When Bob Hawke was asked what sort of Liberal leader Tony Abbott would make, he answered: "Temporary". This paper seems to support that view.

I am dreading having to listen to Tony Abbott's constant appeals "to the working family" which are based on no economic plan that I have heard about. It feels as though he simply grabs figures out of the air every time he speaks.

Conservatism in Australia is poorly understood and poorly represented by Tony Abbott's 'Battlelines'. The Liberal Party has always been a thinly disguised coalition of vested interests seeking to subvert the public interest - subsidised businesses, cocooned-professionals, agrarian socialists, and recipients of middle class welfare make up the heartland of the party. No surprise, then, that Tony Abbott opposes means-testing of welfare and supports even more corporate welfare.

A genuinely transformative conservatism would seek to strengthen society by making both state and markets serve social objectives. Markets should serve consumer interests and competition, not protect big business. State regulation should protect civil society and organic social relationships, not buttress service providers, lawyers and professionals. Conservatives should seek to build the capacity and assets of low-income people to participate in a genuine property-owning democracy, not dispense welfare and paternalism in glorious bi-partisanship with left-leaning bureaucrats.

Liberal and Labor share an ideology of managerialism, which is the dominant ideology of our time.

Conservatives should aim to subvert this managerial hegemony, empowering people to create, restore and strengthen civil society.

This is the real emerging battleline in 21st century politics.

Vern Hughes
Centre for Civil Society

Tony is not perfect and conservatives accept that, as do liberals of their choice of leader and current PM, surely?

If we wait for the perfect conservative leader (prince Charming syndrome) as some people encourage, then we might wait a long time.

Tony is better as a leader of conservatives than Malcolm was, and many Liberals believe Malcolm is confused about politics and may be in the wrong party.

The criticisms in the article are what you would expect from someone worried about what might happen should their preferred leader and system be thrown out. Tony certainly has you all worried, this is good for politics in Australia, perhaps now we'll get some actual questioning of government policy and behaviour.

Now that we have a conservative leader who is not a shadow of the PM, as were Malcolm and Brendan, who can clearly differentiate himself, we have an alternative when we throw the ALP out.

It doesn't matter what the conservative policies are, what matters is we have someone of substance standing by when we vote the ALP out, not the coalition in. Did the ALP have policies years ahead of the election, no of course not and they had 3 leaders in 2 years.

In the last federal election, the ALP were not voted in, the coalition were voted out, look at all the advertising, it was not on positive strengths of the ALP, but the negative aspects of the coalition. The ALP ran a negative campaign, and will do it again, it started 15 seconds after Tony became leader.

Women who read Battlelines will be left in no doubt that it is their patriotic duty to breed; and there is seemingly no recognition that women who do not have children can contribute to the nation in a publicly meaningful way.

It would have been strange to encourage men to breed, after all they do need a woman to carry the child.
Were single men told that they could contribute to nation if they didn't father children? Why would a single woman need to be told she could contribute in a publicly meaningful way. That would be patronizing!

There is no point in dissecting Tony Abbott or any other party-driven politician for the benefit, amusement or edification of the Australia people.

They are all the same; there for what they can get out of it, and to hell with the electorate they are supposed to be working for.

All we have is the 'choice' of one of two dictators. We need to start refusing to vote for any party hack intent on driving us further into totalitarianism