Abandoning classical liberalism turns the heartland teal – The Australian Financial Review

That they no longer feel at home there demonstrates the extent to which populism has successfully laid siege to the old political philosophies.

Liberal voters who desire articulate, forward-thinking policies have been taken for granted by leaders who disregard their concerns as vacant middle-class musings leaders seemingly taking advice from commentators who, with absolutely no evidence, claim a mythical new base of the Liberal Party that rejects any type of climate action exists in the outer suburbs of our capital cities. These are commentators who assert themselves as the arbiters of ideological purity, yet whose understanding of the political philosophies they guard is so incoherent one would need a translator to make sense of it.

It is a de facto assumption in too many conservative circles that net zero is bad, coal is good, LGBTIQ is bad, religiously acceptable relationships are good. You support proactive climate policy and promote the individual freedoms of marginalised groups? You obviously arent a real Liberal.

Real Liberals supposedly dont support such policies as they are the remit of starry eyed eco-luvvies.

What rubbish. It is time real Liberals stopped listening to those bastardising their partys philosophy to shroud Luddite attitudes towards progress and veil naked bigotry towards people who make them uncomfortable.

Real Liberals as friends of the free market know that there is no movement more amenable to conservation and climate action than liberalism. They know we should be supporting the private sectors desire to speed up the exit of coal from the grid, rather than forcing energy companies to keep open loss-making, coal-fired power stations (a perfect example of government overreach if there ever was one).

They know that there is enormous economic opportunity in diversifying regional industry away from mining. They know that it is lunacy to allow good environmental policy to be the partisan property of the Greens. That, as Liberals, they resonate with Burkes view of society as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead and that the greatest thing they can do is to pass on a world to their children that is sustainable and unravaged by climate change.

Real Liberals as protectors of individual liberty know that governments must fearlessly support marginalised communities so they can live free from discrimination. They know that the unhinged views on the LGBTIQ community held by reactionary darlings (particularly in relation to how LGBTIQ school students should be treated) are far-left ideas with far-right sensibilities: deeply censorious, overtly invasive of individual privacy and monocultural.

Lessons must be learnt from this loss. Dave Sharma, Trent Zimmerman, Jason Falinski, Tim Wilson and Josh Frydenberg were the future of the party. They are genuine liberals who would have been huge assets to the 47th parliament and to the country. If the Liberal Party is serious about winning back these seats, it must come to the table with a policy platform consistent with the partys philosophy.

If it doesnt, the momentum towards independents will only increase as voters lose sight of what their leaders stand for.

David Cross is CEO of the Blueprint Institute.

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Abandoning classical liberalism turns the heartland teal - The Australian Financial Review