Mr. Turnbull is Right About Something!

The Australian Prime Minister, Mr. Turnbull is currently in London and a day or so ago he said the following in a speech:

'Menzies said: 'We took 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','

Mr. Turnbull is the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, a party that is always referred to as a Conservative party, but Mr. Turnbull is quite correct the party is not Conservative. It is a party of Liberalism, once upon a time Classical Liberal, recently Right Liberalism, now moving to Left Liberalism while along the way having some genuinely Conservative moments. Mr. Turnbull thinks that Left Liberalism is the sensible centre of Australian politics, well there are only two words wrong with that!

But then to show how bad things are in Australian politics, two other Parties got on the bandwagon.

I first saw that Senator Cory Bernardi' from the Australian Conservatives had tweeted his thanks to the Prime Minister for pointing out that the Liberal Party was not Conservative. I then saw that  Senator Pauline Hanson from One Nation had put out a message "Confirmed, Malcolm Turnbull declares One Nation, Australia's largest Conservative party!", Conservatives seize on Malcolm Turnbulls centreright Liberal Party claim.

Both then used the occasion to invite Conservatives to join their respective parties. I'd love to, but.

Senator Bernardi seems to me to be a Classical Liberal, socially conservative but economically Liberal. And I'm still sadly not convinced about One Nation, it's much better on the National Question but it's not clear enough on the issue to get really excited about. They both seem Liberal lite in too many ways. I wish I was wrong, if I thought I was I would join and support one of them.

Senator Bernadi has said he supports halving Australia's immigration intake straight away, which is great!

He then spoiled it by saying that Sir Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party would today be a member of Australian Conservatives and not the Liberal Party. But here's the thing, Sir Robert named the Liberal Party the Liberal Party, he was a Classical Liberal and Classical Liberalism leads to the place we are now in. So having him as a member of your political party is a bad thing not a good thing.

It will be quite interesting to see how this plays out with a Liberal Government that has decided that it is a Left Liberal Government and that it is no different to the Labor Party on most issues.

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