The delcon’s conundrum, which is the lesser of two evils?

 

 

 

Well, the starting gun has been fired and we are just over a fortnight into the election campaign.

Bill Shorten and his ALP crew have reinforced all my concerns about their potential election. They don’t know the detail of their policies, take them off their website and in every press conference, Mr Shorten and his cohorts seem to think that dodging answers to direct questions is some form of a sport to be good at. I suppose it couldn’t be any worse than Bill Shortens embarrassing attempts at running.

All we have seen from Labor is more spending, more taxes, more super payments forced onto employers and the predictable punch lines about the “top end of town” despite many of Labor’s front bench hypocritically walking in those circles themselves. For instance just before this campaign Shorten has enjoyed dinners with Anthony Pratt and Lindsay Fox for heaven’s sake, that is hardly slumming it with Joe Public.

It also doesn’t inspire you when you look at Labor’s front bench and potentially the country’s next cabinet which will be made up of very much the same people who failed so dismally their last time in government under Rudd/Gillard/Rudd. Their list of failures is long and the cost was extreme. The introducing a mining tax that didn’t raise any dollars, implementation of the disastrous pink batts scheme which costs lives, the NBN rollout which was unrealistic, totally overpriced and is now being outdated while in many instances not delivering the speeds that were promised. The disastrous idea to open our borders that led to the people smuggling trade and a thousand plus deaths at sea with thousands more ending up in detention camps and even more into our immigration system placing an unfair burden on Australian society and in particular the Australian taxpayer.

Let’s also not forget about the building the education revolution. How many kids missed out of laptops? how many fatcats in Labor filled bureaucracies lined their pockets while failing to deliver better results for our students? Then there was the introduction of 18C to begin the process to restrict free speech and the continued failure to reign in spending and to deliver budget surpluses, despite Rudd declaring himself a fiscal conservative in the 2007 election campaign. What about cash for clunkers and the $900.00 cheques delivered to every Australian including dead ones. The list goes on. This crew parading around for six years trying to portray themselves as a competent government while sending our spending spiralling into debt from which we are just starting to recover. Despite this, the Australian electorate, if polls are to be believed, could be about to give them control of government spending once more.

Insanity!

I would raise leadership turmoil but both major parties have been insane enough to dabble in those dark arts., which brings us to the Liberals. Only twice in my adult life have I not voted Liberal. Since I was eligible to vote I have always been drawn to the centre-right of politics, which is unusual as for most people you usually transfer across once you realise how foolish you were in your youth to support Labor.

I could never bring myself to vote for Andrew Peacock in the eighties, he just was too much of the stereotypical private school boy for me and in 2016 no self-respecting conservative could ever vote for a party led by that smug narcissist  Turnbull. There are plenty of conservatives just like me who just couldn’t believe the Liberal party would so wantonly followed the ALP’s madness of changing leaders and through that period between 2015 to 2018 if you held that opinion you secured the label “delcon” (delusional conservative). The definition of delusional in the Oxford dictionary is –

“Characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.”

Now that is a fairly harsh analysis and one which I think that with the passing of time has proved to be significantly incorrect. In fact, I would say that label should now instead morph into “VisCon” for visionary conservative, as all of us DelCons could all see the train wreck that was coming when Turnbull by bequest was gifted the LNP leadership and along with it his coveted job as Prime Minister of the country. Who was to know that having relieved the nation from the madness of Krudd just a few short years later we would have delivered to us somebody who would prove to be even worse?

Through the prism of this leadership change,  we would see the invasion of the moderates into the once great Liberal party. Moderate was code for centre-left and Turnbull had convinced these wonders of nature that cosying up to the ALP by mirroring much of their policy platform in a diluted fashion would deliver the LNP a swath of votes form the centre of the political spectrum. What these moderates conveniently seemed to forget was that Tony Abbott, a conservative leader, had delivered a smashing majority in the house of representatives by advocating for the exact opposite of ALP policy in 2013 with a conservative platform. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

So throughout his tenure as PM, Turnbull took the Liberals away from what was its traditional position in the electoral landscape and delivered Same-Sex marriage,  embraced the Paris accord just as the USA were removing themselves from it and in the process committed Australia to wasting billions in a futile mission to invest in anything but coal or fossil fuels for energy generation. The LNP failed both under Abbott and Turnbull to remove 18C from the discrimination act, while we increased spending in Education under Gonski 2.0 without seeing educational results improve. Under a federal LNP government, safe-schools was introduced and we have seen the emergence of gender fluidity into society. Our defence forces under former chief David Morrison’s become gender politically correct, so much so that last year our defence force personnel were even painting their fingernails pink. You could just sense the Chinese military were shaking in their boots. This all occurred with LNP defence ministers, which would have been unthinkable back in 2013.

Turnbull was moving the LNP towards the left-leaning parties convinced the new centre of politics was, in fact, centre-left. In Turnbull’s flawed political mind there were millions of potential voters for the taking in this fertile field of an unexplored electoral wasteland. Of course, Malcolm, the legend in his own mind, could never be wrong but how did he lead so many of his colleagues over that cliff?

In doing so delcon’s like me resisted in going with them. We can argue, as many in the media do, about what numbers those delcon’s represent, but that is a futile debate. For a healthy democracy, you need political parties and politicians that represent ideals across the political spectrum so that the nations voting public have a genuine choice at the polling booth and that in my opinion is the behind the scene issue of this election, especially if you are a conservative.

At the moment our country’s voting public has a choice between two parties who can genuinely form a government that is genuine centre-left if not completely left in the ALP or moving towards the centre if not even in some aspects towards the left with the LNP.

In many aspects, the centre-right political fields have been deserted by the LNP and mostly due to a lack of political will for fear of being labelled. Don’t take a stand against cutting immigration or you will be labelled racist, don’t take a stand against safe-schools or gender madness or you will be called a bigot, don’t dare claim Global warming is a hoax or be framed as a science denier. Our best leaders stood up for principles and fought for them in public discourse and debate, now, at least on the conservative side, instead of standing their ground on principles they run away from them for fear of upsetting focus groups and impacting polls. The only conservative value the LNP seem to be prepared to fight for is economic management and only then to a certain extent.

As an example since being elected in 2013, government debt as a percentage of GDP has grown from 30.7% to 40.9%, that debt has risen from $259 Billion when the Abbott government was elected to what is currently today at over $550 billion or half a trillion dollars. While the current budget prediction of surpluses is welcome there is much work to do and the LNP cannot claim that they haven’t contributed to the countries ballooning government debt. Why? because they don’t want to cut in areas they know they should for fear of backlash from affected groups and the opposition.

As a conservative I believe in far more than economic management, a good economy is a means to an end. Conservatives and even moderate liberals should believe in the power of the individual and one of the most important aspects of the individual is the right to free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association. The ALP introduced 18C but after six years of LNP government, it is still there. How is that when so many within LNP ranks champion free speech,  not only has 18C not been repealed but after the Christchurch massacre Scott Morrison put through more restrictions on speech through social media.

A value of being conservative is a belief that taxes should be kept as low as possible so individuals can spend and save as much of the revenue they earn and generate as possible. The LNP for some time attempted to make the argument that company tax cuts were vital for the ongoing strength of the economy and the creation of jobs. They enjoyed the support of economists and corporate Australia on this argument, what happened when the argument for these cuts become too tough in a hostile Senate, this vitally important tax reform wasn’t so important any more and was duly binned.

Finally, as conservatives, we should stand by the values, traditions and culture that built this country, yet during the time of this LNP government we have seen the introduction of same-sex marriage, safe schools, gender fluidity & identity being introduced into our schools and the empowerment of some of the worst elements of the LGBTI community. For heavens sakes, just over the past few weeks, they have flexed their muscles against Israel Folau and of all people Barry Humphries who made cross-dressing iconic on the Australian Landscape.

Talking about values look at the reaction of so much of this country and the world’s political elite to this week’s ISIS terrorist attacks compared to the manic reaction to the attack in Christchurch. They have either deserted Christianity or are too fearful to mention it let alone defend it. The “Easter Worshipers” tag given to Christian victims was absurd and reveals much about Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton and any other world elite who used it. What would our ANZAC diggers, who were predominately Christians have thought of so many of our political leader fawning to the Muslim community while at the same time being too embarrassed to reference the Christian community in any of their public statements?

While doubts have been raised by certain conservative mp’s within the LNP ranks, where is the greater party’s fight for our society’s values? For traditional Liberal values?

How ironic is that politicians from all sides yesterday attended ANZAC ceremonies remembering the courage of our finest, yet display cowardice in dealing with our nations most pressing problems. What must those fallen servicemen and women think who sacrificed their lives for this country of these politicians who don’t have the spine to make a hard decision for fear of sacrificing their seats of the government benches?

So as a conservative, who is the party that I should consider supporting in this upcoming election? Which party best represents my values that can form a government? The answer is that there is none and there is the conflict for a conservative like me. While I desperately hope that we aren’t delivered a Bill Shorten ALP government for the sake of the nation and future generations, the fact is if the LNP can be returned what genuine conservative platform is it that they are campaigning on? If Scott Morrison is successful he is guaranteed a full term as Prime Minister due to the new Liberal party rules.

A labor-lite LNP government is better than a full on Labor/Greens one, but it is still labor-light. My only hope is as many conservatives within the LNP survive this election as possible and minor conservative parties hold some balance of power in the Senate. If Morrison is successful we may not see a genuine conservative government for over a decade, can we afford that?

Recently the IPA released a document listing fifteen policies that the LNP coalition should adopt but won’t and five policies that they shouldn’t introduce but will. (CLICK HERE to see the list). This is a document if adopted and fought for would ensure not only an election victory but the building of our nation and the embedding of TRUE liberal values into our society. This is clearly outlined in this document and is so badly needed not just for present but future generations.

Going through the policy platforms of all the centre-right parties the only party that comes close to these IPA policies is Corey Bernadi’s Australian Conservatives. What chance have they of securing enough Senate seats to hold the balance of power after the next election? I don’t know but at the moment unless something remarkable happens they will have my vote as they are the closest not only to my values but a party that represents a stable mindset and set of hands in parliament. Therein lies the conundrum for conservatives as realistically minor conservative parties won’t win a lower house seat but their preferences could help the LNP win vital seats, but also voting for minor parties could hand them to the ALP. So for me, I am waiting until I see the candidates who are standing in my electorate, reluctantly I probably will have to vote for the Liberal candidate in my electorate, but I will be voting for the most conservative candidate who represents my values I can find for the Senate.

In the hope of denying the country what I consider to be a dangerous ALP government, I will have to opt for the lesser of two evils. After that, I am determined to expose fake liberals and do what I can to assist any true conservative force to emerge in time for 2022 and beyond. You can join me in that effort by supporting our online paper by clicking on the subscribe or contribute buttons below.