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Home  Media2009 |
 
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| Conservative shift likely to spook the electorate, The Australian, 9 December 2009 |
| by David Hetherington, Executive Director, Per Capita | |
The battlelines are drawn. With the appointment of his shadow cabinet, Tony Abbott has lived up to the credentials presented in his recent manifesto.
He has given shape not only to the dimensions of his battle with Labor but to plans to realign his own party. In come conservative stalwarts Philip Ruddock, Bronwyn Bishop and Kevin Andrews. Out go noted moderates Steve Ciobo and the two Michaels, Keenan and Ronaldson.
Malcolm Turnbull, meanwhile, roars from the back bench at the injustice of his rejection. Yet his meaningful split was not with Liberal colleagues. The more significant departure came years ago when he turned down Paul Keating's offer of a Labor Senate seat.
For Turnbull is at heart a progressive who found himself on the wrong side of the seminal fault line in Australian politics: not Right vs Left, not business vs union, but progressive vs conservative.
The roots of each word speak for themselves. Progressives believe in progress: that change is inevitable, is healthy and can be positively influenced by social and political action. Conservatives' principal aim is to conserve; they hold that the social and economic status quo should be maintained.
The political implications of this fault line are profound. Among the parties, we find Labor, the Greens and the Democrats on the progressive side and the Nationals and Family First on the conservative side. However, the fault line runs directly under the Liberal Party, cleaving it into two implacably opposed camps.
Turnbull constructed his climate change stance within the broader argument of the need for the Liberals to embrace change. Joe Hockey is of a similar hue. Before the leadership vote, he noted: "I say to the Australian people, we are a progressive party."
Not so, decided the party room, by the slimmest of margins. Lined up against Turnbull was a band of staunch conservatives with no wish to see their party embrace the progressive logic. The conservative world view is clear: Cory Bernardi declared in a recent interview on ABC television's Lateline that the Liberals are a small-government, low-tax, pro-family and free enterprise party. This group does not believe in the capacity of government to address climate change, or much else.
This is the source of the Liberals' present malaise and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Although climate change has been the immediate catalyst, the tensions have been building for some time. For years, the asylum-seeker debate has set moderates such as Petro Georgiou against hardliners such as Ruddock. The rollback of Work Choices created similar schisms.
The remarkable thing is that John Howard was able to control these tensions for so long. Its defenders will make soothing noises about the party being a broad church, but electoral success
makes it much easier to gloss over divisions about values. Howard's political skills helped, too. He maintained small-government rhetoric while building the biggest government in Australian history. He derided welfare dependency while providing huge sums to middle-class families.
But the electoral success and Howard's political mastery are long gone. So the Liberals must face these tensions. For now, one side has prevailed. Yet Abbott's conservative front bench will struggle to resonate with Australians, a pragmatic lot who recognise change must be accommodated. While Australians don't believe government should fix everything, they accept it has its place. Above all, they reject ideological dogma from either end of the political spectrum. If the Liberals stick firmly to the conservative path, it will be a long time before they are again an electable mainstream proposition.
Meanwhile, Turnbull's roar gradually fades. Perhaps he will not refuse the next Labor job offer that comes his way.
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