A Very Strange Unity Ticket

Malcolm Turnbull, the unflushable Malchurian Candidate, thinks that the Liberal Party, which he (unfortunately) led for a brief and forgettable moment, thinks that the Liberals should “stop living in a right-wing populist bubble”.

Oh dear.

Tony Abbott, Turnbull’s immediate predecessor, knifed in the back by the same Malcolm Turnbull, believes that the Liberals should not become “One Nation Lite” in the aftermath of the necessary but insufficient dispensing with the services of yet another useless female leader.

This is an unusual, apparent coincidence of views, to say the least. While each would run a million miles from being compared to the other, superficially, at least, they seem to be on the same page here.

We know exactly where the greenie, silvertail chancer is coming from. Turnbull is a buffoon, Chauncey Gardner of a politician, with nothing to offer in the way of ideas other than those that he gets on speed dial from Davos.

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Abbott, on the other hand, is Australia’s last decent PM – decent in all of its meanings – with a thought-through, carefully constructed, nuanced world view and still with plenty to offer those willing to listen. I just disagree with him here. And, to be fair, the ABC story was a very short media grab. And he also said that the Libs shouldn’t be anything else-lite. But his headline comment begs many questions.

My immediate retort to both? The Liberals – about which I care very little, post Covid, to be honest – should be One Nation Heavy. And they should recognise what a “right wing populist bubble” means. And move rapidly to occupy it. Only the idiot’s idiot, Turncoat, could believe that they currently exist in anything approaching right wingism. Only a stakeholder communist like Malcolm could believe that centrists like One Nation voters – of which there seem to be plenty now – could be described as right wing.

Both views reflect what Eric Weinstein has called “insiderism”. It is, sadly, another case of the establishment Liberals talking about themselves. It actually isn’t about them. Speaking of bubbles …

The “new look” Liberal Party, if it (for once) starts thinking about we-the-people, it might actually begin to haul itself back to some sort of relevance. And to rediscover that magic, yet, seemingly elusive, combo of spine + principle. To stop being scared of its own true centrism. To stop kowtowing to its and our enemies. To cease endlessly tacking to the zeitgeist. A zeitgeist created by its and our enemies. To stop trying to please establishment Party grandees. Past men. They don’t count for shit. They live in the past, and the past is, indeed, another country.

None of this is rocket science, of course. We are in the territory of blind Freddie.

Oh, and by the way, I think the chances of the Liberal Party, as it is now constituted, moving to the right (the real centre) are as close to net zero as you could get. So, our two former PMs need not overly worry.

Exhibit A is the maintenance of the factional status quo, which has not changed by one single centimetre despite the change in the leadership. When Alex Hawke and Michael Photios are hosed out of the stables, along with all the other pieces of horse shit, I might begin to believe, again. They won’t be, anytime soon. Trust me.

Exhibit B is the much-perpetrated myth that the Liberals’ problem is that they stand for nothing. Not so. The current Liberal Party stands four-square behind globalism, managerialism and technocracy. After all, it is the Party that gave us multiculturalism, failed Middle Eastern wars, the NRET, ramped-up migration, Covid tyranny, the eSafety Commissioner, social media censorship and, most recently, the repulsive hate speech laws. Many they initiated, God help us. Some they merely and cravenly went along with.

No, the Liberals do stand for something. They need to change what they stand for. About 80 per cent of the electorate (apparently) now say so.

Exhibit C is the fact that the Liberal Party continues to be two parties in one. And the two components are utterly incompatible. They hate each other, and they hate each other’s world views. Why no one in establishment Aussie liberalism seems to get this is beyond me. (Actually, it isn’t beyond me. The various players have careers to protect, and that is all they care about).

So even to talk about “the Party” and its future is to make a category error.

Exhibit D is the priority of the new leader. It is selecting the new shadow cabinet. This should be way down the list. Selecting the shadow cabinet is not front of mind for those voters who have left the Party. What they would rather see, up front, is an apology for past Liberal sins. In particular, they would like to see an acknowledgement that the Liberal original sin has been managing up to the global, Epstein-aligned class, and not managing down to the Liberal base and the crushed, outsider class. It looks, alas, like BAU.

Exhibit E is the new deputy leader, one Jane Hume, a moderate woman (of course) from Victoria. I watched her briefly on the news the other day. Five minutes of my life I will never get back. All she said- about three dozen times – was that the Liberal Party “had to change”. She never said, nor was she asked, what change might look like. I doubt she even knows.

I have little doubt that her definition of change and my own are the length of the Simpson Desert apart. And in the desert the Liberals will remain, becalmed on 18 per cent or whatever. Until they discover (again, as Menzies did in the late 1940s) the forgotten people.

If this is what Abbott meant by his reference to rediscovering the party of Menzies and Howard, well and good. By the early 1970s, Menzies was not even voting for the Liberals. And they were a lot better then, Billy Snedden notwithstanding, than they are now. And they are now facing a far more dire existential crisis – not for them but for US – than they were, even in the times of Edward Gough Whitlam.

My best guess is that Menzies would be now voting for just about anyone to the right of the Libs. Including One Nation. As a pragmatic centrist, Menzies would now be locating himself with those in the right-wing populist bubble. Lock, stock and smoking barrel.

And I honestly believe that he would be advising his best two successors to do likewise.

Paul Collits

14 February 2026