It doesn't seem as thought the continued existence of the Liberal Party has any purpose, meaning or use.

david f,
Just as little as paying Academics for what ?

"It completely misread the mood of the electorate." This was clear every day from reading letters to and online comments at The Australian. The Coalition ignored the clear views of its core supporters in the false hope of attracting those who would never vote Coalition. And they are still doing it!

Dear Indyvidual,

Academics teach, do research, add to knowledge, inspire people and are useful citizens. You might learn something from them. My older son is a professor at William & Mary in the US. I am proud of him.

It is absurd to call the Liberal Party 'conservative'.

Moved to the right! What absolute rubbish! Over its past three terms it has been chasing Labor to the left.

This ridiculous party died when John Howard lost the plot and his seat. Conservatives have been disenfranchised for a decade.

How sad is this bloke!

Dan.

The "Liberal" party need to kick out the (hard right neo-Nazis) conservatives who've swelled their ranks in recent years.

The moderates need to understand that the "conservatives" are the stinking albatross hanging around their collective necks and sort as always to surf on their coattails to power!

And the public have finally woken and are not having any! Hence the rise of the teals and probably feature as far forward as the eye can see! Only, even more so!
Alan B.

Bring back the policies of the Hitler sycophant 'Pig Iron' Bob Menzies, with his racism through the "White Australia" policy, persecution of Aboriginal people, exploration of working men and women, Menzies favoured 10% unemployment, underpaid women in the workforce, a "Body Hire" policy with the removal of all worker benefits other than a mega pay ration. Menzies believed no worker should ever own a house, or heaven forbid, a car! The bloke was a coward, in favour of Australia's involvement in WWI, but failed to enlist himself, as an politician during WWII, Menzies was willing to allow the Japanese to invade Australia with his infamous 'Brisbane Line'.

Quoting Menzies;

"[The} abandonment by the Germans of individual liberty and of the easy and pleasant things of life has something rather magnificent about it … they have erected the state, with Hitler as its head, into a sort of religion which produces spiritual exaltation that one cannot but admire."

ttbn, he, he, snigger, snigger. As the conservatives moved further and further to the right, so did labor.

The worker's party is little more than a memory with the ranks now filled by (labor in name only) professional politicians who give lip service only to the once visionary labor party of Chiefly and Curtain

Labor is now filled the gap that was formerly filled by Menzies moderate small L liberals, fiscally conservative and socially progressive moderates!

And a totally different animal from the hard right folk like yourself and who see anyone left of your extreme right-wing position as bleeding heart lefties!

Hang on to the self-delusion, illusion and attitude and watch as more and more so-called "liberals" are replaced in our parliaments by even more and more teals!

Keep on making stupidity a virtue and watch as my predictions become your future reality! "Genius"!
Alan B.

The Liberals lost a large number of votes to the Teal Greens despite trying to chase those votes down the climate change rabbit-hole. But the fact is the Libs could never compete with the Teals because, despite Frydenberg's wanton largess, they needed to remain marginally fiscally responsible.

The Teals had and have no such problems. That will remain a winning formula for the Teals until the electorate discovers the cost of climate change fanaticism. The Liberals need to get themselves prepared for that time which will come sooner than many think.

Returning to Menzies style liberalism is neither possible nor advisable. That time is past. That is not the period the Liberals should be targeting. Instead, it needs to look to the early Howard period before that government, in fear of voter tsunami around climate change, tried to buy their way out of the problem.

When the Asian financial crisis hit, the Howard-Costello partnership saw the country emerge relatively unscathed and indeed, strengthened. The coming financial crises will make that 1998 period seem like a blimp. A fiscally responsible Liberal Party ought to be positioning itself to await the return of voters seeking a safe harbour in those coming trying times.

But alas, such a party needs to take a long view of the economic welfare of the nation while today's politician (of all hues) looks to the personal here and now rather than the national long term interest.

It's rare that I praise a post by Paul. But his most recent one here is indeed a gem.

In it he has managed to list pretty much every Labor myth about Menzies every contrived. They are all, each and every one, utterly false as I've demonstrated to Paul in the pages over the years. But being utterly wrong is Paul's default starting position.

Myth making is one of the few tasks the left is good at. And they love their myths, the less factual the better.

Liberal Party members and supporters are now old and the numbers are dropping fast. Those supporters come from a previous generation. The issues that attracted them to the Liberal Party have gone, and new issues have emerged, to which they are not adapting. The old are important, but they are not a viable political majority. Anyway, baby boomers (whose votes kept the Liberal Party strong) are now dying, and millennials already outnumber those baby boomers.

This is the irrelevance of the conservative force and the reason The Liberal Party lost the last Federal Election and the next State Election..A LACK OF RESPECT

Accepting always that societies, political parties, and circumstances change (it’s a dynamic process) Baume’s point that the Liberal Party has lost the vital middle ground is far from being merely moot. There was no way I could have voted for the party or its then sitting prime minister in May 2022. Nothing has happened since the election that would encourage me to consider doing so next time. It’s not a return to white picket fence heaven that would draw me (and so many others) back, but a recommitment to moral and ethically based politics and administration. My judgment is that Dutton and his tin drum brigade are incapable of making that leap.

david f,
I think you're confusing Academics with professionals ! Professionals are competent people who used their exposure to Academia to educate themselves into valuable careers. Academics do of course have a place in society but the majority are not quite as valuable as you like to believe ! The average tradesman contributes more to society than the average Academic !

When we return to Menzieism will we all have to wear snappy black uniforms and goose-step around in torch light processions? Just asking. After all Menzies was a NAZI sympathiser, as was the King of England. Menzies loved the royals. When Australia changed to decimal currency in 1966, Menzies wanted to call the dollar...."Royals"... what can we say.

Indyvidual wrote;

"I think you're confusing Academics with professionals !"

Dear Indyvidual,

I think you're confused. My son is an academic and a professional. Besides teaching as an academic he is also an agronomist. He has advised Brazilian farmers on the best way to grow soy beans. Being that he knows both Portuguese and Kayapo, the language of the tribe, he acted as negotiator between the Brazilian government and the tribes people. The tribes people supplied forest products and the government supplied guns, blankets and other items. Some academics become academics because they have a solid base of knowledge and wish to pass it on. It might be good if you should learn a little about academics. He is professor of anthropology. Anthropologists study different cultures and can help people from different backgrounds to communicate. You sound as though you are prejudiced against academics, and the prejudice comes from ignorance. However, I'm sure you can learn if you want to make the effort.

Dear Indyvidual,

I bought in to your distinction between academics and professionals. Actually, academics are professionals. If an academic does nothing but teach, he or she is a professional. To be a teacher is a skill.

You wrote, "Just as little as paying Academics for what ?"

Why do you feel hostile to academics?

As someone who should have been a rusted on Liberal, one thinks there is a simple explanation related to US libertarians, nativists, Christians and Murdoch led media, i.e. the Libs or LNP becoming GOP lite.

Howard's rise (after years of frustration), and maintaining power, was not solo but assisted by (now oligopoly) legacy media with the ascendancy of Murdoch becoming free of constraints and the centre of gravity of the Libs moving north to Sydney (now QLD), for more conservative nativism &/or evangelical Christianity.

Worse has been the imported non native US ideology that crosses from radical right libertarian Koch ideology e.g. denigration of climate science and education to white nativism that is rampant in US, UK & parts of Europe e.g. Hungary.

Further, importing/adopting US nativist or eugenics based ideology of deceased white nationalist John 'passive eugenics' Tanton an admirer of the white Australia policy, visitor, promoter of the 'great replacement' and muse of Bannon, alt right, Sustainable Population Australia etc.

Finally, importance of leveraging ageing demographic for 'pensioner populism' &/or 'collective narcissism' i.e. banking on the self interest of the above median age vote of Irish/Anglo cohorts who are less educated, but with demographic change are being replaced by younger, more diverse and more educated generations; many of the latter have bene dog whistled for over a generation..... not a sustainable strategy.

We are seeing evidence of the latter now but the Liberal Party is toying with going further right, with a shrinking membership/no policy development, when we have compulsory and preferential voting i.e. we're neither the US nor the UK; Labor should remain in government for two term minimum....

Why do you feel hostile to academics?
david f,
Because of my experiences with many. From social engineering disasters to indoctrination education which showered us with thousands upon thousands of useless, incompetent bureaucrats to just as useless people in the Judiciary & in Government. i.e. all who made many peoples' lives a misery because these "Academic experts" always claimed to know better.
Yes, there are many decent & knowledgable learned out there but they're heavily out-numbered by the afore-mentioned. I'm sure you can verify that !
How many of the social engineering experts that haven't been to University do you know of ?
Mathematicians, Doctors, Engineers (proper ones) & indeed most professional people should object to be thrown into the same category as Academics !

Dear Indyvidual,

I am proud to have been an academic, and I don't think further discussion on my part would be useful.

Hi David,

Those of the extreme, people like the yarpie Indy, have always had an aversion to people of knowledge, those he calls "academics". For knowledge is power, and true knowledge is a danger to the philosophy of the extreme, which is to control through ignorance. With knowledge comes thought, questioning, and a desire for a better way, things alien to the extremists who believes all that is required is contained within the extreme philosophy. It is no accident that when in power, everyone from Hitler and Stalin to Pol Pot and others of the far right and left attacked "academics", they were the real danger to their controlling influence and power.

I doubt Indy has ever known his despised public servants, who in his perverted mind he equates to the hated "academics". BTW Indy has no influence or power, and relies on the despised public service to dole out his dose of welfare every fortnight.

One just needs to listen to the intonation of many of these Academics & it becomes clear to a sober mind that many such Academics are put on pedestals by their peers so they in turn will put the other lot on the pedestals of over-hype of importance.
Paul1405 is simply a silly git who believes literally anything so long as it is anti-European.
Scholars are valued members of society, Academics merely waffle on as if the are !

For Pol Pot the despised academics were people wearing glasses, hummm. For the yarpie Indy its the "intonation" of a persons voice that makes them a despised academic, how strange.

Paul1405,
Look up what intonation means !

proud to have been an academic,
david f,
What would you consider your most valued contribution to this society ? As for me, I helped keep essential community services running & I helped train a number of indigenous who are now doing the work.
Our most infuriating hurdles were educated people showing up for a few hours & of course telling everyone how we did everything wrong & how they could change everything for the better. They never showed us how though !

Indy,

I take "intonation" in your context as being the pitch or accent of a persons voice. Do you speak English with an annoying yarpie accent, I'm sure you do.

an aversion to people of knowledge,
Paul1405,
Only to knowledge of frivolity which is what many in Academia wallow in.
Why do you think Scholars & Professionals call themselves that rather than Academic ?