There are two Robert Menzies Institutes in Australia. One is run by Nick Cater, and the other by the University of Melbourne, aka The Parkville Asylum. So named by the legendary and now vanished Professor Bunyip, who may or may not have been Imre Saluszinsky.
https://timblair.net/he-was-the-peoples-bunyip/
No prizes for guessing the one to whom Malcolm Turnbull has just granted an interview. What a privilege for them.
There is not much that is new or unexpected from the former LINO (Liberal in name only) prime minister. His two main contributions here have been to the rich literature of Godwin’s Law – invoking comparisons with Hitler – and to the endless Liberal quest to appeal to Robert Menzies to bolster one’s arguments. His invocation of Hitler involved Tony Abbott’s supposed endorsement of Donald Trump and Viktor Orban of Hungary. Turnbull wheeled in the late Menzies, inevitably, to prove his own Liberal virtue.
Here is how it went:
Mr Turnbull then attacked his Liberal predecessor for defending the “authoritarian populism” of Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“Menzies would look at Trump or an Orban and say 'Man, I've seen that film before; it's called Mussolini and Hitler’,” Mr Turnbull said.
“But this is what so many people on the… so-called conservative side of politics are adopting, including in the Liberal Party.
“I mean, Tony Abbott extols Viktor Orban and says he is the type of conservative leader other nations would like to have.”
On the one hand, it is a legitimate and interesting question as to what Menzies would think of many aspects of modern politics. On the other hand, many might now argue that who really now cares what he would think?
But let’s play the Turnbull Menzies invocation game.
What would Menzies make of the Covid State, for example? Of the crushing of small business during the Plandemic? Of the destruction of individual rights and freedoms? Of vaccine mandates? Or serial, official lying? Of handing over control of policy to unelected bureaucrats? Even to real civil servant giants of Menzies’ own generation, giants like Sir John Bunting, Arthur Tange and Roland Wilson? What would Menzies make of the climate grifters who now control his Party? The American congressman Scott Perry recently put it to John Kerry that he and his globalist climateers were spending $1.6 quadrillion dollars on solving a problem that didn’t exist. The first time I have seen the world “quadrillion”. Malcolm is on board with this. Would Menzies be? Would Menzies endorse fiscal incontinence, executive overreach, national cabinets, the abandonment of the rule of law, foreign policy recklessness, cosying up to China, republicanism, the voice?
There is not the remotest evidence that Menzies would be a twenty-first century wet.
No, the Malchurian Candidate’s s take on Menzies is quite bizarre, not grounded in reality or any understanding of either politics or Menzies and a figment of the fetid swamp that is his imagination. One thing we do know is that Menzies stopped voting for the Liberal Party he founded a mere five years or so after he retired in January 1966. It seemly highly unlike that Menzies would be remotely enamoured of the modern PGGWC (progressive, globalist, green, woke, Covid) class that now runs his old Party. It is understood he voted for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in his later years. The National Civic Council, like the DLP, founded by B A Santamaria is, today, the very antithesis of the PGGWC class. The values of the NCC are not a million miles from both Tony Abbott and Viktor Orban, and many of Trump’s policies and values would also have appealed to Santamaria’s successors. Menzies, we know, was rabidly anti-communist. The policies pursued by Turnbull were far closer to the Communist Party than the Liberals of the Menzies tradition. The Communists are now almost of one mind with the Davos Class of which Turnbull is a paid up member.
Turnbull opined that the Liberal Party might not even exist in a few years. On this, he might be right, but, almost inevitably with poor, dumb Malcolm, for the wrong reasons. To suggest, as he does, that the modern Liberal Party is in thrall to Orban or Trump-like principles, is pure fantasy. The Liberal Party is a narrow church, and it ain’t run by conservatives. It has done its very best to excise genuine conservatism – and, yes, Turnbull actually claimed to have been a student of Edmund Burke’s – from the Party. At the risk of repetition, think Nicolle Flint, Craig Kelly, George Christensen, Gerard Rennick, Moira Deeming. Centrists all. And all shunted. Would One Nation and the United Australia Party even exist, and garner substantial votes, if the Liberal party were conservative? Nope. If the Liberal Party ceases to exist any time soon, it won’t be the fault of those who are no longer allowed to even be in the building.
As to Hitler and Mussolini, I think that far more apt comparisons are with the World Health Organisation, the World Economic Forum, Tony Fauci, Daniel Andrews, Professor Halpern (Mr Nudge) and Brad Hazzard. Anyone more self-aware and philosophically savvy than Turnbull would know this.
John Howard made mistakes, to be sure, big ones, in addition to doing wonderful things and providing Australia with good government for over a decade. No mean achievement in these postmodern political times. His two greatest non-policy errors were accepting Turnbull into his Cabinet, and, years later, helping persuade Turnbull not to leave politics after Abbott won the leadership in 2009. The latter, in particular, had profound and deleterious consequences for our polity. This week was but a small reminder of those consequences.
Paul Collits
15 July 2023
Conservative voter my entire voting life. Hard to vote for the Liberals/LNP due to their dearth of conservative politicians and conservative values. Mark Textor stated that the Liberals could do without their conservative base…. Their current situation makes Textor the fool that he really is. Turnbull is a traitor and fraud. Morrison was Turnbull Vers.2.0. The Liberals will never see my vote whilst ever they maintain their course and speed.
The decline started with the wets who voted grand Mal into power. Softcocks.