-one goes to the Anglican Church (or its allies such as the Pope Francis mafia) for some learned, Christian tradition, logical analysis on the ethics of homosexual sex, or contraception, or abortion.

    (There was a great interview in The Australian a few decades back with some Anglican divine on key issues, and he kept saying “Well on the one hand there’s this and on the other there’s this.” The exasperated reporter finally blurted out: “What if you’ve got only one hand?” Touche! )

    No, … they go to a one-handed somebody like Prof. Ed Feser, or Archbishop Vigano. I disagree intensely with hardened marxists and atheists, but I’m much happier going toe to toe with them than with bloody wimpish temporisers who are forever choosing their words because what they say might offend someone.

    2. Balance the budget. NOT by increasing taxes, but slashing government waste. Eg the Dept of Education, the ABC, the CSIRO, the pathetic BOM, funding to universities, the Yarts.

    3. Deregulate the energy sector. Allow coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind, etc to fight on a level playing field.

    etc, etc.

    4. Pull all funding to all special interest groups such as the aboriginal industry. Abolish the cancerous funding to remote communities. For their own sake.

    In fine: do nothing. Our society, after a short sharp shock, will look after itself just fine. Amazing, hey? Whodathunk?

    Hey, Libs, you’ve forgotten the forgotten people. The deplorables. The ones who actually create the wealth which is fleeced to pay for the grifters in Canberra and their minions, deep state and otherwise. Do you have the guts to call this out?

    23
  21. Fair Shake Avatar
    Fair Shake

    I recall discussing the then forthcoming 2022 Fed election. One of our group who is normally quite measured said there is no way he could vote for Scomo cos of his problem with women. Others piled in in support. It was shock to me they could believe the sh!t being peddled by MSM but there it was. The sh!t had stuck. I knew the Libs needed to come back strong, but they didn’t, 6-months later…DING! Cooked.
    Meanwhile Dan Andrews appalling treatment of women in his Labor cabinet rolled on by without barely a wimper from MSM.

    12
  22. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Tognini … thinks she’s clever, whilst she’s not stupid, she ain’t half as clever as she thinks she is. She’s rude and she has a massive ego, she needs to learn a little humility.

    To paraphrase Sir Les Patterson, Gemma Tognini is lower than a snake’s arsehole — a parasite real journalists despise, since she took the cowards route out of journalism to go into public relations.

    There’s nothing lower than getting out of journalism to write press releases for the highest bidder. Tognini is a twenty-dollar hooker.

    6
  23. Kingsley Avatar
    Kingsley

    I think what is not understood on the conservative side very well is we need our leaders to be Thatcher level tough and effective all the time. Thatcher types can’t be the occasional oddity, they need to be the norm. The Left doesn’t rest so nor should we. We are seeing here and perhaps even more graphically in the UK that even when we are in power for quite a length of time we sort of aren’t even running the show. We keep getting suckered into splitting the difference and then 3 seconds after reaching a splitting the difference deal they start again trying to split the difference again. So instead of getting 50% of what we want, we are instantly on our heels looking at being chiselled to 75%/25% in their favour. Everything the Left says needs to be energetically challenged right there and then. Don’t wait to see if it might die a natural death, start stabbing it right now and make sure it dies.

    8
  24. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare Avatar
    Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare

    An over-representation of women with a particular feminist ideology tends to skew political life by creating a coercive and unnecessary ‘corrective’ gender emphasis in legislation that doesn’t reflect the true nature of men and women’s lives in the wider society. There are often deleterious consequences of this legislation for both men and women, as anyone familiar with Family Courts can attest. Affirmative action hiring and promotion simply downgrades the achievements of those very capable women who do wish to aspire to senior business and political roles. It is a fact that women are less likely than men to have such aspirations, and that is due to some very female-oriented choices that women make as women in families. More women are now expresssing a rejection of enforced feminist ideologies The Liberal Party would do well to listen to them and attack back at Labor’s leftist slurs.

    4
  25. Ed Case Avatar
    Ed Case

    What the hell was Robert Menzies thinking when, as an aspiring young politician in the 1940s, he named the organisation he hoped to lead the Liberal Party of Australia?

    Born 1894, he was 50 years old, been in Parliament since 1928.
    The UAP was a Bosses Party, it failed.
    Ditto the Nationalist Party.
    The Liberal Party had a good name in Australia, the descendants of the Founding Stock rejected the Conservative Party of England, and it’s proved very successful.

    Who survived the reckoning of 2022?
    Liberals like Tudgie, Dutton, Bridget Archer, Angus Taylor, Sussan Ley.
    Who lost their seats?
    The BumSex crew, Dave Sharma, who has now been rejected twice in Wentworth, tough guys like Falinski.
    Liberals had a presentable candidate capable of winning Warringah, swapped her out for a ratbag like Deves.
    The lesson?
    Anyone can win a safe Liberal seat in the good times, candidate selection matters when the swing is on.

  26. Ed Case Avatar
    Ed Case

    I think what is not understood on the conservative side very well is we need our leaders to be Thatcher level tough and effective all the time.
    Thatcher didn’t conserve anything.
    Here’s one of the thousands of things she wrecked:
    Tore up tens of thousands of miles of Spur Lines in the 1980s on the basis that they weren’t getting used much, so let’s rip them out.

    Industrial Vandal on an industrial scale.

  27. Ed Case Avatar
    Ed Case

    The Liberals did have a problem with better educated women.

    Had nothing to do with selecting more token Barbie Dolls, though.

    Their handling of the Brittany Higgins Affair absolutely stank.

    To high Heaven.

    Scotty has worn the blame, but according to Samantha Maiden in today’s Courier Mail, the AFP was briefing Peter Dutton on the rape investigation.
    Higgins told the Trial she was scared to hand her phone over to the AFP because of rules requiring them to brief then Home Affairs Minister Dutton on “sensitive investigations”.

  28. a reader Avatar
    a reader

    An interesting discussion and some observations:
    *Hugh’s comments are pretty good but when you talk Church of England or for that matter the Anglican Church you need to be very specific. The Anglican Church in places like the Diocese of Sydney, or Armidale is not woke. It’s unfair to lump these bible following Christians in with others that profess their faith publicly but at the same time contradict it.
    *Ed’s concepts of Thatcher are head scratchers
    *The so-called Liberal woman problem has now resulted in a former journalist, Charlotte Mortlock, actively going out trying to recruit women to the Liberal party via some kind of Emily’s list style organisation. I’ve heard Ms Mortlock on Andrew Bolt’s show the last couple of weeks and I’m afraid she’s the perfect representative of the Liberal party in that she speaks but doesn’t actually say anything. Bolt set her up with plenty of opportunities when debating some Labor woman (that I’d never heard of) and she squibbed each and every one.
    *The Liberal party from the start had strong women in it. Anybody that knows their Liberal history will know of the significance of the Australian Women’s National League and people like Dame Elizabeth Couchman, Enid Lyons and Dame Ivy Wedgewood. It says a lot about the current custodians of the Australian Liberal Party that they have allowed this history to be neglected and not used as a strong point.

    4
  29. Ed Case Avatar
    Ed Case

    Destroyed the British Coal Industry in tandem with Communist Arthur Scargill.
    Massively increased non White Immigration for no social benefit.

    Had Jimmy Saville as a house guest every New Years Eve of her Premiership.
    Yeah, that was Thatcher.

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