Launching the Enemy
The Australian Christian Lobby has a very clear strategy for the 2022 Commonwealth election. It is targeting candidates and not parties. It is attempting to get more members in the Parliament that are sympathetic to Christian families, values and traditions.
Here is an excerpt from one of the ACL’s regular communications to voters:
It’s extremely hard to make a decision about the Federal Election.
There is disillusionment with the government due to the things they’ve allowed like queer education in schools and mitochondrial donations.
Not to mention the failures on the Religious Discrimination Bill, vaccine mandates, and more. Everyone’s in a state of confusion.
But the consequences of your vote are very profound.
You have a contest between light and dark; good and evil. There are people who are trying to change the social fabric of the nation. There are also people who have faithfully upheld truth and Christian values.
You need to be wise and understand the people on your ballot.
One of ACL’s mobile billboards states, “Fiona Martin voted against Christian schools”. Martin (of course) was a 2019 “captain’s pick” of the Prime Minister and a “Modern Liberal”. ScoMo is famous now for his captain’s picks. He is also alleged to be a conservative and a Christian. Martin is a champion of the transgendered and the transgendering – a little unlike that other famous Morrison captain’s pick a little to the east of Martin’s Sydney seat of Reid.
Here is another of the ACL’s communications:
The voting records of the Coalition MPs who destroyed the Religious Discrimination Bill in February are being highlighted in North Sydney, Wentworth, Bass and Reid – through multiple channels.
It is the ACL’s biggest election campaign ever.
Unsurprisingly, another of the targets of ACL is Trent Zimmerman, the Member for North Sydney, leftist and loyal lieutenant of the Liberal Party’s rainbow mafia. A champion of homosexual marriage, of course. He is also pro-abortion and crossed the floor to prevent the Liberal led Government in Canberra from actioning its earlier commitment to (a grossly imperfect form of) religious freedom.
Not a lot of joy for ACL, then, in Trent. One Nation is also recommending preferencing against certain Liberal politicians of dubious moral and economic merit. The Liberal Democrats are also preferencing against Fiona Martin in Reid. She isn’t very popular on the deplorable right, it would seem. According to one report:
Guardian Australia understands that One Nation will put Liberal Trent Zimmerman last on its how-to-vote cards in North Sydney, with moderates Bridget Archer, and Tim Wilson also potential targets of the minor party.
(Bridget Archer has described the excellent Claire Chandler’s proposal to safeguard girls’ sport as a “vanity bill” and “not government policy”, “unnecessary” and “divisive”, despite the Prime Minister’s strongly stated support for it. No wonder the punters are confused by this Government).
Back to Trent. Zimmerman is also a sworn enemy of the Australian economy in relation to the lie of climate change. Here is The Guardian:
Liberal Party MP Trent Zimmerman says he and fellow moderate MPs “prevailed” over the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, in securing a net zero climate target, saying the Nationals leader was opposed to the policy.
Zimmerman has also noted:
I am pleased that the PM is on my side on this debate and not on Matt Canavan’s.
Matt Canavan, of course, is one of the few Coalition members willing to speak truth to left-liberal power on the climate-renewables fantasy. If Morrison is, indeed, on the side of genuine net zero (and who would ever know what side ScoMo is on, on anything) it is no wonder that George Christensen, Craig Kelly and Nicolle Flint ran screaming from the Liberal building. The only question is how on earth they lasted as long as they did.
Given all this, it was somewhat surprising that one John Howard turned up at Zimmerman’s campaign launch. Yep, you read that correctly. Gladys of Willoughby was there as well, of course. No surprises there, in view of her massive commitment to all things rainbow and leftist. Naturally, the corporate media wrongly saw the story as being about Gladys’s presence, not about Howard’s.
But Howard? Why would he be there, launching the enemy? He is a professed Christian, after all, and deemed to be an arch-conservative.
On reflection, there is no real surprise here. Howard’s loyalty has always been to the god of the Liberal Party, and not to conservatism of any real kind. Well, I suppose the Iraq War showed him to be a neocon, and we thought that he was against same sex marriage and infanticide on demand (to use Tony Abbott’s description of recent NSW abortion law changes supported by Howard’s mate Gladys). No, the Liberal faithful and conservative voters have always come second to The Party in Howard’s world view. As well, and equally relevant, Howard in parliament was always the master pragmatist and the keeper of the keys to the famous “Liberal broad church”. Well, it must be pretty damned broad, if it can house Trent. Especially, when in government, the Liberal Party manages to accommodate those whose core philosophies are simply anathema to many on the right-of-centre. This was never a mere accommodation to attain and hold onto government, either. Howard Liberals see the broad church as a virtue, a paean to Menzies’ alleged fusion of liberalism and conservatism. (“Modern” (left) Liberals, of course, have a very weird definition of “liberalism”). The problem is, of course, that the Liberal Party is not a remotely broad church any more. It is run by green, leftist, globalist, socially libertarian ideologues and populated with chancers and careerists. Yes, it is a church, but not in the traditional sense.
ScoMo, too, is a broad church kind of guy. Indeed, he himself can occupy several broad-churchy positions on any given day, without flinching. Here is what he said about the above-mentioned Bridget Archer:
You know, we love Bridge. We really do. And I’m really pleased she’s on my team, and she’s on my team and she’s a fiery member of my team and she’s a fiery member for Bass.
You could not make this up. Long live the broad church! And ideological schizophrenia, it would seem. Except that Archer’s moderate faction actively seeks, wherever possible, to rid the Liberal Party of anyone who, like Claire Chandler, believes in traditional values and common sense conservatism. That is the problem with alleged conservatives trying to convince anyone the Liberals are still a broad church. They are not. Morrison is clearly seeking to position himself as a latter-day Howard, but without the skill-set.
Speaking of Robert Menzies, here is what he thought about the importance of faith in politics, something that the feisty ACL would endorse:
Menzies made it explicitly clear that “human nature is greatest when it combines dependence upon God with independence of man”; he believed “religion gives to people a sensitive understanding of their obligations” which alone could make a community of individuals successful; and he described the Bible as the “repository of our faith and our inspiration”.
Now the Liberal Party, for example in South Australia, routinely drums Christians out of the Party. More of that broad church that the likes of John Howard and Tony Abbott (unaccountably) seek to defend. Perhaps they even believe that it still exists. I, on the other hand, remain a convinced broad church denier.
Menzies, famously, stopped voting Liberal very soon after he retired from politics. (He repaired, electorally, to the then Democratic Labor Party of Bob Santamaria). This is something that modern-day Liberal apparatchiks and assorted think-tankers who endlessly chant the name of Menzies conveniently choose to forget. Menzies’ defection occurred when the Liberal “moderates” were people like Holt, Gorton and McMahon. I wonder what he would make of Bridget Archer, Andrew Bragg – who doesn’t want “American culture wars” imported into Australia, who threatens to sue web sites which (allegedly) claim he doesn’t support homosexual rights enough, who wants an indigenous-only voice in the Parliament and who has said he is “a fan of the ABC” – Trent, Fiona Martin and the rest of them now targeted for electoral demolition by the ACL.
I am reasonably certain that Menzies would never have turned up to the launch of a campaign for Trent Zimmerman. Or be photographed grinning while standing next to someone who quite possibly lies under oath and who is being investigated by an independent body for public corruption. (Simon Birmingham believes ICAC to be a “star chamber” and Morrison thinks it a “kangaroo court”. Buffoons, indeed).
Yes, it is normal practice, and quite understandable, too, for the Liberal Party to wheel out its most recent electoral asset (since 2007!). Howard in retirement has garnered considerable affection from voters who recall from the now distant past competence in governing, a safe pair of hands, moderation in policy and fiscal continence. Things notoriously lacking in Australian politics ever since. (Not that Labor’s electoral star appeal is any better, as we saw with Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating being the only eminences on display at the recent ALP election launch). But producing Howard come election time is a little galling. Where was he when governments run by his Party and supposedly committed to individual freedom were trashing the nation and hiding behind unelected health bureaucrats bent on keeping us all under house arrest? Where was John Howard when Liberal governments were throwing Australians out of work for making their own health care decisions? Did he speak up when his Liberal successor stopped Australian citizens from entering or leaving the country, aligning us with North Korea and Cuba and nobody else? He wasn’t there for us. But he is there for Trent Zimmerman!
The ACL’s thinking about the election is very interesting:
A Labor win may result in a more rapid downward spiral of social engineering, but it will also show the Coalition they cannot treat Christians with indifference and expect to win.
A Coalition win may mean they forever miss the opportunity to reflect and reform, and the Liberal party will continue to deteriorate in its principles.
Thoughtful words, indeed.
Paul Collits
7 May 2022