Graham,

There is a fault in the system--the text of the article does not appear when it is selected.

Firstly we need to praise Tony Abbott. He exposed the hollowness of Kevin Rudd's leadership and kept Julia Gillard honest by forcing her into a minority government.
He was the opposer we needed, but he is not the leader we now need.
Enter Malcolm Turnbull MarkII.
Admittedly he made a bit of a mess during his first shot, but I suggest he will have learned and be the better for the experience. And on the core issues facing Australia, I think he would show leadership as well as reinstating a certain stature to the nation's top job.
On global warming and the carbon tax, he has argued sensibly for a degree of "risk management". The jury is still out on causes, but surely no one can deny that ecological changes are afoot in the world today.
On refugees, I would hope for an end to the wishful thinking that we can deal with them by hiding our head in the jungles of Malaysia or the sands of Nauru. Or the sands of Christmas Island for that matter.
I would expect to see the worst excesses of the NBN challenged and some form of mining tax or resource rent scheme kept in place.
Turnbull might be a wealthy man, but he does not appear to be dipped in greed like so many in the upper corporate percentile.

There are no "right wingers" or "conservatives" in Australian politics and no Australian politician can be seen to act according to an underlying ideology, ideology is an impediment to people who need to be able to about face on a seconds notice.
What would a conservative conserve anyway?

A conservative would ensure the rich get richer and the rest just tag along.

THanks OzBib. I got some emails on it and have fixed the problem. It was to do with the formatting of the article and how that interacted with the algorithms that drive the site. Generally the article can be read if you click on the "All" button, even when the formatting is the problem.

Apologies to Will for accidentally delaying his article.

Wow...so, what the author is saying is that more and more young people don't think, but instead vote with their naive understanding of how to fix issues.

So really this article is about a failure of society to eductate their children.

maybe it shows that young people have a mind of their own and don't have to be brainwashed.

Perhaps the other thing 579. It may be showing that all the attempts to brain wash the kids in the lefty/feminists education system are not being any more successful than their feeble attempts to educate the same kids.

However I do find it hard to reconcile Will's theory behind the article with the current polls.

Perhaps Will should consider the writings of Joséphin Péladan.

“Society,” Péladan wrote, “is an anonymous enterprise for living a life of second-hand emotions”.

One point Péladan made that remains valid today is that spending time among a crowd of people whose minds and conversation are utterly conditioned by popular culture is not noticeably different from getting your popular culture firsthand. If anything, it’s even more of an issue these days than it was in his; I suspect most of us have had the experience of hearing a conversation between two politicians in which every single word spoken was a sound bite from some media source or other. There’s no need to become a hermit, but it’s a good idea to choose your politicians with some care.

“’Fear the example of another, think for yourself,’” wrote Péladan

Our current political leaders evoke Péladans’ thoughts and words, much to our political embarrassment.

don't have to be brainwashed.
579,
So, we should look forward to more coalition supporters then. First positive thing I read in a long time. Thanks.

"A key strategic blunder of conservatives over the past five-to-ten years has been their lack of recognition that younger people are more and more making their voting decisions based on issues rather than ideology."

It is ironical that 'younger people' have voted for socalled action on climate change based on ideology, not science. There is no scientific evidence that human-caused greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming

What about the "Tea Party Movement"? Hmmmm.

What we are seeing is the last gasp of the destructive left/liberal/feminist/green ability to mobilise a grass roots.

Instead leftie/feminist zealots have taken power in or schools, divorce courts, nanny state, governments etc. Like the ALP, they no longer have a grass roots - and they don't need it... they have POWER.

And they use their power just as any powerful group does... to 'silence dissent'. The self-proclaimed 'radicals' are now in power and, lo and behold, they are now use 'conservative' techniques of oppression.

And on the other hand, there is a growing but unfunded and disorganised grass roots movements:-
- Fathers and Families Movement (mis-named as 'men's rights')
- A growing popular media especially seen on talkback radio (mis-named as 'right-wing').
- An embryonic anti-green grass roots.
- A vigourous anti-big government "Tea Party Movement"
- a reaction to the discrimination inherent in the 'war against boys' in schools
- Truth campaigners in the anti-migration, anti-multicultural field.
- truth as opposed to propaganda, age of enlightenmnet values as opposed to PC lies.
- a resurgent evangelical christian movement.

The extent of the power of the lefties/feminists is that the institutions that 'should' guard against discrimination and lies, are in fact the worst offenders of oppression and propaganda. The anti-discrimination bodies are the worst offenders... supporting overt oppressive discrimination against the unfashionable oppressed, and pushing additional priviliges on their favoured groups and beliefs (women, illegal migrants, aboriginies, womens industries, geeen fascism)

These are 'conservative' movements. and they share several things in common.

... continued...

... continued...

These are 'conservative' movements. and they share several things in common.
1: they have no government funding (the powerfull left-wing are far more vigourous than previous generations in making sire that the new movements never get the sort of funding that allowed feminism to move from the writings of a few authors into a legally enforced dogma.

2: Pro-family, Pro-child, Pro-truth. The lefties/feminists/greenies have embraced postmodern philosophy to such an extent that they don't believe there is 'truth' and that fabricating and disseminating lies is nothing to be ashamed of.

3: They are small and so-far disorganised. They don't have media, funding, organisation and so they are forced to rely on grass roots radicalism and consciousness raising. The conservatives are forced to use 'radical' techniques.

Like the Fatherhood and families supporters known as "Fathers4Justice" who dressed in superman suits and climbed buildings, bridges and Buckingham Palace, to get some media. Just like the bra-burners in the 1960's - these are the vanguard of those hell-bent on making our society fairer better and safer for children.

They are our only hope for the future.

>>“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.>>

Attributed to G.K. Chesterton.

Sums it up very nicely.

Cynical old buggers, both you & G.K. Chesterton, Stevan.

The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected

Bob Katter's mob might just fit into this gap. I just don't know enough about the people in his party. Are they fairly switched on ? Seeing that they're not Labor or Liberal being switched on is really the only other option. If they were sillier they wouldn't be able to get the Party off the ground.

As far as I am concerned, there is and always has been only one way to ensure a fair way to restore the economy to an intelligent and successful position, and that is to first get a treasurer who is not so blocked in the brain that he ignores good advice and decency and all the members of the parties obey and honour their constitution. The second requisite is that a top personal tax of approximately 70% is applied along with an approximately $30,000 income with zero tax. I realise that when a political party is first formed, they organise a constitution to plan for a successful accomplishment of their project. As you can see, your party does not demand that members sign any agreement with referral to honouring any party constitution, and I see no effort being made by the party as a whole of doing anything to improve the conditions for the wage earners as should be a main part of the constitution of this party, and this is why you are not getting the expected support. Further contempt is due to the “upper class” of the Labor party, because of the choice of the particular group chosen for any tribunal and then giving them a clear choice of presenting the government with excessive unjustified increases which you will claim “you had nothing to do with”. With the destruction impacted on the economy, over the last forty years, I find very hard to find any excuse to do other then to condemn all parties for allowing high salaries and perks to destroy. I blame Wayne Swan for our main problems at this time and the liberal party treasurer when they have been in power.

The average price of homes in Australia today is $435,000 (seven times the annual workers wage of $65,000) and yet in 1977 the average price was $31,000 (twice the average annual workers wage of $15,000). They were relatively cheaper in the 1950-1970 era. The top tax now is 45%, in 1977 it was approximately 60% and in 1950-1970 it was 66.6%. A low top tax is actually detrimental to the economy particularly for our wage earners, when the tax is low, CEO’s and others increase their salaries, causing higher prices and with the Governments increasing the salaries of their heads of the various departments, the cost of services increase along with the costs of food, clothing, housing and transport. And now we have a government who wants their salaries more than doubled because of the recent high salaries given to their department heads. I don’t want any of our un-principled politicians they want to increase their undeserved salaries still further. If the tax is increased to either 65% or 70%, and zero tax to $35,000 or $30,000, the drive for higher salaries will be stopped and our real workers could live properly. Our economy and conditions will return to better than it was in the 1950-70 period, when it was the best it ever has been. Our nurses, police, firemen and the airline workers would not need to go on strike, if they did, it is just means that others will increase their salaries and start the creep back up the spiral.

The difficulty facing the coalition is that, taking office with Tony at the helm presents several major obstacles before they can go forward with positive policy.Whilst negativity has worked for Abbott in opposition, somebody has to be prepared to moderate the 'blood oath' pledges including destroying the NBN, Rolling back the carbon pricing scheme, rescinding the mining profits surcharge and then reintroducing the hopeless 'Nauru solution' coupled with the 'turn back the boats' on the high seas commitment; not to mention the bizarre parental leave pledge and its 'great big new tax' on major employers. That's an awful lot of baggage to dump and only a change in leadership could do it and maintain some credibility.

The abbott grave is getting deeper, he has now gone and criticized China So much negativity, without any thing positive. Turning back sinking boats, that is a no brainer thing to say. That goes against every law, plus some that have not been written yet.