Leading article Australia
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25 March 2023
9:00 AM
From preposterously clownish Nazis to battery-powered campaign buses that have to be ditched in favour of diesel alternatives, the political landscape in Australia increasingly appears to resemble a satirical television skit or a stand-up comedy show. Once upon a time, the satirists tended to mock the political class. These days the politicians appear to be more than capable of doing the job themselves.
Let’s start with the New South Wales state election. By the time this magazine is on the news-stands, the results should be known. We would love to see nothing more than the return of a Liberal government, perhaps a minority one, with as added bonuses Matt Kean losing his seat and One Nation and/or LibDem and/or UAP candidates holding the balance of power. We shall see. If Mr Perrottet does win, let us hope he finally stamps his authority on the party and boots out the bedwetters.
Alas, as Judith Sloan points out this week, the reason for voting for the NSW Liberal party is not out of wild enthusiasm for the premiership of the ‘conservative’ Dominic Perrottet, but rather, for the depressing reason that if Labor wins we are looking at wall-to-wall Labor governments across mainland Australia. Which would mean, among much else, a ‘treaty’ between NSW and our ‘first nations’.
What is clear is that the most serious politician during the course of the campaign was former federal Labor leader and now One Nation NSW leader Mark Latham – best known, of course, to readers of this magazine as the regular, longstanding author of the Latham’s Law column.
Despite appalling attempts by the Left to shut him down on the campaign trail, Mr Latham has campaigned convincingly. As he bravely and correctly points out, he will not participate in ‘cancel culture’ and insists on the right to be heard – particularly during a democratic election.
Mr Latham’s twin themes have been on energy and education and, along with other minor parties of the ‘right’, he has been a clear voice warning of the dangers of our current ‘blow-up-all-our-power-plants-and-install-Twiggy’s-fantasy-hydrogen-instead’ energy trajectory. Future generations will shake their heads in disbelief at the damage inflicted by the climate cult on Western societies and rightly praise the very few politicians (and journalists) who were prepared to speak out against this prosperity-crippling madness.
Hilariously, Labor leader Chris Minns found that his electric campaign bus was not up to the task of ferrying his motley crew from one electorate to another across our wide, brown state. Apparently he forgot to plug it in the night before. Could there be a more perfect metaphor for life under a Labor government, or indeed, life under the Libs with Mr Kean a key player?
The alternative view, perhaps, is that Labor in power across the nation is the tough medicine the Australian electorate deserves if we are to ever escape from the woke ideology that now permeates our lives at the academic, political and corporate spheres. According to this theory, when the whole renewables/net zero structure comes crashing down there will be no one to blame other than Labor governments – and it is at that point that the Liberals might finally come to their senses and start to genuinely repudiate this entire fraud.
Let’s hope so. But the woke ideology is not limited to climate and energy, obviously. As Bella d’Abrera writes this week, the national curriculum is now long past being a woke joke and is in fact a dangerous arm of neo-Marxist propaganda thrust like a dagger into the heart and soul of Western societies. Parents and grandparents must forcefully speak out against what our children are having foisted upon them in all areas of learning, with their education now appearing to focus on little other than race, gender, and trashing our proud history.
In the meantime, the Liberals find themselves being tricked into playing the ‘no, we are not Nazis’ game, the latest iteration of the ‘no, we do not beat our wives’ ploy. New Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto has made a complete fool of himself by announcing his desire to expel Liberal MP (and Speccie columnist) Moira Deeming from the party because she inadvertently appeared at the same rally some clownish ‘Nazis’ popped up at, (looking about as threatening as Basil Fawlty goose-stepping through the Fawlty Towers kitchen.) Ms Deeming deserves first and foremost the presumption of innocence. Absent any proof demonstrating links to or sympathies with any neo-Nazi movement or organisation, libelling her and throwing her under the metaphorical bus at the behest of the most outrageously authoritarian leader in Australian history, Labor’s Daniel Andrews, is an abomination.
Alone among our political leaders, federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton deserves full marks for standing firm and and angrily calling out Prime Minister Albanese and the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus for peddling this same ‘defender of Nazis’ garbage. Well done. Alas, politics in this nation has sunk to abysmal depths. Little wonder the comedians cannot compete.
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