Liberal nastiness

At times, reading John Hyde Page’s The Education of a Young Liberal (which you can’t do now if you haven’t already - it was recalled in March last year pending legal action) is not much different to reading journalist David Greason’s account of extreme-right organisations in the late 1970s in I Was a Teenage Fascist.

These branch-stacking, god-fearing, radical-right Young Liberals don’t take too kindly to criticism.

In February this year, Malcolm Fraser - hardly a raving leftie - criticised the Victorian Liberal Party for its ideological branch-stacking and its propensity to stifle dissent. The response was immediate - and vicious.

“Who cares what this old irrelevant man has got to say anyway [?]” wrote one blogger on The Age website. “I wish he was not still a burden on the taxpayer as he and Gough and other[s] are.” “If ‘thousands’ are abandoning the party it’s because of the limp wristed drift to the left,” declared another. A “senile old fool”, proclaimed a third. For many of the Young Liberals I know, Fraser is akin to Satan.

Given that its highest office is now the Brisbane City Council, it might be wise for the Liberal Party to take the Nationals’ statesman Bill Baxter’s advice and be “brutally realistic”. Australians, it seems, have voted against nastiness. But after a decade of “Strong Leadership” during which foundational cracks in non-Labor were papered over by federal election results, all that seems to have happened is that young people of the sort described above joined the Liberal Party in large numbers. And rather than having their rather extreme views challenged by some centralising hegemonic influence within the Party, they are, by all accounts, having them affirmed.

In the years to come, we will be in a better position to assess the historical significance of Howard’s “Strong Leader” style. But following the new government’s National Apology to the Stolen Generations on February 13, we undoubtedly saw an immediate consequence.

In his political need to placate the attack-dogs of the rampant Right, Brendan Nelson gave a “Sorry” speech that nevertheless relied on the very same comforter myths the Apology was intended to refute - especially that which seeks to excuse the behaviour of past governments on the basis that they had “good intentions”. Nelson’s speech was incredibly offensive, both to those supporting the Apology and to the Stolen Generations themselves: this was made clear by those who spontaneously turned away from screens broadcasting the speech.

In the blinkered, ideological cocoon the party has woven for itself, not even this could be seen. “I don’t believe anyone who attentively listened to Brendan’s speech would have been anything other than very satisfied with it,” said Tony Abbott the following morning.

Howard’s “Strong Leadership” may have won the Liberal Party elections. It does not appear to have resolved the fundamental cracks in Liberal ideology that emerged during the 1980s. And, given the tenor of the people who were attracted by Howard’s “tough” lines, it may have done the Party much more long-term harm than good.