If what 'The Australian' says is true, the daft Liberals will do their best to get Lefty Frydenberg back into the fold; which is why genuine conservatives like me have decided once and for all that the Australian Liberal party is a genuine small 'l' liberal, or left party, never going to get our votes again.

The fact that Dutton has put Birmingham in the shadow cabinet shows that he would be like the NSW premier, Perrottet, conservative until he gets the top job, then turns to wet left water.

When is this mob of way out wackos going to get over their "shock" defeat at May 21st election. Labor will not be doing anything different that the Liberals weren't doing, except they wont be in the Treasury vault on a Wednesday afternoon stuffing their pockets with $100 taxpayer bills. Nah, that's going to be done on Thursdays from now on.

ttbn, before the election you were crowing One Nation and the Fat Clive Party, they were totally rejected by the electorate, like your Corny Banana Party was in 2019. Australia does not want your brand of conservatism!

"Australia does not want your brand of conservatism!"

Yet.

"Australia does not want your brand of conservatism!"

Yet... still many people cling to the notion that it's something Australia must want!

IMO there are four enormous problems with conservatives. The first is intolerance, It's always a bad thing, and PC intolerance is as bad as traditional intolerance. But conservatives tend to be more intolerant overall.

A second, related, problem is their opposition to social justice. Social justice = a fair go for all, and that's one of the quintessential Australian values, yet conservatives tend to think we're better off without it!

And the third problem is their irrational opposition to debt. However important anything is, they think it's unaffordable because the government has too much debt.

And the fourth is their contempt for the environment.

If the conservatives were willing to address these flaws, I suspect they'd have a lot more support.

No right wing parties in Australia?
I think rather there are no left-wing parties.
There's something called The Overton Window that explains it.

Labor was dragged to the right away from their traditional values because they tried to capture some of neo-conservative Howard's turf but are now trying to get back to the centre - an area where the Liberals used to occupy.

What used to be conservatism is now neo-conservatism, transferring public assets and public wealth into private hands while cutting back on services and removing protections through rampant deregulation.

There is now no party to the right of the Liberals and One Nation are just a reactionary hate cult riding on the coat-tails of disaffected Liberals - always angry about something but in the end voting along Liberal Party lines and producing nothing of substance.

Likewise the Greens are just a populist conscience-driven group and like One Nation are inherently powerless to implement meaningful policies.

The so-called socialist Teal independents are actually Liberal-leaning candidates who simply wanted to remove the previous government because of their failed policies in certain areas.

The shortcomings, corruption and lies of the previous government are gradually coming to light and bold announcements are useless without implementation. This once-satirical clip from 5 years ago demonstrates they were wasted years -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaBzj7cn14

"If the conservatives were willing to address these flaws, I suspect they'd have a lot more support."

So if conservatives were more like progressives then the progressives will support them? Sounds reasonable. But then everyone would be wrong.

My view and hope is that the Libs and their fellow travellers will return to true liberalism. Currently the tenets of the last 20 year progressive experiment are unravelling and people will come to realise that some of the attitudes of 'conservativism' are not only valid but vital.

We've been through a period where the progressives decided that they'd borrow against the future to satisfy their insatiable desires. But the chickens are coming home to roost.

Renewable energy fantasies will evaporate as the lights go out. Massive over-spending, massive debts, massive deficits, won't look quite so appealing when inflation approaches 10% and mortgage rates double (or worse). A generation used to never ending 'wealth creation' via rising housing prices, will look askant as prices fall.

At that point, the true cost of the progressive spending spree, the true cost of the lockdown fantasies, the true cost of the climate fantasies will become both apparent and decried. The teal generation are happy to save the planet from the evil CO2 when it was cost free or someone else was picking up the bill. But when the bill is closer to home then demands for petrol subsidies, coal subsidies and the like become shrieks.

We have growing inflation locked in. We have growing interest rates locked in. We have power crises locked in. The international destabilisation is locked in. International famine and growing refugee crises are locked in.

In crises, when people realise that they've been sold a pup, the conservatives will be (hopefully) waiting with open arms.