No political party in Australia represents traditional conservatives

I grew up in a conservative family during The Great Depression of the 1930's.

My mother was the granddaughter of a Lutheran Missionary and the daughter of a devout Presbyterian Elder.

My Dad was a hard working and very reliable labourer who was a faithful member of the right wing Australian Workers Union and a devoted follower of Edward Theodore, the most financially conservative Treasurer the Labor Party has ever produced.

With the benefit of their example, I grew up with a set of values that have been a cornerstone of my life and remain with me to this day.

Those values are not based on any ideology or theology.

They are basic and clear.

Let me list a few of them.

• Work hard and always do more than you are paid for.
• Save hard and be ready for tough times.
• Give away all you can. It puts power into your life.
• Learn skills and use them to find better ways to do your work.
• Never look backwards.
• When you are down, get up and start again.
• Dream visionary dreams and reach for the stars, always taking careful steps forward.
• Never leave your mates behind. Always pick them up when they are down.
• Be a committed working partner of Jesus of Nazareth and walk with him to create a better world.
• Treat everyone the same, no matter what their race or religion or social status may be.
• Foster the politics of common sense.
• Apologise when you are wrong.
• Never end a day with harsh words.
• In all your dealings, make sure both sides win.

So, I look at the world of today, which is far different to my world of 9 decades ago, and ask if most people still live by these values. I find that the answer is "No". I reckon this is so because few leaders – political, financial or religious – are committed to those values.

Certainly, no political parties spell them out as their basic policies.

So called Conservative Parties are guilty of persistently promoting greed and power and privilege. They have no fundamental core of values and are mostly controlled by those who call themselves the Christian Right but are not Christian. They are more like bigots.

Parties that can be identified as being in the socialist realm go to extremes in trying to change the world by replacing traditional values with short term trends towards progress and rewriting history without putting anything solid in its place.