The morning after the democracy sausage sizzle

Sunday, 4 May 2025. Peter Dutton rebirthed, a gracious leader, after his double-barrel demise the night before.

But until that Saturday night, Dutton had been the strong man we needed in these unspeakably uncertain times, and Albanese the weak leader, wavering to "wokeness" and to those banging on about our moral duty to condemn the Israeli killing of women and children in Gaza.

All was forgotten the morning after.

The legacy media needed to redeem themselves.

The voters had got it right again! Dutton had taken the Liberals too far to the right. And his spurious campaign promises had failed their bullshit detector.

But Dutton, in his gracious concession speech, is the real Dutton.

What a convenient myth! For a clutch-on-anything-to-win Opposition leader who had exploited the culture wars from day one.

Winning is everything: the No campaign; sack 41,000 public servants; remove the Indigenous Flag behind him in Press conferences as PM; colluding with Labor to kill the Teals or appease the salmon corporations.

What a great (robust) democracy!

Hopefully May 4^th 2025 will ring the bell to scatter that grand delusion.

The Greens got 12% of the votes, but not even 1% of the seats in Parliament.

And it is not illegal to tell lies in election campaigns. A Teal or two has tried to change that in the last Parliament, but Albo was too timid to take it on. Dutton was none too keen either, having invested so perniciously on the No campaign for the Voice.

May 4^th looms big in my consciousness. On that day in 1919 the student protests in Tiananmen, sparked the day before by revelations from the Paris Peace Conference at which our own Billy Hughes played a pivotal part, led to the founding in 1922 of the Communist Party of China.

In 1919the struggling 8-y-o Republic was barely functional or solvent. Warlords roamed; its treasury closely watched over by the big four foreign banks; its customs service, postal service, railways, salt, and more, under the firm guiding hands of foreign powers.

We are a world away from that scenario. Yet I hope that our May 4^th will give birth to a new democracy in Australia.

By all accounts the Liberal Party is beyond redemption. Its party organisations are determinedly dysfunctional in most States and its Parliamentary inhabitants are incapable of upholding the "liberal" dream, once sublimely expressed by John Gorton in his maiden speech.

In my simple observation, John Howard started edging out the "wets" in his caucus, starting with Ian MacPhee. Thus began the withering of structural members who upheld the integrity of the liberal enterprise. Howard also gave wings to the culture war started by Geoffrey Blainey in 1984. And telling lies became okay, almost institutionalised, when he appointed Peter Reith, who had lied about children overboard but did not stand in the ensuing 2001 Federal Elections, to a tax-free $250,000 a year job in London soon after the Tampa election victory. Later Scott Morrison completed the hollowing out of the liberal remains of the Party: the resignation of Birmo, the public face of the last tortured liberal soul; and Morrison's frolicking with the extreme Christian right, seen when he doubled down on picking Catherine Deves to win back Tony Abbott's seat.

We are a lucky country. Rich wide plains for sheep and wheat, gold, coal for centuries to come, and now critical minerals to seduce our big brother in his mission to make his country estate great again, via Greenland warlordism if need be.

Will our luck dwindle to a trickle? For many, it already has.

Like the Qing dynasty in late 19^th century, our governance has been weak, and beset by warlords within and without the reigning Party.

At the end of Howard's reign, his national sovereign fund was much smaller than Singapore's, a young nation with no natural resources, not even water. Howard had presided over the mineral boom which could have given us a national sovereign fund akin to Norway's, the world's largest, based on its north-sea oil and gas royalties. Instead, to win elections, Howard gave us tax cuts, that got us gorging on MacMansions, floor-to-ceiling marbled bathroom renovations, etc, etc. His capital gains tax discount, a nod to housing gamers, marked the beginnings of our housing crisis. Had he followed the Norwegian governments, we might have had plenty in our national sovereign fund to build enough social housing to nip the housing crisis in the bud, as was done in Singapore.

But winning elections is everything.

No matter what: the Vietnam war in 1966; Children Overboard in 2001; Mediscare 2016; the "death-tax" scare 2019; AUKUS he-man in 2022; and "kicking-down" working mothers (work from home), public servants (sack 41,000), and Blacks (not standing in front of their flag) in 2025.

The political campaign has become the playground for self-serving and hollow leaders often with snake oil in their saddle bags.

Vietnam was Menzies' playground. Against American advice he announced the sending of fighting soldiers to Vietnam, without any request having been made by the President of Vietnam. In his grand vision he would thus win America's commitment to Australia's national security against the Red Menace, the smarter younger brother of the Yellow Peril. Sadly, we now have thousands of PTSD Viet Vets among us, mostly unseen.

AUKUS looked like Morrison's snake oil bid for a second miracle. Hopefully no South China Sea PTSD vets from this grand delusion.

Tragically, the Greens and the Teals suffer from delusions as well. They failed to recognise that their unprecedented success in 2022 had much to do with the ugliness and hollowness of Morrison's reign rather than anything else. Thus in 2025 they made heroic efforts to increase their numbers by doing more of the same.

They failed, but survived the day: the Teals to face the hangman's noose in 2028; the Greens to face the ghost of Don Chipp's Democrats.

The passing of "Donfather's Law" and the "salmon corporations protection law", rushed through at the 11^th hour by the two colluding Parties should have dispelled their reverie. The first Act will legally strangle the Teals in 2028; the second made clear that both Labor and Liberals are in fear of offending corporations reaping millions from our economy - salmon, coal, gas, critical minerals, et cetera.

To be blunt, what the Teals and Greens have achieved is akin to renovating the interior of an old heritage mansion, while leaving the rotting foundations untouched.

Had they spearheaded Proportional Representation in their campaign to fix the rotted foundations of our two-Party-Preferred electoral system, as a priority, they might have attracted enough new converts to prevent the loss of Adam Bandt and Zoe Daniel.

There is no certainty in that. But Proportional Representation is the best insurance we have against the winning-is-everything mentality. Two or three parties sitting at the high table of minority governments should see to that. It has worked in New Zealand for 30 years.

I am hopeful.

Malcolm Turnbull's assessment in his memoirs of Peter Dutton as a national leader is now vindicated. Given the state of the Liberal Party, Malcolm might create a new genuinely liberal Party that commits to legislating Proportional Representation at first opportunity and to reforming the monarchic war powers still vested in the Prime Minister. No more election winning with lies; no more Vietnam or Iraq to prolong the life of the reigning gang; no more war-mongering that bleeds our treasury to appease the foreign big brothers still dreaming about stewarding a re-birth of China.

After all, it was Malcolm who democratised the gang-ensconcing Senate voting system, making it hassle-free and easy to vote for individual candidates listed Below-The-Line on the Senate ballot paper.

Amen.