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January 21, 2008
Noel McCoy, president of the NSW Young Liberals, argues in The Australian that Howard's amalgam of economic liberalism and social conservatism is the best path for the Liberal Party to move forward and regain power. He refers to the way that Howard opposed the liberal-progressive values of the Left.
Slashing personal income tax rates, erasing $96billion of government debt, opening up the workplace to competitive market pressures and the introduction of private health care incentives are just a few examples of Howard's voracious appetite for economic reform. But in virtually the same breath, the Howard government reaffirmed marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, pursued a "tough on drugs" strategy, rejected indigenous apologism and replaced multiculturalism with integration.
This argument, which aims to influence the meeting of Liberal leaders in Melbourne to devise strategy and tactics, forgets to mention the neo-con foreign policy. What is more questionable is McCoy's claim that Howard's formula of blending free-market economic policy and socially mainstream values --note the slide from socially conservative to socially mainstream--- is an expression of Australian mainstream.
McCory says that the recent ALP's shift to the left---eg., apology to the stolen generations, an Australian bill of rights and allowing civil unions between homosexuals in the ACT---provides:
an opportunity for the conservative side of politics to take back ground and reassert its place as true representatives of the Australian mainstream. To take advantage of this opportunity, blending social conservatism and economic reform will be the key not only to electoral success of the Liberal Party, but to locking in Australia's long-term prosperity for future generations.
So we have the slide from social conservative values to mainstream social values to Australian mainstream. Is the Australian mainstream is socially conservative?
Howard's reflex Burkean conservatism is the right wing populist reaction to the effects of globalization on Australian social life. It's a one nation conservatism built around a pre-modern Christianity that is hostile to liberalism, and on the absolute authority of the national security state.
Update
Howard has gone. So where do the pale-blue liberal moderates go in McCory's account? Are they to be banished? They had experienced the very long night of teeth grinding bitterness under Howard, even though they stood in the Deakinite/ Menzies wing of the Liberal party. What is the future of the moderate liberals (the ones who support a republic, reconciliation and refugees) with conservatives such as Downer and Minchin still calling the shots in the Liberal party. Yet more exclusion, if McCory's account is anything to go by. That's the message being sent out.
So will Rudd seduce the moderate liberals, as he increasingly loses leftwing support when dealing with climate change with his pale green governance, and the Liberal party swings further to the right?
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Gary,
some of these Liberal Leaders would have to be clowns--- I'm thinking of WA and Queensland. They have fully embraced the world of infotainment and see their role in the political world as entertaining the public with their antics.