Category Archives: Liberal

New federal Liberal Party president Nick Greiner plans to take Tony Abbott aside to urge him to stop stirring dissent in the Turnbull government.

The former NSW premier says the party will lose the next election if it doesn't present a unified face to the Australian public, which has watched a month of infighting led by the former prime minister.

"It is as simple and as stark as that," Mr Greiner warned on Sunday.,

He told Sky News that while the government was talking about itself, Labor and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten were "totally escaping scrutiny".

He said he planned to talk to Mr Abbott, who has been particularly vocal about the direction of the government, in the next week or so.

"I think we have got to be adults about it," he said.

"I think everyone understands a prime minister who loses his position in the way it happened has all sorts of human emotions and has responded in a particular way which is very open and public."

He concedes he doesn't have an answer, and even if he did, he has neither the power nor the capacity to implement it.

"This is for the parliamentary party," he said.

Nationals Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has expressed his frustration over the constant infighting of the Liberals, the senior partner of the governing coalition.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop can understand such frustration when the government should be focusing on the legislation it is getting through the Senate and the policies it is implementing.

"We are getting on with some very significant reforms," she told ABC television.

"And I agree with Barnaby Joyce, that's what we should be focusing on."

She can't understand why people from her own side would criticise the government's performance because all it does is drive people to Labor.

"And if Bill Shorten, by accident, becomes prime minister of this country, I think it would be very dangerous."

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Unite or face defeat: Liberal president - NEWS.com.au

The annual Social Liberal Forum conference is always nourishing for the Liberal soul. Theres always some proper intellectual heft behind its discussions and deliberations.

It takes place today in London. By the time you read this, Ill have been up since before the crack of dawn. That 6:25 flight from Edinburgh is not my favourite way to travel but I couldnt justify the cost of the sleeper. The last time I was on this particular flight, it didnt even leave until after 11.

The theme of the Conference is The Retreat from Globalisation. That takes the morning and the afternoon will include a leadership hustings (free to all Lib Dem members to attend) and a look back at the General Election.

Heres how the day will unfold:

10am: Refreshments 10.30am: Welcome 10.35am: William Beveridge Memorial Lecture Is a liberal and democratic society compatible with globalisation?,William Wallace 11.30am: Global conflict, Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman 12.10pm: Global warming, Ed Davey MP and Mark Campanale

11.30am: Universal basic income, Helen Flynn 12.10pm: What would a 21st century preamble to the Lib Dem constitution look like?, Seth Thevoz

12.50pm: Lunch

1.30pm: Leadership Q+A 2.30pm:Refreshments 2.45pm:Perspectives on the General Election, Sarah Olney, Caron Lindsay, Joyce Onstad, Daisy Cooper 3.45pm:Reflections on the General Election, David Howarth 4.30pm: Close

No doubt people will be tweeting from the event, using the hashtag #slfconf.

Well obviously have a full report in the next few days.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

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Follow the Social Liberal Forum conference today - Liberal Democrat Voice

Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mohandas Gandhi is said to have answered that it would be a good idea. Debate about liberal democracy in the Trump era is suffused with similar pessimism about Western achievement, bordering on self-damaging despair. The liberal mix of capitalism and democracy is denounced for yielding social inequality, cronyist kleptocracy and sheer governmental incompetence failings that opened the door to Donald Trumps dispiriting presidency and that may be entrenched by it in turn. In the wake of the recent Group of 20 summit, some went so far as to claim that the chief threat to Americans was not from the aggressively illiberal despots of Russia, North Korea, China or the Islamic theocracies. Rather, it was from Trump which is to say, from the perverse fruit of our own system. The enemy is us.

This intellectual bandwagon needs to be stopped. Liberalism faces two challenges on the one hand, external enemies; on the other, an internal crisis of self-confidence and it is time we all acknowledged that the external threat is more severe. However bad Trump may be, he is not Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. And although it is true that liberalism faces an internal crisis Ive done my bit to contribute to the alarmism it is worth remembering how liberalism got started two centuries ago.

As Edmund Fawcett has argued in his magisterial history of liberalism, the creed originated as a set of principles for managing bewildering change. For most of human history, economic growth and social evolution proceeded at a snails pace, but between 1776 and the first decades of the 19th century, revolutions both political and industrial caused everything to speed up. Liberalism skeptical of central power, respectful of diverse beliefs, comfortable with vigorous disagreement offered a means of handling the resulting tumult. If headlong technological and economic dislocation made political conflict unavoidable, humanity needed a way to contain it, civilize it a way to hang on to timeless standards of humanity while providing an escape valve for argument and change.

Seen in this light, todays technological and economic convulsions the part-time jobs of the gig economy, the menacing shadow of the robots are not signs that the liberal system is in crisis. To the contrary, they are signs that liberalism is more essential than ever. We are in the midst of another industrial revolution, which will create winners and losers and bitter political arguments and Trump is testament to that. Liberalism will not end these conflicts; only absolutist doctrines create political silence. But liberalism will set the rules of the game that allow the conflict to be managed. For now, Trump is expressing the frustration of a part of the country, but liberal checks and rules of process are containing the impact.

In its long history of facilitating clamorous argument, liberalism has succumbed, unsurprisingly, to repeated neuroses. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev boasted of the superiority of state-directed industrialization, telling a group of Westerners, we will bury you; some in the West made the mistake of believing him, especially when the Soviet Union launched the first-ever space satellite the following year. In the 1960s, U.S. democracy was rocked by political assassinations, violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and a bubbling up of radical challenges to the system. Amid the stagflation of the 1970s, a business school dean sounded a warning about an end-to-Western-capitalism syndrome; and no less a figure than the U.S. president lectured the nation on its moral turpitude. All these episodes generated existential crises, just as Trump today leads people to doubt the resilience of our system. But pessimists should note that liberalism emerged robustly from those moments of self-doubt.

Whats more, pessimists should remember that, if a few dice had settled differently, the current conversation would be completely different. Absent strong proof to the contrary, Trumps election must be accepted as legitimate, but a small swing in a few places would have put the status quo candidate in the White House. Similarly, Britains Brexit referendum was decided 52 to 48 percent; and a recent poll suggested that the voters now have doubts. In France, to cite a contrary example, the ambitious liberal Emmanuel Macron was lucky to face a bevy of weak opponents, and France was even luckier that Macron emerged out of nowhere, clad in white. The point is that political outcomes often hinge on quirks of fortune. None of these events should be interpreted as durable signals that liberalism is either moribund or resurgent.

Finally, it pays to remember that the two disasters that discredited the liberal establishment the 2008 financial crisis and the Iraq War were not errors that flowed from liberalism itself. There was nothing liberal about taxpayer backstops for private financial risk-taking, nor about the failure to temper the objective of Iraqi regime change with a sober calculation of available resources. These episodes do hold lessons for our democracy avoid cronyism, avoid hubris but they absolutely do not show that liberalism is wanting. To the contrary, liberalism arose during the first industrial revolution. We need it to navigate the second industrial revolution as it roils around us now.

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The crisis of confidence that's roiling liberalism - The Washington Post - Washington Post

It's not just a penchant for larrikin humour that explains former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett's comment that he's so disillusioned by the Liberal Party under Malcolm Turnbull he wants to drink whisky before 9 am.

A creeping chill threatens to paralyse a Party already in crisis. According to one Liberal insider, the position is "unsustainable."

What he means is that a Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is so riven by attacks from Turnbull's predecessor, Tony Abbott, and Turnbull's flat-lining in the polls, there will be a major eruption by Christmas.

If this scenario is born out, the "never again" mantra about another change in the Liberal Party leadership will metastasise into "here we go again."

There are no current plans to topple Turnbull, but plenty of "hypothetical" discussions. Two names that crop up are long-time Party deputy and Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, as leader, and Health Minister, and Victorian MP, Greg Hunt, as Bishop's deputy.

Neither have expressed interest privately or publicly in such a scenario. So at this stage it is no more than talk.

Moreover, Party insiders acknowledge any significant improvement in Turnbull's opinion poll standing over coming months would result in leadership spill talk disappearing as quickly as a Scotch down a thirsty gullet.

But these conversations re-surfaced among Liberal MPs and Party supporters after Malcolm Turnbull's recent London speech. This sparked internal unrest because it included a shaman-like invoking of the name of the Party's founder, Sir Robert Menzies, to support Turnbull's position as a centrist.

The unrest is likely to become pointed during a special NSW Liberal Party "Futures Convention" to be held in Rosehill, Sydney, from July 21-23. It will debate a right wing push to "democratise" pre-selections. This originated in the electorate held by the man Turnbull bulldozed out of the prime ministership Tony Abbott.

The Warringah motion calls for pre-selections in "open" federal and state seats that is, electorates without a sitting Liberal MP, or where he/she is retiring to be done with full plebiscites of Party members.

Through its proximity to Mr Abbott, this push has been identified as a key element in the destabilising proxy war between Abbott and Turnbull. The complication is that Turnbull has also backed the reform bandwagon, with the significant caveat that he will not, in the end, necessarily back the motion from Abbott's Warringah Federal Electorate Council (FEC).

A more likely prospect is a series of 20 motions which in effect support plebiscites, but where respective Federal Electorate Councils (FEC) set the rules governing the conduct of those plebiscites. These will be put to the special State Council meeting by the successful Fox Valley branch of the NSW Liberal Party which lies in the seat of Berowra, held by a leading NSW Liberal moderate, Julian Leeser.

But even if the Fox Valley approach wins through it will not be a comfortable experience for Malcolm Turnbull who will be addressing the "Futures Convention" next Saturday morning. One interested attendee will be Peter King, the onetime Liberal MP for Wentworth until Turnbull toppled him in the mother of all Liberal Party pre-selection battles in 2003.

Mr King also mouths the mantra of Party reform, and is not re-entering federal politics. He has put his own motion forward for the special NSW Liberal Party Convention, but expects the Warringah motion, or the one identified with Tony Abbott, to win through.

No matter which motion emerges from the NSW Liberal Party "Futures Convention", the paradox is that the catalyst for this latest instability is a speech by Turnbull which, despite the spin by opponents, contained nothing exceptional, surprising, original, or even overtly provocative.

Turnbull pointed out that when Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party in 1944, he "went to great pains not to call his new political party ... conservative, but rather the Liberal Party, which he firmly anchored in the centre of Australian politics."

"He wanted to stand apart from the big money, business establishment politics of traditional conservative parties of the right, as well as from the socialist tradition of the Australian Labour Party, the political wing of the union movement," Mr Turnbull said when receiving the Disraeli Prize from the influential conservative London think tank, the Policy Exchange.

"The sensible centre was the place to be. It remains the place to be."

Turnbull's London comments broadly accord with the views reflected in a 70-page report prepared for Menzies in 1944 as a political road-map for his new Liberal Party. It was written by the economic adviser to the powerful Institute of Public Affairs, Charles Kemp, father of David Kemp, Education Minister and Environment Minister in the Howard Liberal government.

Called Looking Forward, Charles Kemp's report was, writes Menzies' biographer Allan Martin, "a businessman's argument about the virtues of free enterprise". It was "not hostile to the state, but demanded agreed lines between when governments should attempt to thrust themselves forward and where they were being intrusive. What was essential, it said, was a kind of middle way."

Seventy-three years after Menzies founded the Liberal Party on the basis of that Institute of Public Affairs report, the current head of the IPA, John Roskam, says the "issue is what is his [Turnbull's] definition of what the progressive centre means." He answers that Turnbull's interpretation of the term "centre" means "bigger government" and an "excuse for higher taxes and bigger regulations."

The Turnbull government's economic policy stance contrasts with "everything he said he was going to do before becoming Prime Minister. He spoke about the evils of the mining tax. Now he is embracing something worse than that and that is the bank tax."

"That's how I see it," says Roskam

Historian Ian Hancock, who has written biographies of former Liberal prime minister John Gorton and former Liberal Attorney General Tom Hughes (father of Lucy Turnbull) points out that while Malcolm Turnbull refers to the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in his speech, "he never defines them. "

"He's like all Libs he's going back to Menzies and treating his statements as some kind of Holy Grail. But Menzies delivered" he was Prime Minister for a record 16 and a half years "because he was a pragmatist, not a philosopher."

"Menzies was never consistent" so "various factions of the Liberal Party can find support in various phrases."

Asked if Menzies would like Turnbull, Hancock replied: "If he was in a good mood he would probably say: 'Good luck to him'. He would probably approve that [Turnbull] is someone with a high background and appears to rise above everybody else."

Turnbull is, like Menzies was, a "loner, with few friends in politics. If Menzies was being honest he would probably have a degree of sympathy with someone who people on the backbench didn't like. That's something that Menzies went through himself," Hancock said.

But there are differences. Menzies was a social conservative; Turnbull is more liberal, and has supported same-sex marriage. Above all, Menzies was a devoted monarchist "I did but see her passing by, but I will love her till I die," he once intoned to Queen Elizabeth in a speech in Canberra.

Malcolm Turnbull is, or was, Australia's Mr Republic.

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Malcolm Turnbull's Liberal party feels a dread chill - The Australian Financial Review

Seven years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Chinas most famous political prisoner has died, locked away under the heavily guarded watch of the Chinese state. The New York Times:

Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil on Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him an 11-year prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010 while locked away, died on Thursday. He was 61. []

The Chinese government revealed he had liver cancer in late June only after it was virtually beyond treatment. Officially, Mr. Liu gained medical parole. But even as he faced death, he was kept silenced and under guard in a hospital in northeastern China, still a captive of the authoritarian controls that he had fought for decades.

As Bill Bishop points out in hisSinocism newsletter, Lius death will be difficult for even Beijings most dedicated apologists to spin. The last Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to be effectively killed by his own government was Carl Ossietsky, in Germany in 1938, Bishop notes. Does Xi care that the the likely precedent here for Beijing will be pre-World War II Nazi Germany?

Another question follows from that one: will the Wests newfound defenders of Xi Jinping care that the man they have anointed in the wake of the election of Donald Trump as the champion of the liberal world order drove a courageous dissident to his death? Or will they persist in the delusion that Xi is a liberal darling, content to overlook his human rights abuses so long as he delivers rhetorical paeans to globalization and needles Trump on the world stage?

Sadly, the answer is not clear. Many in the West have already proven easy marks as Xi has tried to reinvent himself as a principled defender of international values. All it took was a single speech at Davos for the plaudits to pour in: China has become the global grown-up, claimed the front cover of The Economist.Beijing would now be seen as the linchpin of global economic stability, raved Bessma Momani in Newsweek,while Trumps America [would] no longer play the role of enforcing the liberal rules and norms the country once coveted and benefited from.Susan Shirk, a former China hand in the Clinton administration, perhaps went the furthest in singing Xis praises toThe Guardian:

Lets lavish praise on them I think it was super-smart of Xi Jinping to go to Davos and give the speech More credit to him, really. []

I believe the United States actually has sponsored Chinas emergence as a constructive global power not just allowed it but really, actively encouraged it and I dont see anything bad about that. The only bad thing is that the United States is not just sitting by the sidelines, but actively subverting [the status quo].

Liu Xiaobos death should be a sobering reminder that this kind of thinking is nonsense. China is a dictatorship and a revisionist power, not a defender of liberal values or a responsible stakeholder. As the world pays tribute to Lius brave legacy of speaking truth to powerand his family remains under house arrest in China, unable to speak outacknowledging that reality is the very least we can do.

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Xi Jinping, New Defender of Liberal Order, Lets Chinese Dissident Die - The American Interest

Editors Note: The following piece originally appeared in City Journal. It is reprinted here with permission.

Since early June, when voters in Georgias sixth congressional district rubbed yet more salt in their 2016 election wounds, Democratic pols and sages have been pondering why, as Ohio congressman Tim Ryan put it, our brand is worse than Trump. Thats a low bar, given the presidents nearly subterranean approval ratings, but so far the blue party has mostly been turning to an inside-the-box set of policy and political memes: jobs programs, talk of a mutiny against House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, and better marketing or, in Ryans words, branding of the Democratic message.

Whats missing from this list is the most important and most challenging item of all: solving the liberal deplorable problem. The white working class that hoisted Donald Trump to an unexpected victory may not always admire the man, but they know that he doesnt hate people like me, in the pollsters common formulation. And they have good reason to think that Democrats, particularly coastal and media types, do hate them: Consider Frank Richs snide and oft-cited article, No Sympathy for the Hillbilly. Its possible that white working-class voters would back a party filled with people who see them as racists and misogynists, with bad values and worse taste, because they all want to raise taxes on Goldman Sachs executives, but it seems a risky bet.

So its worth noting that a few prominent liberal writers have been venturing out of the partisan bunker and calling attention to the deplorable issue over the past few months. In late May, for instance, progressive stalwart Michael Tomasky, former editor of Guardian America and now of Democracy, published an article frankly titled Elitism is Liberalisms Biggest Problem in the New Republic. The West Virginia native called the chasm between elite liberals and middle America...liberalisms biggest problem. The issue has nothing to do with policy, Tomasky writes. Its about different sensibilities; bridging the gulf is on us, not them. To most conservatives, Tomaskys depiction of Middle Americans will seem cringingly obvious. The group tends to be churchgoers (Not temple. Church), they dont think and talk politics from morning till night, and, yes, theyre flag-waving patriots. Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum, an influential though occasionally heterodox liberal, seconded the argument.

A more complex analysis of liberal elitism comes from Joan Williams, a feminist law professor whose best-known previous book is Unbending Gender. In White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Williams takes her fellow liberal professionals to the woodshed for their indifference to the hard-knock realities of working-class life and for their blindness to the shortcomings of their own cosmopolitan preferences. Married to the Harvard-educated son of a working-class family, Williams is astute about the wide disparities between liberal and white-working-class notions of the meaning of work, family, community, and country. One of her proposals for solving class cluelessness is a conservative favorite: reviving civics education.

A final recent example of deplorable-dtente comes from Atlantic columnist Peter Beinarts How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration. Noting that the unofficial open-borders philosophy of the Democratic party is far more radical than the restrictionist immigration policy it espoused just a few decades ago, the former New Republic editor acknowledges that there is more than nativist bigotry behind white-working-class immigration concerns. He concedes that mass immigration may have worked to the disadvantage of blue-collar America by lowering wages for low-skilled workers and undermining social cohesion. Beinart concludes by dusting off a concept that liberals currently hate: assimilation. Liberals should be celebrating Americas diversity less, and its unity more, he writes.

These writers are engaging in healthy critical self-reflection, but in the course of describing the Democrats class dilemma, the liberal truth-tellers unwittingly show why a solution lies out of reach. They understate Democrats entanglement with the identity-politics left, a group devoted to a narrative of American iniquity. Identity politics appeals to its core constituents through grievance and resentment, particularly toward white men. Consider some reactions to centrist Democrat John Ossoffs defeat in Georgias sixth district. Maybe instead of trying to convince hateful white people, Dems should convince our base ppl of color, women to turn out, feminist writer and Cosmopolitan political columnist Jill Filopovic tweeted afterward. At some point we have to be willing to say that yes, lots of conservative voters are hateful and willing to embrace bigots. Insightful as she is, even Williams assumes that all criticisms of the immigration status quo can be chalked up to fear of brown people.

No Democrat on the scene today possesses the Lincolnesque political skills to persuade liberal voters to give up their assumptions of white deplorability, endorse assimilation, or back traditional civics education. In the current environment, a Democratic civics curriculum would teach that American institutions are vehicles for the transmission of white supremacy and sexism, hardly a route to social cohesion. As for assimilation, Hispanic and bilingual-education advocacy organizations would threaten a revolt and theyd only be the first to sound the alarm.

Appeasing deplorables may yet prove unnecessary, though. Democrats strategy of awaiting inevitable demographic change in the electorate, combined with the hope that Trump and the Republican Congress will commit major unforced errors, may allow the party to regain control of the country without making any concessions to the large portion of the U.S. population whom they appear to despise.

READ MORE: A Democratic Blind Spot on Culture The Democrats Resistance Temptation Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Shrinking Democratis Brand

Kay S. Hymowitzis aCity Journalcontributing editor, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author ofThe New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back.

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Can Democrats Make Nice with the 'Deplorables'? - National Review

In the final few weeks of the last Liberal Democrat leadership race, there was a sudden outbreak of unease in the partys upper echelons about their incoming leader, Tim Farron.Their worries? That Norman Lamb, his opponent, had been too soft on Farrons voting record on equality issues and on reproductive rights, and that their soon-to-be leader would be cruelly exposed on that front during an election campaign.

Now the same worries are gripping the party as they elect a replacement for Tim Farron. Senior Liberal Democrats and party activists are concerned both at the lack of a contest Vince Cable is running unopposed and at the candidate.

Driving their fears about the former is that not having a proper contest means that the post-mortem about the 2017 election result is being neglected. There is a lively debate even about whether or not the 2017 election was a good night or a bad one for the Liberal Democrats. On the good night side, the party gained 12 seats, and got within shouting distance in a further five. But on the bad night side, others point out that the party lost votes even on its dismal 2015 showing. It is in third place in 15 of the 57 seats it held in 2010, and fourth in a further six. (It came fifth in Bradford West, but that result was partly because the Liberal Democrat former MP, David Ward, ran as an independent, coming third.)

Those who believe it was a bad night are further divided over why it was a bad night. Some solely blame Farron for what one candidate describes as a fucking catastrophe, while others believe that the wider context of the election. One of the anti-Farronistas puts it like this: We had a problem where no one wanted to give him a hard time on the God-bothering [in the leadership race], but obviously Labour and the Conservatives had no such qualms, so instead of dealing with it internally our election campaign became a theology seminar.

They say that Farron hurt the party badly with its longstanding LGBT vote and that the conversation about sin crowded out their message, and alienated possible Labour converts.You clearly had at this election a lot of people who did not want to vote for Corbyn or May, one Liberal Democrat says, We should have been the natural home for them, but Tim turned them off, and because we looked like a wasted vote, we got smashed everywhere.

Some believe that the problem was not Farron, but timing. The partys anti-Brexit message, they believe, will grow in its appeal but the consequences of Britains Out vote are not yet keenly felt and the reality of Labours commitment to a harder exit from the European Union has not yet made itself felt among Remain-supporting voters.

But for another group, the problem is that first-past-the-post means that Remainers will never be able to desert Labour in sufficient numbers to benefit the Liberal Democrats. They believe the party needs a complete rethink of its approach. We still seem to have this attitude of if we wait in the middle, they will come to us, one says.

There are also growing concerns about Cable himself. My colleague Anooshs interview with him made headlines because of his comment that Theresa Mays citizens of nowhere speech channelled Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf, but his remark that race and gender isnt an issue any more is the one that has left party members feeling irritable, particularly because many members were excited about the possibility of electing their first woman leader.

Also alarming senior Liberal Democrats are what some see as his excessive candour. Yesterday, Cable told journalists that Britains Brexit vote was primarily driven by elderly voters worried about Turks coming to their villages and people outside first-tier cities.

I agree with him, one said, But how are we going to win Yeovil without elderly voters? What seats are we going to gain in cities? Labour has a lock on those now.It just feels like hes going for voters who will never support us. I think were making a terrible mistake.

Not all are of that view. I think were in the brilliant position where we have four people who could have made a great leader, and Vince is one, says one former Liberal Democrat MP.Now if you look at the Tories, they cant find anyone better than Theresa May.

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We're making a terrible mistake: why Liberal Democrats are starting to worry - New Statesman

Craig Kelly spoke ahead of a meeting of state and federal energy ministers to discuss the clean energy target (CET) proposed in the Finkel review. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Renewable energy will kill people this winter, Craig Kelly, the chair of the Coalitions backbench environment and energy committee has claimed.

Kelly, a Liberal backbencher, said the deaths would be caused by people not being able to afford to heat their homes in winter. He blamed rising fuel costs on the governments renewable energy target.

People will die, he told ABC radio on Thursday.

Kelly, MP for Hughes in New South Wales, cited recent reports that one-in-four Australian households this winter will be frightened to turn on the heater due to high power prices. He also said the World Health Organisation has made it clear that winter mortality rates increase if people cant afford to heat their homes.

Most of that research, however, was done in Europe, where winters can be much colder. Some work done in Australia by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare found that at least some of the excess deaths in winter in Australia were caused by heating.

There are $3bn this year being paid in subsidies for renewable energy, that pushes up the price of electricity to the consumer, Kelly said.

That claim, however, is contradicted by the Abbott governments Warburton review of the renewable energy target which found the scheme was putting downward pressure on prices.

And it contradicts the conclusion of most industry groups, the Finkel review and many other reports finding the key driver of high power prices is policy uncertainty, which is driving down investment in new generation and allowing expensive gas-fired power plants to dominate the market.

Labors energy spokesman, Mark Butler, accused Kelly of scaremongering.

This is another appalling intervention, not just by a backbencher, but by the chair of the Coalitions energy policy committee.

Butler conceded households and businesses are facing high power and gas bills, but he put that down to policy paralysis at the national level.

Kellys comments come ahead of a meeting of state and federal energy ministers in Brisbane on Friday to discuss recommendations for change from the chief scientist, Prof Alan Finkel.

Every state in the national electricity market has either expressly stated their support, or hinted at their support, for the clean energy target (CET) proposed in the Finkel review but the federal minister for energy and the environment, Josh Frydenberg, has said the government will not support the CET at Fridays meeting.

Victoria and South Australia have said that if the federal government doesnt provide leadership, the states might go ahead and try to implement the CET without them.

Modelling shows the CET would put significant downward pressure on the price of electricity, specifically by introducing a lot of cheap renewable electricity, along with enough storage.

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Liberal MP says people will die of cold because renewable energy drives up fuel prices - The Guardian

Human-rights activist Seyran Ates, left, chats with colleagues ahead of Friday prayers during the opening of the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in June 2017. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Sheikh Atef Asker, head of Egypts Al Azhar mosque and university often referred to as the foremost Sunni institution worldwide said that the Berlin mosque does not follow the true path of Islamic methodology.

Allah, peace be upon him, has ordered us to have the prayer led by a man and not a woman. It's not about being strict or not, it's about following an order, Sheikh Asker told NBC News.

Meanwhile, Egypts Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, a state-run Islamic institution assigned to issue religious edicts, also

While only a few worshippers attended Friday prayers on the official media day, Ates said that the interest from liberal Muslims in her mosque has been significant" and that it has welcomed 20 to 30 regular followers, including several recently arrived refugees.

We also have refugees approach us, who say that many of the traditional mosques here are too conservative, too radical, too orthodox, Ates said, referring to the recent influx of nearly a million refugees from Muslim countries such as Syria and Iraq into Germany.

She said that the mosque and the work of her group is sending a signal in the fight against Islamist terror.

Coincidentally, her institution is only a few blocks away from

To show that "Islam is peaceful" and that many Muslims are open to change, Mohammad Moshiri, an Iranian writer and poet, joined the Friday prayers.

"We should not surrender our religion to fundamentalists," said the 60-year-old Moshiri, who also works as an integration representative in Berlin. "Seyran Ates is very courageous, we need to support her."

The taboo-breaking mosque will stay open despite the death threats and strong criticism, Ates vowed. It is now cooperating with local schools and plans to offer Quran and Arabic language classes in the future.

Our vision, our dream is to one day have our own building with rooms for Sunnis, Alawites, Shiites and Sufis, and one room where they then can all come together for religious encounters, Ates said, naming four sects of Islam.

But there should also be a place for inter-religious dialogue that would even invite people who do not believe in God, she said.

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Berlin's First 'Liberal Mosque' and Its Female Leader Fight for 'Modern' Islam Despite Threats - NBCNews.com

Factionalism is alive and well in the Liberal Party.

But the factions themselves are fractured almost beyond identification.

The Liberal Party's factions have historically been identified as "wets" and "dries", or "moderates" and "conservatives".

Some MPs and grassroots members embrace the label "conservative" with all the passion of their UK equivalents.

The moderates are less likely to use their label, but more often call themselves "pragmatic" or "progressive".

Malcolm Turnbull sought to use a speech in London this week to map out where he sits and how he sees the Liberal Party.

However, the leaked paragraphs of the speech offered a blunt point out of context (for the newspapers which received the handout) and became quickly caught up in the quagmire that is the Turnbull-Abbott leadership cold war.

Turnbull was trying to say the party can have its differences of opinion on things like social policy and how far to go on economic and budget reform.

But the party comes together, as founder Sir Robert Menzies said, under the name "Liberal ... because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea."

He noted Abbott had spoken about the "sensible centre".

But the former prime minister failed to demonstrate it in practice.

Voters reacted sharply to Abbott's "knights and dames" decision and the harsh measures in the 2014 budget.

And while his decision to roll out a plebiscite on same-sex marriage is now popular after being embraced by Turnbull, it was initially seen as a way of kicking the issue down the road and giving political cover for social conservatives to argue against the law change.

Coalition MPs are now more likely to factionalise around regional and state interests, or issues such as climate change, than ideology.

Queensland members routinely meet when parliament is sitting to talk about taking a united view on certain issues and even projects that require funding.

South Australian members have the ear of the prime minister via Christopher Pyne, who as defence industry minister has a multi-billion-dollar bucket of money to throw around and has been staunch in arguing to protect steel jobs.

Turnbull has used SA's energy crisis as a political weapon in his bid to cobble together a climate policy by another name - aimed at pushing down power prices, making energy more reliable while cutting emissions.

There are also groupings around personalities, with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Treasurer Scott Morrison enjoying a certain level of popular support but not enough to swing the leadership at this point.

While some Liberals delight in working the numbers within the party and seeking to seize the advantage, others are happy to get on with the daily drudge of electorate work - seeking pragmatic answers to voters' concerns.

Some party veterans like Tasmania's Eric Abetz are adamant it needs the two "rails".

"The Liberal Party is and has always been a train running on small-l liberal and conservative tracks - unless both are tended to the whole train will derail," he says.

Without giving space for economic dries and social conservatives, voters will go elsewhere - and they are.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation and Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives are capitalising on the rise of the small-l liberals championed by Turnbull.

Labor is the beneficiary of this, not only because voters see a divided Liberal Party but One Nation preferences have tended to naturally split evenly between Labor and the Liberals.

Unfortunately for Turnbull, who has trailed in the polls since September last year, he's about to see another public outbreak of factionalism.

The NSW division's party futures convention towards the end of July will debate changing the rules governing the way candidates and party officials are elected.

Abbott and junior minister Angus Taylor lead a group seeking greater democracy, to whittle away at the power of the party organisation's moderate elite.

Turnbull wants change, but not in the way Abbott is proposing and the final outcome will be a compromise of which direction to take to greater democratisation.

The prime minister will be hoping the party can unify around the final result, but that hope may be undermined by a fraction too much faction.

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Turnbull prays for broad Liberal church - NEWS.com.au