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The Forum > Article Comments > Goodbye Menzies > Comments

Goodbye Menzies : Comments

By Everald Compton, published 2/9/2016

The great political party, The Liberals, formed by Robert Menzies seven decades ago, is in its death throes. It has been assassinated by right wing zealots.

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The last thing the country needs is another leader or political party.

Political parties have now lead us into high levels of government and household debt, overpopulation, unemployment and underemployment, insecure jobs, falling wages, increased consumption, depletion of natural resources, unsustainability, multiculturalism, americanization, fracturing of families, failing education and health systems, and a sell off of publicly owned assets.

Time for processes of direct democracy, rather than leaders of more political parties
Posted by interactive, Friday, 2 September 2016 8:10:04 AM
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"What would Menzies do to fix all this if he was still around?

Without the slightest shadow of a doubt he would form a party that had as its basis a union of the right wing of the ALP with the left wing of the Liberals. Then, he would add to it an educated group of Young Turks (more females than males) with open minds and no ideology who signed up as nation builders, financially and socially."

With respect,this is nonsense.
Menzies set a high priority on the following matters:-
1.Fiscal discipline.
2.Rule of law.
3.Carefully consideration of public policy and immunity to ideas of the moment.
To imply as you do that these are matters of right wing zealotry is just nonsense.
In fact, Everard,Menzies was very cautious about dealing with people like you-who are rent seekers from the Government
Posted by sabena, Friday, 2 September 2016 9:37:51 AM
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Well argued Everald; and you had me and my goosebumps until you revealed your fundamentally flawed judgement of (economic illiterate) John Howard! Who simply wouldn't allow the zealots to use him like a figurehead puppet, with more positions than the kuma sutra?

But would likely force a spill or another election to put the troglytes back in their box?

It's sad commentary, but it may be argued that today's fiscally conservative Labor is further to the right than Mr Menzies liberal wets. None of whom ever annuciated a desire to sell off publicly owned income earning infrastructure? That generations of ordinary australians sacrificed and slaved to create! But rather allowed a private enterprise model that competed where appropriate?

Thus we had TAA and its private enterprise competition Ansett! If Menzies had a flaw, it likely would have been his subservient forelock tugging to Her Majesty?

I agree with most of your observations and intend to vote for contemporary independants not given to jumping, when the puppet master pulls the strings!

Other than that, always putting the incumbent last, but particularly visionless party hacks seems like an erstwhile strategy all the disillusioned could emulate as opposed to a donkey or invalid informal vote? Which in effect is a vote for the incumbent and oh so clever!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 2 September 2016 10:54:07 AM
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I agree with Sabena that the article is nonsense, although I can cite different reasons. To conclude that Turnbull has been captured by the right wing of the Liberal party, for example, is in straight defiance of what is known of the man. He is most certainly not a dry or a free trader (Abbott might have been that) and has made approving noises about gay marriage.

But most ridiculous of all, Compton still has not grasped the basic point that many voters have a view of immigration that is completely different from that of the bulk of the media-political elite. That and the decline in real incomes explains much of the rise of both Hanson and Trump (although Hanson makes considerably more sense than Trump).

To explain those changes as the result of maneuverings by political parties or personalities is to entirely miss the point.
Posted by curmudgeonathome, Friday, 2 September 2016 10:56:35 AM
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Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease, or is it just selective memory here Everald & interactive.

In Menzies day, you had better have some money if you got sick.

No free doctor health care no free hospitals [except in Qld, where it was paid for by a lottery, not government]

You had to pay full price for medication.

You had to win a bursary to get past year 10 at school, let alone to university.

People on low wages actually paid net tax, rather than be given much more in handouts than they paid in tax.

Unemployment benefits & age pensions were just about enough for food, if you lived in a tent, or under a bridge.

People hitchhiked everywhere, as they could not afford the train fare.

If Menzies came back he would be horrified at the way socialism has taken over everywhere, & the handout mentality it has developed. In all the practical things that matter he was way right of Abbott, & he would have considered Rudd/Gillard/Shorten/Turnbull deep pink or full communists.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 2 September 2016 11:14:59 AM
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Unlike the term left wing - which invariably refers to an ideology of advancing the powers of big government - "right wing" is an intellectually incoherent concept.

This is because it is used to refer to at least four fundamentally inconsistent ideologies:
1. national socialism aka fascism, with their creed of unlimited government power, their denial of the primacy of individual liberty, and their economic policy for government to control any and every aspect of production, supply, demand, prices, interest, money, credit, wages, education, infrastructure, tariffs, subsidies, motherhood, you name it;
2. "conservatives" a la Edmund Burke. This category includes modern American neo-cons. Among other distinguishing features, they fought the fascists. In America they embrace perpetual war and thoroughgoing government control of anything and everything; through the war on drugs, they have sponsored the modern American police state, overflowing jails, and the militarisation of police, and creed of unlimited government power.
3. classical liberals i.e. small government libertarians a la Locke, who believe that government legitimacy is strictly limited to protecting person and property from aggression.
4. voluntarists aka anarcho-capitalists: libertarians who deny the ethical and economic legitimacy of the State itself.

In fact most of the time, the term right wing is used to refer to authoritarian and collectivist ideologies, with national-socialist economic policies of open-ended government control of anything and everything, and drenched in socialist beliefs in central planning, for example, the modern day Liberal/Nationals in Australia, Conservatives or Tories in England, and Republicans in America.

The term right wing wrongly assumes that these parties are somehow *opposites* of left wing parties. But it should be obvious that, as against libertarians, they share virtually everything in common with the parties of the left wing.

Therefore anyone, such as Everald Compton, who uses the term "right wing" without defining what they mean by it, is only displaying their ignorant confusion.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Friday, 2 September 2016 11:19:38 AM
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