Displaying items by tag: Conservative

Barnaby's return to national leadership is a hope and an opportunity.  The left loves to hate true conservatives.  They hate Barnaby.  But will he deliver for those of us who hope for a better politics in this country?

The journalist Niki Savva has been stalking Tony Abbott for what seems like decades.  Suddenly noticing a current absence of political leadership, Savva has broken the habit of a lifetime and actually praised Abbott.  As an Opposition leader.  She still misses plenty.

WB Yeats famously opined, in the dark shadow of the Great War, that "the centre would not hold".  A much quoted line, often tinged with sadness and fear.  The sensible centre of politics might similarly wonder - whither liberal democracy in this land, as we are assailed by the forces of the dark side and there seems no leadership emerging to fight these forces?

Recent events in the Liberal Party in two states have only reinforced the once broad-church party's drift to the secular left, leaving the shrinking minority of cowed conservatives in the Party and Christians across the electorate wondering how and why this has occurred.  The Liberal Party's growing list of crimes against people of faith and against the churches is beginning to look like an agenda.  This article first appeared at politicom.com.au.

The "crucial" Upper Hunter by-election has come and gone.  There are myths, and there is the reality.  A Gladys miracle?  Not really.  There are deeper stories here.  A version of this article appeared at The Spectator Australia's Flat White.

The New South Wales Liberal-led Government recently turned ten.  Is there anything to celebrate in the Premier State?

Amanda Stoker is a Queensland Senator of immense talent, traditional views and spine.  A rare combo in the Liberal Party these days.  Naturally she has been shafted, being consigned to a lowly position on the ticket for the next election.  The result says plenty about Australian politics.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the conservatives in the Liberal Party are falling like nine pins.  What does this mean for the survival of conservative values in the Liberal Party?  A version of this article was published in The Spectator Australia.

The late Frank Devine once said, during the debate over saying "sorry", that the Aborigines should just forgive us.  In the age of the politicisation of everything, of group rights, of cancel culture and of the rejection of Christian forgiveness in public life, Frank's implied hope is forlorn.  We are unforgiven, even when we have done nothing wrong, and they are a-coming for us.

Andrew Peacock has passed away, an event accompanied by glowing tributes (inevitably, "great Australian") from the political class, present and past.  How good was Peacock?  And what, if any, were his achievements?