The resignation of Craig Kelly from the Liberal Party, and from Government, has enforced the trope of the High Minded Conservative Loser but the Liberal party is vulnerable to a Right Wing take over, Kelly should have stayed and called for that.
My fellow Australian’s, I’m John Andrews and welcome to
another episode of Advancing Australia.
The political parties, particularly the Liberal Party’s
State Branches, are weak and ready to be taken over by true Right Wing
supporters and in this video I am going to demonstrate just how weak they are,
how few people are needed, and how little someone actually needs to do, to
bring about true Right wing change in the country.
We will examine the state of the Liberal Party by looking at
several preselection battles between Federal parliamentary candidates and the
incredibly small numbers of people that are voting in those party elections,
particularly in safe seats and that are shaping the destiny of Right Wing
politics.
Craig Kelly:
At the 2019 election, Craig Kelly received nearly 60% of two
party preferred votes in the swing seat of Hughes, located in south western
Sydney, first winning the seat in 2010 and holding it since then.
“I felt that for the rest of this parliamentary term, if I’m
going to act and speak according to my conscience and beliefs, I can do so more
effectively as an independent.”
According to media reports Kelly has more than 90,000
followers on Facebook, where he often has much higher engagement than either
the opposition leader or Prime Minister. He is also a regular on Sky News and
is an outspoken MP.
According to Michelle Grattan, writing in the Conversation
Kelly had been stalked by another candidate seeking Liberal pre-selection. Two
important pieces of information leap from the article, linked below:
“Hughes local Kent Johns, a councillor in the Sutherland
Shire”, and “Johns, who is ex-Labor and an industrial chemist with a committed
position on climate change”.
The media have been gunning for Kelly for many years now, he
entered parliament in the huge swings to the Liberal Party off the back of Tony
Abbott’s leadership of the opposition.
On Monday 22nd February The Guardian reported polling that
showed that Kelly’s electorate of Hughes “believe his social media posts are
irresponsible, with his climate denialism further eroding his popularity”.
What that article failed to report was that the polling
company is owned by the CFMEU and the ACTU and is the polling company of choice
for activist groups like GetUp! and Greenpeace, and media like SMH and the Age.
It was commissioned and executed specifically to target and weaken Kelly,
particularly in the media.
He has been very strong on coal in the past and has spoken
in a manner that is outside of the normal Left Wing framing of debates. This
has made him a target of the media and they have used every opportunity to make
this a headache for the PM.
Quitting the Liberal Party is the worst possible thing Kelly
could have done. He is immensely popular and has a media profile far higher
than many Government Ministers. He could have used his profile to push the
issues within the tent of government and the Party room.
Sadly, I think he will join the ranks of Corey Bernardi and
other failed Conservatives that have put their principles ahead of their
ability to exert the power. That is to say that Conservatism fails when its
champions put respect for institutions and the platform they have ahead of
their policy principles and their ability to speak out about the issues they
care about. That is to say that they put the office and the platform of the
party room ahead of the power it can exert. I call this the trope of the High
Minded Conservative Loser, Kelly should have stayed and fought and drawn out
the Lefties in the ranks of the Liberal Party.
If Kelly wanted to advance the ideas down the field he would
have been better doing it in the party room. This is what Leftist agitators do
all the time, they change institutions and it is what we must start doing. That
is the theme of this video essay.
Kevin Andrews Rolled
In January this year the Liberal Party in the seat of
Menzies replaced the long-time sitting member Kevin Andrews with a challenger,
an ex-soldier with 3 tours of duty in Afghanistan under his belt.
Kevin Andrews first entered the parliament in 1991 and he
was a minister within the Howard Government from 2001 to its defeat in 2007,
including time as a Cabinet Minister from 2003 to 2007; he was a very senior
member of the Howard Government, as he was during the Abbott Government, as a
Cabinet Minister from 2013 to 2015. Indeed it has been reported that he was one
of Abbott’s strongest supporters.
Menzies is very safe, blue ribbon Liberal Party heartland,
and Kevin Andrews represents a very old school conservatism. At the last
election the electorate of Menzies had a constituency of 107,000 electors and
Kevin Andrews won the seat he had held since 1991 by a margin of some 14,800
votes even with a swing against him.
https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDivisionPage-24310-229.htm
The successful challenger is Keith Wolahan. From research I
can gather that he was born in Dublin, Ireland, and is a Cambridge Educated
Barrister. He was a Captain in the 2nd Commando Regiment, a special forces
Regiment of the Australian Army.
His page of the Victorian Bar Association website outlines
some work history and notes:
https://www.vicbar.com.au/profile/7854
“After a series of deployments overseas as an officer with
the ADF, Keith returned to practise with Blake Dawson. At various times he was also employed as a
tutor in the fields of criminal and constitutional law at the University of
Melbourne.
Keith was educated at the University of Melbourne
(completing part-time officer training at Duntroon) and Monash University,
where he was awarded the Sir Charles Lowe Prize for Best Advocate. He later completed a Masters of International
Relations (MSt) at the University of Cambridge.
In the 2011 Australia Day Honours he was decorated with a
Commendation for Distinguished Service for performance of duty in action with
the ADF in 2009/2010.”
I managed to find a video on YouTube on him speaking on the
issue of “A Colour Blind Constitution” and speaking about his opposition to an
apology to the so called stolen generations, and against racial thinking and racializing
our constitutions and institutions, and speaking against recognition of
Aboriginal People in the Constitution which at this point is current government
policy. It’s a very interesting speech and the link is in the description and I
recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FECvwxYVbyk
According to “The Age” in Melbourne, in an article, written
before the pre-selection vote:
“300 local members in Ivanhoe. Party operatives with
knowledge of the group of voters predict a tight race that could be determined
by non-rusted on voters who make up their mind on the day.”
Further it was widely reported that Kevin Andrews had
endorsements from:
John Howard, Tony Abbott, Mathias Cormann, Peta Credlin
& Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Right now with the limited information that we have about
Keith Wolahan it seems he may be a sound man, he has runs on the board in the
military, is on the record speaking against those that would seek to divide our
citizens by race. We don’t know where he stands on abortion, on the use of
government institutions to further our social aims, we don’t know where he
stands on the rights for children to grow up naturally and unmutilated by the
medical industry, but he does seem very sound on Nationalism on Nationhood as
you would expect from a Special Forces Officer.
What we do know are the numbers, that’s the focus: 300 party
members decided the fate of one of the safest seats in the country, a seat that
has held a Federal Cabinet Minister for two separate government terms.
Also what we know is that high powered, high profile
endorsements mean nothing. What we are seeing now all through the West, in England
in the US and now, finally, perhaps here there is an appetite for change.
The vote to change candidates at the next Federal election
was decided by a margin of 70 votes, 181 to Wolahan, 111 to Andrews.
As a military man Wolahan would recognise what I see and
what you should see, the major parties are strategically vulnerable. A
membership of 300 voting members is strategically vulnerable and tactically
weak.
Another example is
Bronwyn Bishop’s battle for preselection for seat of
Mackellar
The seat of Mackellar is in Northern Beaches of Sydney. In
April 2016 conservative stalwart Bronwyn Bishop was dumped in a preselection
contest within the Liberal Party after a 29-year stint in the both Senate and
the seat of Mackellar. She lost 51:39 to Jason Falinski, who has since
advocated for policies to increase energy prices and that will impact
Australian employment and manufacturing.
There were 91 eligible voting pre-selectors.
Within that electorate the Liberal Party received 65.74% of
the two party preferred vote in the Federal election of that year and in 2019,
the most recent Federal election 63.22% of the two party preferred vote.
This is another very safe Liberal seat where 91 Liberal
Party members determined who the sitting member would be and they picked a man
who has championed policies relating to Leftist priorities. There are more than
108,000 voters enrolled in the electorate.
Prior to writing this I had never heard of Jason Falinski.
His YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt3AJq7aims4IjsZGxHWOw
channel has 91 subscribers. He has a range of clips of him
talking about the Northern Beaches, Science Week grants, Costal Erosion but
also on YouTube I found the video titled
“Jason Falinski wants to ‘get to net zero emissions before 2050’ “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOP5tsBx7A
Here is a member of the Liberal Party, in a very safe seat,
advocating Left wing policies from within a supposedly conservative Government.
He has no profile in wider Australian politics yet the right candidate in that
seat could be a major force in driving the debate and promoting true Right wing
policies.
In the 2019 Federal Election, in that same seat of Mackellar
the Christian Democratic Party, the Fred Nile Group, received 1,401 primary
votes. There are 15 times as many hard core, conservative Christian voters in
that safe Liberal seat than there are members of the Liberal Party eligible to
pre-select a member.
In the YouTube video of Falinski he appears on ABC24 and
mentions his parliamentary colleague, and ideological friend Trent Zimmerman,
another left winger, who took over the relatively safe Liberal seat of North
Sydney after the retirement of Joe Hockey in 2015. He won preselection for that
seat 47 to 35 votes, of a possible 84 eligible electors. In fact prior to being
elected as the member for North Sydney he was on Joe Hockey’s staff, he
represents the very worst of the political class, a clique of insiders removed
from the concerns of ordinary Australians.
In his first speech to parliament in March 2016 he spoke
about his homosexual identity and the Gay Mardi Gras:
https://youtu.be/10XQg_bGj-4?t=297
Again in this electorate there are over 1600 Conservative
Christian, Fred Nile Group, voters that could have been active in the Liberal
Party ensuring a truly conservative voice in that safe seat.
Sources:
The same could be said for Julian Leeser in the seat of
Berowra in the Northern outskirts of Sydney, where the ALP routinely struggle
to get around 19% of the vote.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/preselection-decided-in-ruddock-s-seat
There is an evident pattern: Party membership numbers are
very low and the local branches have ultimate control over who the candidates
for an electorate will be and they could be influenced by very few new,
motivated members.
How to join and what to do:
In NSW, the Liberal Party is divided by the Federal
Electorates. When you join you’ll need to use your residential address and it
will need to match the electoral role with the AEC. A basic membership is $100 a year, or if a
student or over 60 it is $40/year.
There is an impression that political parties are full of
policy egg-heads having deep and esoteric discussions about the nuances of
policy but that is not the case. At a local level the parties are made up of
regular people who have families and regular jobs or small businesses, and they
want to help their country.
All you need to do to have an impact on Australian politics
is go along to two meetings a month, pay your membership fee, talk to other
party members about the issues that you are concerned about and participate.
The Rules for selection committees and voting by selectors
are covered by Appendix F of the NSW Liberal Party constitution, I’ve linked
that below. The only disqualifying factor would be if you were a relative of a
candidate.
Conclusion:
Changing politics by voting for a minor party is a delusion.
The only meaningful way to elect a politician from a minor party is to vote for
them in the Senate, but in order for your vote to count you must number every
box below the line. The major parties, and the Greens, changed voting rules
such that above the line votes extinguish rapidly in the preference system.
The weakness of the Liberal Party has been demonstrated. The
only meaningful way to make an impact in Right Wing politics is to join the
Liberal Party. Plant the seed in your mind, what would happen if you joined
your local political party and talked about the issues that we talk about, the
issues that matter.
Let’s say that 30 people joined a branch and changed 30
people’s minds on an issue that we care about, suddenly the party, that branch
of the party totally different. The local candidate is always reliant on their
local branch to have their candidacy confirmed, even before they go to the
wider electorate.
Think about what happened to Bronwyn Bishop, she was
defeated in her preselection battle she lost 51-39, so 90 voting members of the
Liberal Party decided the outcome of a safe parliamentary seat, and you’ve seen
the other examples.
Craig Kelly would have allies, strong allies, in the Party
Room and the Government if a cohort of strong Right wing voters joined the
party. It would be those soft left voices in the outer, not the strong Right
voices.
So I hope that you understand what I am talking about here,
the examples of the votes in the preselections are perfect illustrations of
what we can and need to do, push the political parties to the right. It’s
possible, we need to have faith in the process and what happens in the parties
is more important than what happens in the parliament.
What that means is that it is the quality of the elector
pool that determines the quality of the candidate, a left wing electoral committee
will get left wing policies, and the reverse is true.
A Member, elected by a right wing selection committee that
then goes against the wishes of that committee is finished but a Left wing
Member selected by a Left wing committee is only going to be responsible to the
wider electorate, and in a safe seat that doesn’t matter.
So the character, the nature of the selection pool needs to
change and we could do that over the coming months. If these issues can be
sorted out internally, by the local branches, Members in the governing party
room will have the confidence to overcome the advisers, operators and staffers
that are risk averse, when it comes to right wing issues. We need to give the
members of parliament the courage to know that they have the support of the
Party back home, or will have to fear us should they fail to keep faith with
the position they earned.
Join the Liberal Party!
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