Twelve reasons why Australia needs a Conservative Party

Immigration and cultural inclusion

Australia is a hybrid of Indigenous and immigrant peoples, but this hybrid identity has been put at risk by the imposition by both Left and Right of a cumbersome “multiculturalism” upon a reluctant host community. Its emphasis upon cultural separateness rather than cultural inclusion continues to threaten social cohesion and jeopardise popular support for a high immigration intake.

Public debate about cultural policy and immigration has been thwarted by a continuing Left and Right aversion to encouraging cross-cultural social interaction and discouraging ethnic “ghetto-isation”. The Left dislikes the concept of social interaction because it cannot be managed by state officials. The Right's support for immigration is market-driven - it cannot grasp notions of social interaction that lie outside the framework of market exchange.

Australian society needs a party that can challenge racism and ethnic ghettos by articulating the goal of a culturally inclusive hybrid Australian identity that is grounded and mediated - not through quangos or fashionable cuisine - but through the social relationships of civil society.

Small business and the break up of corporate power

Both Left and Right favour big business and have facilitated the concentration of corporate power. Australia's corporate sector lacks genuine entrepreneurs and fears global markets, and has tended to rely on domestic mergers and the restriction of competition for growth. Both Left and Right have acquiesced in big business demands for curbs on competition, subsidies, handouts and protection in the name of industry policy, at the dual expense of consumers and an entrepreneurial domestic business culture. Both Left and Right lack the will to break up Telstra and oligarchies in retailing, banking, insurance, transport, energy and media.

Australian society needs a party that can challenge concentrations of corporate power from a pro-business standpoint.

Preserving the idea of a university

The Dawkins revolution in higher education has turned Australia's universities into factories producing technical skills for Asian and domestic markets. A rounded liberal education geared to the cultivation of intellectual capacity and moral character has become an anachronism to the technocrats of both Left and Right. The Left has made an idol of meritocratic hierarchy and believes a university degree is a right of all, regardless of its content or standard. The Right has succumbed to a Fordist mentality, viewing education as a resource for industrial ends. Neither have the will or the strategic vision to restrict public funds for higher education to open access generalist liberal arts and sciences programs, and impose full or partial HECS or fees for vocational and professional training courses such as law, medicine, hospitality and horticulture. Neither Cultural Studies nor hospitality training belong in a university.

Australian society needs a party that can break the bi-partisanship of Left and Right that has turned universities into factories of technocracy.

Small is beautiful

Aggregation of suburbs, businesses and community organisations has been an uninterrupted organisational and management trend for the past half century, backed in equal measure by Left and Right. Small community associations begun by parents and residents in disability, health and social support have been corporatised and merged beyond recognition by managers and regulators from both Right and Left.

Co-operatives, credit unions and mutuals have been transformed into corporate entities by inappropriate regulatory frameworks set up by Left and Right. Small towns have struggled to maintain viability as cities sprawl ever outwards with diminishing social connections. Neither Left nor Right have been able to combine a “small is beautiful” social ethic with contemporary economies of scale to produce liveable communities and local organisations that are amenable to the cultivation of social relationships and civil society.

Australian society needs a party that can understand and value the social ethic of “small is beautiful” in a globalised world.

Making everyone visible, allowing everyone to be heard

People with disabilities, ageing Australians, and people with mental illnesses are invisible to Left and Right and excluded from public decision-making. For the Left, these people are “clients” to be managed by government departments and service providers - inside or outside institutions. To the Right, these people matter only if they participate in the labour market.

Neither Left nor Right regard people with disabilities, ageing Australians, and people with mental illnesses as citizens who possess inalienable rights to self-direction and personal and social autonomy to the maximum degree possible. Volunteers - workers outside the paid workforce - are similarly irrelevant to the Right, and merely resources for efficient management by the Left. The voices of these large sections of society are silenced and hidden, consigned by Right and Left to a permanent status of marginalisation and dependence.
Australian society needs a party that can provide a platform for everyone to be seen and heard and contribute.

In the last 30 years, the only areas of public life untouched by movements of reform have been Parliament and the rusty political machines that select and place citizens in parliamentary seats. As public participation in these machines has plummeted, an increasingly small, professional caste of machine operatives now maintain the machines, and select their own kind for its parliamentary rewards. The result is a crisis in representative democracy that neither Left nor Right can comprehend.

Both Left and Right believe the political system works well if their caste of operatives can occupy Cabinet seats and manage the economy and service provision to the satisfaction of the disengaged punter. The relationships and social interactions of the disengaged punter - in civil society or in public life - are of no concern to the officials of Right or Left. To the conservative, these relationships and social interactions are the primary indicator of well-being and success or failure.

Australian society needs a party that can repair public life and governance by bringing a focus on social relationships into the public arena.