Conservatives, Christians and the Coming Election

This new book on ScoMo is a must read:

Now that Australians know when the next federal election is taking place (May 21), the more seasoned political observers among us may not be all that excited – certainly if they are Christians who are also conservatives. Picking between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is not a very exciting prospect.

And those of us who have been around for a while know that a change of government can often result in little change in actual substance and policy. Australia increasingly has only centre-left major parties now, with few real conservative options available. Thus one can become a bit cynical.

Indeed, many will be all rather jaded at the moment. As Alexandra Marshall recently tweeted: “Labor and Liberal political campaigns be like: ‘We locked you in your home for months. Ruined your businesses. Destroyed the economy. Created a new system of medical discrimination and segregation. Traumatised your children. Now, we will go head-to-head offering “free stuff!”’.”

Of interest, both leaders – ScoMo and Albo – are now trying to convince people they actually are conservatives. Morrison says he knows what a woman is. Well, that is a good start. And Labor is trying to reinvent Albanese, claiming he is a ‘fiscally conservative moderate’. But given that the other day he could not even tell us what the jobless rate and cash rate were, this is not very reassuring.

A new book also takes a dim view of the options – at least one of the two main parties. A political party tends to be only as good as its current leader. If the leader is not up to speed, the party suffers. That is how Perth law professors Augusto Zimmermann and Rocco Loiacono see Scott Morrison in their new book. Deconstructing ScoMo (Locke Press, 2022). Australians will find the book here: https://lockepress.com/deconstructing_scomo/

As is mentioned in the Preface:

This book is a collection of articles and essays published over the course of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership, with the majority focussing on the years 2020 and 2021. These pieces, written in the main by Professor Augusto Zimmermann and published in various online and print outlets and edited for this book, deal not only with Scott Morrison’s handling of Covid-19, but with many issues that are critically important to those who would traditionally consider themselves Liberal voters, namely: freedom of speech, religious freedom, individual liberty, fiscal discipline, the rise of China, wokeism, the climate change cult, and so on.

Image of Deconstructing ScoMo: Critical Reflections on Australia’s 30th Prime Minister
Deconstructing ScoMo: Critical Reflections on Australia’s 30th Prime Minister by Loiacono, Rocco (Author), Zimmermann, Augusto (Author) Amazon logo

Chapter One begins this way: “The Australian Labor Party hasn’t been the party for blue-collar battlers for a very, very long time. Instead, this is the party for group interests pushing such things as state-sanctioned abortion on demand, assisted suicide, the LGBTIQPAX+ agenda, radical environmentalism, etc. However, in many ways the Liberal Party is not so different.”

Most of the book’s 20 chapters deal with freedom and how it has taken a hammering over recent years. Morrison is not alone in weakening our liberties – be they religious freedom or free speech or even the rule of law – but he has done little to strengthen them, argue the authors.

The handling – or mishandling – of Covid has been a major case in point. Chapters 16-20 deal directly with this issue. The authors say that the National Cabinet set up to deal with this has done far more harm than good, and the states were able to get away with murder (sometimes literally) in their incompetence and deplorable and heavy-handed lockdowns. And ScoMo basically was unable or unwilling to rein in these despotic state premiers.

An entire chapter is devoted to one of the worst premiers in the country when it comes to all this: Dan Andrews of Victoria. Yes, other premiers have also been quite shocking, but Dan may take the cake here. My own website has featured many dozens of articles on the hell-hole that Victoria has become under his reign of terror.

The case of pastor Paul Furlong being imprisoned for daring to keep his church open is mentioned. Says Zimmermann:

But while the men and women of the cloth disappoint in shrinking from defying the state and its VicPol enforcers, my disappointment is more pronounced in the case of one prominent Christian leader in particular. I speak of Prime Minister Scott Morrison. While his fellow believers in Victoria see their most basic rights violated, Mr Morrison simply refuses to criticise the Andrews government in the name of supporting “national leadership unity”.

And then we had the pregnant mother arrested in her own home in her pyjamas in front of her little children by Andrews’ henchmen: “How can our system of representative government be reconciled with police bursting into private homes to arrest a mother in front of her children because of a Facebook message? Under the Victorian government, writes Greg Sheridan, ‘all the mechanisms of democratic accountability have virtually disappeared … Victoria has become a dysfunctional one-party state with a mostly compliant local media’.”

The chapter finishes this way: “Premier Andrews is an authoritarian ruler, no doubt about it, and the Prime Minister is effectively empowering and facilitating his arbitrary government. Indeed, the Morrison Government is actively financing and assisting these draconian lockdown measures that have inflicted great pain and suffering to the people of Victoria.”

Yes quite right. As a Victorian resident I have had to live through all this hellishness. Voters should not forget how complicit ScoMo was in all of this. Instead of standing up to these state dictators, he simply aided and abetted them. So much for strong and decisive Liberal leadership.

In the book’s Conclusion we read:

Contrast Morrison with Liberal leaders like John Howard and Tony Abbott, who stood out for their conviction. For most of his public life, Howard affirmed how he was inspired by Reagan and Thatcher’s conservatism. Their success in government centred on the implementation of core conservative ideals: lower taxes, smaller government, reward for individual effort, defence of the family and the importance of: national sovereignty, the rule of law and, above all, individual liberty.

The book’s final paragraph sums things up: “When you look at its record, the Morrison government is like Seinfeld, a show about nothing (but without the laughs). It hasn’t achieved anything of significance in three terms that you would expect a centre-right government worthy of the term to achieve. Why would it achieve anything in a fourth?”

One complaint that can be offered here is that while these chapters make for a good demolition job of ScoMo, and a good summary of his many failures and shortcomings as a ‘conservative and Christian’ leader, we have nothing offered by way of replacement. – especially in light of the upcoming election.

Zimmermann did quit his membership of the Liberal Party a while ago, and he would certainly not encourage us to vote for Albo and the Greens. But which way forward? The reader is left all rather discouraged in this regard. Elsewhere Zimmermann has highlighted the importance of smaller conservative parties and conservative independents as the way to go. A chapter on this would have been useful.

And of course to be fair, a book on Albanese could also have been penned to help round out the picture. But a book like Deconstructing ScoMo is certainly necessary. Voters – especially conservative and Christian voters – have a right to know that a politician who claims to be conservative and Christian will in fact deliver in this regard. As this book carefully demonstrates, for the most part ScoMo has not.

My take on this election is that both major parties are bad news, in good measure because both are moving leftwards and both are trying to out-woke each other. About the only ‘positive’ thing we can say about the election to be held next month is this: a Labor/Greens win would be even worse than a Liberal/National win.

(Locke Press is a sponsor of CultureWatch. If you use this unique code when you order a book (“culturewatch”) you will get 10% off the RRP.)

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16 Replies to “Conservatives, Christians and the Coming Election”

  1. Hi Bill,
    thanks for the article highlighting the similarities between the liberal and labour parties.
    As far as I’m concerned they’ve had their chance and have proven to me that if left in their hands this country will become a dystopian hell hole.
    I’ll be putting the major parties dead last and the freedom parties and any decent independents above them.
    I’m praying for a significant swing away from the majors.

  2. I am also believing for a swing against the major parties. Thank you for this book review – well worth a read.

  3. My biggest criticism of the Prime Minister is that he seems to want to avoid confrontation and trys to appease all groups. A real leader leads irrespective of who he puts off side. Still the best advice on this election comes from Martyn Isles from the ACL. Basically vote for individuals and not parties. Vote for those who more closely align to our beliefs irrespective of the party they belong to.

  4. Thanks Bill for advice about the upcoming Federal election and here is a 14″ video on Topher Field demonstrating how to defeat the major parties using the Preferential Voting System.
    https://youtu.be/zLS3IfC-i6I

  5. I agree with you and all who have commented here Bill – shrug your shoulders at them. Clive Palmer is putting HIS money where his mouth is, and that is $150,000,000.00 in total over this election and the last. Small government, tick, business, tick etc. General Pinochet was onto it, keep the dignity of the ENTIRE civilian population front and center. Something VicPol as well as Canberra need to wake up to!

  6. Ken Triantifillis’ comment “Vote for those who more closely align to our beliefs irrespective of the party they belong to.” is sound advice. The only problem I see with that approach is that if the candidate belongs to one of the major parties, they are pretty much bound by party policy, and may have little opportunity for their beliefs to have any real influence.

  7. Voting for “freedom parties” and even “decent independents” is a recipe for instability. All the independents are left leaning. The minor parties have no chance of getting anybody elected to the House of Reps. The choice is clear: vote Liberal/National. These parties are influenced by Christians and Conservatives. Morrison is a Christian. Just don’t vote or preference Labor. I doubt there is even one Christian in their ranks. At least when I was there there were a few and some fine Independents like the late Brian Harradine.

  8. This article says Victoria is a hell hole ruled by D Andrews. I definitely agree and will tell you why.
    Its strangely worrying that a once free state turns to a police state, how the status quo of its citizens rights get trampled on by freaky, heavy handed power hungry legislators.
    I’ve heard chatter recently from people who say their information sources are impeccable {ho hum} that doctors, nurses and others involved in vaccine administration and hospital care have been muzzled from making adverse comments about the short and long term effects of the vaccines. The muzzling I believe has reached as far as to newspaper executives.
    If this has any foundation then its plainly obvious we are under despotic and a dictatorial Victorian government is returning from a trip to China.
    He got a whiff of communistic power and that really excited him, With the pandemic it presented him with clear air to enforce his draconian laws on a hapless Victorian population. Andrews now has sleepless nights lusting for greater power.
    The opposition should be applying the blow torch to Victorian government because what future is awaiting us lemmings if we are all marching to the dictators drum.

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