I doubt that Abbott defines a new conservatism. Rather at most one aspect of the fracturing of the traditional big parties as they fail to deliver on meeting the needs of a whole lot of disparate groupings.

From what I can see it's happening in one way or another to the national variants of the big two across the western world.

Abbott and his version of conservatism appeals to some but repulses others who might in some ways call themselves conservatives.

R0bert

You have how many trillion your super fund??

It is just amazing how old socialists like Peter Bowden can ignore the fact that socialism failed everywhere it was tried, and that they can still blather on about reinstituting a demonstrably failed system. It is as if the Berlin Wall and Gorbachov had never existed, and socialism had never been thrown "on the scrapheap of history", to quote President Reagan.

I can only conclude that there are people in this world who are dream of how wonderful the world was under the Politburo, when the scummy Deplorables did what they were told. Or else. They love totalitarianism and they despise democracy. They hate free speech and think that the government should regulate what people say, write, or draw. No politically incorrect jokes or it's "re-education" for you. They want a command economy where prosperity can be whistled up by decree. They seem to think that they are a class apart, the "intelligent ones", who are the only ones who can se clearly how everything must be done. Strangely, their "solutions" to modern problems consist of repeating the mistakes of the past. Just one more five year plan, comrades. this time it will work for sure.

To Peter. Human induced global warming is a crock. All it has done is increase consumer power bills to the extent that manufacturing business's are continuing to fleeing Australia, and no sane elector could ever vote for Labor, unless they want a see themselves in a situation like South Australia. That importing 200,000 to 300,000 people into Australia every year will create extreme shortages of accommodation is something even a socialist should be able to understand. With a bit of coaching the should be able to understand it, anyway.

The Human Rights Commission is out of control and it now performs political censorship worthy of the KGB. Perhaps you dream of state censorship of free speech, but intelligent people do not. You are losing the youth, and losing the real intelligentsia.

The times, they are, a changin', Peter. You have now become the very totalitarian you once angrily denounced in your youth

Housing is scarce and unaffordable because building of state housing has been neglected for so long that many people have forgotten what it is.

Abbott is not your regular politician, As Keating warned twenty years ago. Abbott is a monk reject. And has no credability at all. His final performance was to run an election on lies, which he won .. But the man was proved to be a fraud by populararity. So no mater what he says it can not be, taken as truth. He is a proven liar by populous.
To even suggest he can define anything is probably a lie.

To Emperor Julian.

When I was 9 years old, my mother, who was a single working mother, rented a room from pensioners because it was all we could afford. I slept in the same single bed with my mother. She was assessed by the Housing Commission inspector as being "most in need." But we waited 6 years to get a Housing Commission flat in a block of 84 units. Our total furniture was, 1 black and white TV, a folding card table, and an ironing board. We slept on the concrete floor rolled up in blankets and thought we were in heaven.

When we moved in, the people next door were an elderly, cashed up British couple who had recently immigrated to Australia (and went straight onto the old age pension). They had waited only two years. I will never forget what my mother said to me after she met them. "The bloody government thinks more about migrants than they do their own people."

And that is the charge I level at you and Peter Bowden.

Peter thinks it is just wonderful that 40,000 largely useless and unassimilable "refugees" arrived during Rudd The Duds tenure, and tens of thousands have flooded in ever since. He is more interested inn pleasing Jesus Christ with his compassion and therefore getting his ticket punched for heaven, than he does about helping poor working Australians, who are poor through circumstance.

My old block of flats where I once lived is now chock a block full of foreigners and it has become a dangerous place. The Aussies who can flee have fled. What is the sense in Australian taxpayers spending horrendous amounts of money on public housing, only to fill them up with foreigners who have not contributed a penny for the common good? And, who seem hostile to Australians, and simply create more social problems that the taxpayer needs to fix? Perhaps you and Peter envision a prison led economic recovery, with ever more jobs for social welfare employees, police, prison guards, judges, and anti terrorism SWAT teams?