The Liberal Party is in utter disarray and a civil war is needed

Later, the Liberals opposed Labor's attempted bank and airline nationalisations and, in office, delivered policies that were distinctly different from its opponents like increased home ownership in suburbia though sneered at by the intellectuals.

This is now where the Liberal Party across Australia is. It needs to confront its crisis head on, even if it means a split and realignment in the non-Labor parties' ranks that includes the National Party. To just hope the electoral pendulum will swing them back into office misunderstands their parlous situation at both federal and state levels.

They need to decide what they stand for and what they are against, reject those recreational policies presently dominating the political agenda and return Australia to policies that ensure our economic wellbeing and leave individuals with the freedom, independence, and responsibility of deciding their own lives.

The Nationals might have exploited the Liberals' poor leadership, factionalism, and policy vacuum and achieved what the 1987 Joh for Canberra campaign failed to do - take over the non-Labor cause.

But they had their own leadership woes with five changes since 2013, personal scandals, policy blunders and lack the intellectual rigour, political nous and anything like a philosophy other than pork barrelling, to execute such a strategy and their state branches send mixed messages about their values and policies.