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“”We chose the word 'Liberal' because we want to be a progressive party, in no way conservative, in no way reactionary.

—Sir Robert Menzies, Afternoon Light (1967)

The Liberal Party of Australia is a political party founded in 1944, replacing the pre-war United Australia Party. It was founded as a reaction to the Australian Labor Party. This is not a cheap, partisan opinion but a historical truth; their most significant achievements are all about dismantling other people's achievements.

The Liberal Party has never won a majority in their own right. It is in a semi-permanent coalition with the rural-based People Who Think Shepherd's Pie Is Too Ethnic National Party of Australia. The Nats receive roughly the same number of votes as the Greens, but wield many times that in terms of political power. The arrangement is so close, in fact, that the two operate virtually as one party (LNP), and in fact, have already amalgamated in the state of Queensland. Because most of their members are in bed with the coal mining industry, the press have nicknamed them the Coal-lition. Look on the bright side: We may destroy the planet, but fortunately, we'll be making a lot of money for a few wealthy people.

The not-so-Liberal Party

“”We just believe it's another cost on our economy that will have an impact on our international competitiveness.

—Sen. Matthias Cormann on paid leave for domestic violence victims

Contrary to the American sense of the word, the Liberal Party occupies the far-right. When the party was founded in the 1940s, the term "liberal" referred to liberty in general, as opposed to communism. Now it refers to economic liberalism...which is just Thatcherism painted beige.

The LNP is not "liberal" in the European sense, either. To wit, the Liberals have an environment minister who actively allows harm to the environment, in the same way they have a science minister who is hostile to scientists, an immigration minister who despises immigrants, a minister to women who is a misogynist, a treasurer who knows nothing about economics, an education minister who is doing his best to retard education, a communications minister who allowed the failure of fiber optic internet, as well as a social services minister who is anti-gay. Coalition titles make much more sense if you remember to insert "against" into the role.

Liberals aren't as religious as the GOP, reflecting the secularism of Australian culture—though that may be changing. Former Prime Minister John Howard opened the megachurch Hillsong Convention Centre in 2002. Another PM, Tony Abbott, is a devout Catholic who opposes abortion and climate science. And there are plenty of MPs who are anti-gay pro-traditional marriage, pro-life, and virulently hostile towards Muslims. But without the backing of an all-powerful arms industry, they are not as trigger-happy as neo-cons.

Factions

It has two wings: the social conservatives (derisively known as "DelCons", though they wear it as a badge), and the moderates.

• The Libs are your typical right-wing outfit: big business throws a bone to the religious crazies to get their votes. Under PM Howard, and his Lyons Forum cronies, the tail began to wag the dog. DelCons do not engage in discussion, they derive simple talking points from focus groups to further their agenda. Everything from "Children Overboard", "Alert But Not Alarmed", "Great Big Tax On Everything", "Stop the Boats", etc., in a manner reminiscent of "Reds Under the Bed" or "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Trying to find logic or consistency in their statements is an exercise in futility. Their real agenda (ancap wishlist for a broken society) is so unpalatable that they would never actually come out and say it.

This is a party infected with a 'born to rule' mentality. Their leadership has been catastrophic and would be even worse if they weren't so inept at negotiating with the Senate. They can't get anything through because the government can't or won't compromise. It's very Australian to complain about US trends while at the same time copying from their playbook.

• The "small-l" liberals would fit in with Cameron's UK or Harper's Canada. They are very much opposed to the welfare state and social democracy as a whole. This, at least, is an issue which both sides can agree on. It gives them something to fight against, other than climate change, gay marriage, republicanism, etc., all of which are disaster zones for the party; because any time they address them, they end up contradicting themselves, offending the public, or both. There's a bit of a cold war playing out right now between the Corporate faction of the LNP and the Christian faction, because the Corporates are encroaching on the sacred social policy turf.

John Howard was (and is) the most extravagant of Prime Ministers, but you'd never know it from reading the gutter press. During the Howard years, unemployment was going down, and growth was strong. That was the time to increase taxes, not hand out $380 billion to "battlers" to invest in new homes (with historically high interest rates to curb inflation in house prices). Whereas now, unemployment is rising and growth is slow, so the government should be increasing spending, not decreasing it. But Australians are now addicted to their middle-class welfare.. The government has borrowed to the hilt, so everyone is worried about the irrelevant budget deficit. The two main parties seem totally clueless about this and will cause a significant recession just trying to get a surplus.

Fracture

“” I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze! Drive them into utter submission! And when we've crushed these people enough, I'll send in you, Bernardi! They'll cheer you as a rescuer, lovely Bernardi, really a lovely boy.

—Baroness Harkonnen

Malcolm Turnbull was elected to drag his party out of the wilderness it was led to by Abbott. The Coalition is coming apart at the seams because they haven't resolved the internal rift between the centre-right (personified by Turnbull) and the wingnuts who had a taste of power under Abbott—and who, believe it or not, can't let go of the idea that "We Need Tony". Malcolm's either going to get toppled by the right (again), or he's going to start losing appeal with the general public (already started—but it's only rumblings at present, rather than the collapse it's likely to turn into).

Another reason for it is this: One Nation is back in parliament. The pro-business wing is vastly outnumbered on the ground by Trump-lite supporters, old and young. Now the Liberals have to throw bones to those Senators to pass stuff like tax and welfare cuts. The "uglies", a hard-right faction founded by a former collaborator in New South Wales, have also recently regrouped.

There's talk of the DelCons, led by Senator Bernardi, ditching the Coalition to go form a Trumpian political party: the Australian Conservatives Party. Bernardi, like Abbott, sees himself as a culture warrior and one of the last true defenders of conservative values, unlike his morally-flexible kin. Meanwhile, Gina the Hutt and her right-wing allies wants their taxes cut, wages obliterated, and their kleptocratic model to become a reality by piggybacking on the populist sentiment. They are not pulling strings in the shadows as usual.

Policies

Let them eat coal

See the main article on this topic: War on science

“”Far from enjoying the hero status that normally would go to an industry overcoming the odds to be a world-beater, mining has been treated rather shabbily in Australia. We do not give much attention to the contribution of mining in the school curriculum. Students in modern Australian schools are more likely to learn about mining as a threat to the environment than an industry that underpins living standards.

—Peter Costello

Queensland is the North Korea of climate change, forever rattling an empty scabbard in return for scraps and ridicule. That's why CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) has been so savagely cut to the bone. They were on the verge of marketing printable solar cells (which are cheaper than coal-fired plants), a burgeoning industry to make up for the end of the mining boom. Better cut their funding immediately.

CSIRO is also home to Australia's wireless, gravitational wave, and 3D-printing research. Now they're left shuffling money around and laying off workers ("efficiency dividends") under both parties; not just cuts, but creating uncertainty about projects that are decades in the making, and allowing $120m worth of scientists to get poached overseas where they are valued and paid well. (There's a reason CSIRO started selling diet books.) The guy "appointed" as head of CSIRO by the Abbott government is a waste of space. He openly admitted to believing in water divining and stated that it's something CSIRO should be looking into. But it's gotten serious enough that in 2014 they found themselves unable to attend scientific conferences (even via satellite), and in 2015 they were even struggling to pay bills.

Later, Turnbull was forced to decimate the climate research departments by the eco-Luddites in his cabinet. To be fair to the Coalition, the CSIRO may tell them things that are at odds with their policy goals.

That's an ad from the Minerals Council of Australia, authorised by "G. Evans of Canberra." The Minerals Council is just a lobbying group which is named for something quasi-governmental; all they want to do is to pay as little tax as possible. Gareth Evans is Chancellor of Australian National University and a former Foreign Affairs minister under Labor. Though opposed to nuclear power, Professor Evans is a powerful ally to coal. It's thanks to his intervention that ANU did not divest from fossil fuels. So not only are taxpayers paying for this propaganda, but ANU staff and students are indirectly supporting Big Coal.

Meanwhile, climate science says that 80% of coal has to stay in the ground to avoid reaching the 2C warming threshold.

Housing Ponzi scheme

“”Asset bubbles are like a Ponzi scheme—everything is fine until the cash dries up and asset prices stop rising. Like it or not, we are exposed to the Chinese property bubble.

—Malcolm Turnbull in 2010

The Liberals live in an affluence bubble wherein they calmly try to explain that the housing crisis doesn't exist, and a basic need (a requirement for workers which supports their employment) will be better off as poker chips on the international market.

Turnbull frequently talks about increasing supply to address affordability, which would make more sense if there was an actual supply problem. Housing bubbles are seldom popped by construction because they're really land bubbles. If you knock down a house and build condominiums, all you do is increase the price of the land underneath. This idea that unaffordable housing is caused by a lack thereof is neoliberal dogma (cite figures, they'll just say work harder), but there is an interesting experiment going on in Melbourne/Sydney to see who's right.

Also, if you break the union and reduce the construction price by 30%, it won't make the buildings cheaper, it will just increase the developers' profits.

Negative gearing

Wikipedia has a whole section dedicated to Australia in the "Negative gearing" article. They seem to be the only country that's dumb enough to do it. The Hawke Government abolished it in 1985, but wussed out two years later because the move was (incorrectly) linked to rising rents in Sydney and Melbourne. Now it's kind of an accepted fact that it keeps rents lower. Labor's negative gearing plan was sensible; no need for a 50% tax rebate (basically a loan) to invest in property. If you can't afford to pay for five properties without negative gearing, then. You know. Maybe you shouldn't own five properties.

The Liberals seem to be arguing that no one who gambles on a house should ever lose money. It's now the government's business to protect real-estate speculators from all risk. There have been lots of state-backed incentives to inflate the bubble a bit further: tax-free superannuation, grants, interest-free loans. They continually tells us that foreign investors aren't having a distortionary effect on the market, but the minute it looks like the investors might leave, they suddenly need to change the law. The horrible alternative is that local families could step in and buy them at a reasonable and equitable rate. But the Government sees the folly of this, and has made sure it won't be a problem.

Real estate is the biggest scam this government ever pulled. Taxes are being used to prop up other peoples' speculative investments at the expense of taxable income, affordable housing, and share ownership. (Investing in the housing market means fewer people investing in business, so growth plummets.) And who owns the most houses? The rich.

How can we sleep while our boats are burning?

See the main article on this topic: Arbitrary detention

“”The tragic events of the 11th of September have changed our lives, they have caused us to take pause and think about the values we hold in common with the American people [...] we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations. But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

—PM John Howard, 2001 Federal Election Campaign Launch Speech

Manus Island regional processing facility, Papua New Guinea (2012).

John Howard took thousands of the world's unwanted people (war refugees) and stuck them in crowded, confined detention centres with no timeline for being released. The military was effectively forced to become a coast guard and, in some cases, were told not to rescue leaky vessels until they sunk (which skirted navy protocol). Part of the reason why they detained people in Papua New Guinea and Nauru is that Australian law does not apply, much like Guantanamo Bay. They've had minimal mental health support, and are targeted for abuse by guards.

The risk could be mitigated if immigration would put proper support structures in place, but put simply, you can't trust them to do anything more than find another island and dump 800 more refugees in a tent city before washing their hands of whatever happens afterwards. According to the government, the prospect of indefinite years in detention—coupled with the uncertainty of not knowing which country you'll be dumped in—is enough of a deterrent, particularly if the lifetime ban is passed. Apparently there's a risk that they might become "economic migrants" and milk the social services, way worse little emperors who take advantage of exchange rates

Howard let the genie out of the bottle, and now it seems the issue will never go away. Every time Labour "puts the issue to bed" by endorsing the latest bit of LNP foulness, the Libs take another step to the right. There are no depths they won't sink to so they can look "tough" on asylum seekers,, e.g. turning Immigration from a rather bland department into a paramilitary organisation run by a bunch of morale-sucking sociopaths who could never cut it in a real army, and who answer directly to a government minister and are not accountable to anyone.

According to the Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, Labor's immigration policy was to blame for the Sydney stabbings. Now the spud is going even further back in time to find fault: Malcolm Fraser (LNP '75-'83) is to blame as well. Dutton is referring to the descendants of Vietnamese and Lebanese refugees who were used to branch-stack Liberal seats for the last 30 years. Fraser supported their integration because they were anti-Communist and safety Liberal. For reference, the Governor of South Australia is a Vietnamese refugee. How much more can somebody assimilate?

Abbott seems to have learned from Howard the art of making carefully-calibrated statements and stoking "mortgage belt" prejudices. You might not agree with everything Labor has done, but the fact the '13 election boiled down to "Boat People" showed they really hadn't done anything catastrophically wrong that Abbott could pounce on. But if you read the newspapers, they would have you believe the country was 5 minutes away from sinking into the ocean. Abbott's policy planks were deeply unimportant when considered objectively, but they were good emotional strings to pull:

We saw yesterday on our screens a very sad, poignant image of children tragically dead at sea in illegal migration. Thankfully, we have stopped that in Australia because we have stopped the illegal boats.

One Nation haven't done anything except badmouth refugees for years. Now Parliament finds itself in the bizarre position where One Nation has the same polices as LNP, but a more egalitarian economic voice than Labor.

"Labor Waste"

“”The real shame of this debate about aviation jobs is that the Prime Minister and his team have created only one export industry in Australia since getting elected—and that is the export of Australian jobs overseas.

—Bill Shorten, 3.4.14 House debates

This enthusiasm in Anglo countries for austerity has taken hold in Australia—although it has been unsuccessful in some of its initiatives, such as the abolition of the publicly-funded Medicare system, or the so-called "WorkChoices" legislation which was an electoral disaster. But over the last 30 years, the wealth gap has exploded, giving the Liberals and their friends the means to divorce themselves from services that the rest of Australia relies on.

Here's the M.O. of politics in this country: Labor takes on debt and raises taxes to fund infrastructure for improving economic output and quality of life. You know, basically the purpose of government. The LNP then sells that infrastructure (at a net loss) in order to make the bottom line look better. It detracts from the economy, but that's not easily quantifiable, whereas $60 billion off the top is. That's why LNP governments can brag about surpluses and paying off debt. Labor then either has to rebuild it, repurchase it (at a loss), or rent it out from the people LNP sold it to (for more money than if they had self-funded it). The cycle continues as Labor builds infrastructure and the LNP sells it.

This is exactly the sort of pettiness South Australians experienced when they did not vote LNP in the 2014 state election. All of a sudden, things they were reasonably expecting disappeared. LNP also hinted heavily at a constitutional change in response to the electoral loss. When a major bushfire came within a couple of kilometres of their neighbourhoods—on the side of the city which votes Labor—they didn't offer anything in the way of support until locals got very pointed in their criticisms. The federal government did the same thing to Queensland. They made all the federal infrastructure funding conditional on the fact that the state had to sell off public assets. Then, of course, when Labor won in an election centred around public asset sales, it resulted in all that funding being pulled. And then that mess in Victoria about the East West Link tollway funding. Some are a trifle less tight-lipped about it than others.

Don't forget that they're privatising government left, right and centre so they can shore up their post-political careers. The galling thing is that, even after all this, the baseless "Liberals are budget managers" idea will still hold. It's a proven strategy which goes all the way back to Menzies.

No Brains Needed

“”Australia will have not only the most expensive broadband in the developed world but also the least utilised as users will not be able to afford to use its potential.

—Dr. Mark Gregory of RMIT University

Telstra, the incumbent monopoly which owns every phone line, is a black hole. It is collapsing into a superdense object, sucking in more idiots to work for them and growing bigger. Wherever competition springs up to disrupt Telstra's business model, Telstra stomps on it, and the regulator in charge of putting Telstra on a leash is powerless to do so.

The company went public in the nineties, but 17% of Telstra was still owned by the Future Fund, a $100b quango to feather the beds of politicians. Their pensions are being poured into listed equities (such as fossil fuels), "tangible assets" (like real estate), and so on. Those who stood to benefit from Telstra's increased profitability were the same people who legislated on its behalf.

Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party were elected on promises of breaking up the monopoly and creating a new government entity: the National Broadband Network (NBN Co.), which would install a brand new, ubiquitous gigabit cable around the country. The NBN posed an existential threat to Murdoch's cable provider, and it did no favours for his newspapers, either. So it got a lot of negative coverage.

The old government got back in and drastically changed the NBN's direction: to a mere 'upgrade' of the old copper network owned by Telstra. With his line about a series of tubes "multi-technology mix", Turnbull (the man who thinks wireless technology will provide 100 mbps to households) declared war on anyone who knows anything about networking: NBN Co. laid the bare minimum amount of fibre optic cables. Even back in 2003, Telstra described DSL as the "last sweat" of revenue they could wring out their 50-year-old copper network. To even reach 25mbps, a bunch of households had to get new copper installed.

NBC Co. is slowly turning into Telstra, with more former Telstra execs joining after the election. It's the same as Microsoft buying the Android patents at fire-sale prices. (CSIRO owns the wifi patents. Give it a few years and Telstra will.) There is too much theft and obfuscation surrounding the project to go into any detail. IT infrastructure is too hard for the average citizen to understand, compared to, say, stealing $5000. The amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.

The Coalition believes that government shouldn’t have a "natural monopoly" on infrastructure, and Turnbull claims that Labor’s policy on the issue forced his hand. The Liberals killed the NBN on purpose. It wasn't mismanagement, or red tape getting in the way. It was pure malfeasance, a concerted plot to keep it from being delivered. It's like Kodak inventing the digital camera and shelving it because it would impact film sales. Fitting that Kodak went bust, then.

A long list of Liberal Party wingnuts

“”They have been awarded the key "pork barrelling" portfolios, they have been allowed to run issues and speak out, inconsistent with cabinet decisions, even to the extent of being able to cross the floor or abstain in parliamentary votes where they disagree with the cabinet position. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull just sits back and lets it happen, happy to have to attempt to "rationalise" the irrational.

—John Hewson, Liberal opposition leader 1990-94

Being a party which has moved right in recent times, the Liberal Party does have its fair share (and in increasing numbers) of wingnuts and crackpots. Below are a number of them who have or have had known associations with the Liberal Party.

• Eric "Obersturmbannführer" Abetz (Senator for Tasmania, 1994-present): His great-uncle was Otto Abetz, the Nazi official. His little fortress down there is well-known. There was talk Abetz handing over his seat, but since his Rottenführer replacement got defeated, he'll still hang around pulling strings. Described an environmentalist campaign as "akin to treason".
• Tony Abbott (MP for Warringah, 1994-present. Prime Minister, 2013-2015): Lizard person. Walks purposely toward cameras with his arms out to make himself look bigger. Under his watch, a lot of grave listening and nodding went on. On record as saying that climate change is "complete crap". (It has a higher acceptance among scientists than evolution. Which he also doesn't believe in.) Rupert Murdoch and Brian Loughnane did a good job of house-training him; Tony would have lost if the voters had known he's the same, sexist caveman he's always been. However, the spin machine couldn't stop there: they not only had to control Abbott, but balkanise the PMO and turn it into an echo chamber, to make sure the whole party was under control.
• Kevin Andrews (MP for Menzies, 1991-present. Father of the Australian House of Representatives, 2016-present): Named "Natural Family Man of the Year" by World Congress of Families. They are terrorists, even a glancing look at their work in Uganda will confirm that.
• Chris Back (Senator for West Australia, 2009-present): "As a person with a scientific background, I am always interested in hearing the views of a range of people across the spectrum..." That's the scientific spirit if ever we heard it.
• Cory Bernardi (Senator for South Australia, 2006-2020): He is exactly the type of person Lambie described him as a discount Patrick Bateman who hides behind moralistic waffle. By appearing at a Bernardi fundraiser, the PM effectively endorsed Bernardi's viewpoints and agenda. Just like Christ would have done, eh Bernardi? In the fable where Jesus overturned donation caps in the temple, then gave a sermon on why an inquiry into the finance sector would be a war on jobs and growth, followed up with 'we want an inquiry into halal food because Muslims are icky' Bernardi resigned from the Liberals in 2017 and former the "Australian Conservatives" party, but lost his seat in the 2019 elections.
• Simon Birmingham (Senator for South Australia, 2007-present. Minister for Education and Training, 2015-present.): A shill for degree farms. His aim seems to be for the wealthy kids to be protected and have less competition for white-collar jobs. Also a fan for Bjørn Lomborg: Just what you want in your education minister.
• Bronwyn "BronnieCopter" Bishop (MP for Mackellar, 1994-2016. Speaker of the House 2013-2015): Still salty about not becoming PM. Abbott's salary was just over $500k, considerably less than Bronwyn's 2014 expenses alone. If she had issued a stock apology and paid back the money, it would have blown over. Labor only ran with it once it was clear she wasn't going to swallow her pride, and instead provided them with daily ammunition. So, she has finally fallen on her diamond-encrusted sword. Goodbye Bronnie, you entitled old bat.
• Julie Bishop (MP for Curtin 1998-present, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party 2007-present, Minister for Foreign Affairs 2013-present): Alas, the Christian Right would rather torpedo the party than let another childless, unmarried divorcee become Prime Minister. (When your party is so toxic that an asbestos company lawyer is the preferred leader. #JustLiberalThings) Hey, didn't Bishop hound Gillard about her time as a lawyer with Slater & Gordon?
• Andrew Bolt: On par with Jesus of Nazareth himself; there's not much sense you can talk him into. Recently added to ABC's lineup in the interests of "balance." Not bad for someone who built a career out of saying the ABC is a waste of tax dollars.
• Michaelia Cash^{nice surname, by the way} (Senator for Western Australia, 2008-present. Minister for Women, 2013-present. Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Public Service/Minister for Employment, 2015-present): Hair from the 80s meets policy from the 50s! Michaelia is a gift which keeps on giving to Labor. Bless her big-haired, batshit little head.
• Peter Costello (Treasurer 1996-2007): Totally untested as Treasurer and had no credibility. Under Howard, he sold off Telstra and Australia's gold for $250, then bought US dollars at 50 cents. (Gold has gone up 5x while the dollar has halved.) He cost Australia 56b a year in tax concessions. Oversaw the loss of $1 billion in a currency swap fuck-up. Gambled away another $3.8b on the foreign exchange. He also converted a mining boom into... overpriced real estate. Did Abbott do his research before appointing him as Future Fund chairman?
• Margaret Court: Australia has a massive correlation between sporting accomplishment and the soapbox. Margaret is exhibit A as to why it demeans us all. (Shane Warne = exhibit B.) She is using her renown as a tennis champion to spread her poisonous homophobia.
• Peta Credlin (de facto Prime Minister Chief of Staff to Abbott Government 2013-2015): Abbott may regret backing his manager to the point of it contributing to his ousting. She seems, politically speaking, off her rocker. The She-Golem intends to bring down 4 Prime Ministers. It is, after all, all she's good for.
• Peter Griffin George Christensen (MP for Dawson, 2010-present): A 38-y.o. walking heart attack, this Muslim-hating, poor-shaming, gay-bashing, bribe-taking, Trump-fellating, terror-sympathizing, world-beating MP is actually kind of creepy, even by Coalition standards. He is the Nats' whip, so his job is to enforce party discipline. But instead he "freelances" and rolls the Government every week. (Bolt is 100% correct that no backbencher in history has gotten more concessions than this guy. What reason could he possibly have for saying he and the other right-wing trolls aren't getting a fair hearing?) Big George's support for Adani Coal is why he hasn't seen a bigger vote swing: People seem to actually think it will be built, and will bring back jobs. He looks like he's feeding on human misery and getting fatter.
• Peter "Mr Potato Head" Dutton (MP for Dickson, Queensland state, 2001-present. Minister for Immigration and Border Protection 2014-present): Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in your front bench. He's in charge of the bona fide concentration camps on Manus Island. (This bloke just can't catch a break with candid photos, can he?) Rusted-on Liberal seat, which gets stronger the further you go from his Strathpine office. Voters have already forgotten he tried to burn and dump the seat for an even safer one.
• Teresa "Armpitgate" Gambaro (MP for Brisbane 2010-16): Conflicts of interest are for little people.
• Jane Halton (Finance Minister, 2014-2016): The one who tried to bury SIEV-X, a people-smuggling boat, during the Howard government? That Jane Halton? What she did was some House of Cards-level stuff.
• Pauline Hanson (MP for Oxley 1996-98, Leader of One Nation 2014-present.): A skidmark on the fabric of Australian society. Not even the Liberal Party could stand her, as she got "dis-endorsed" for saying 100,000 plus Australians aren't welcome here. Under Howard, the LNP co-opted most of Hanson's policies, rendering her irrelevant. She then buggered off to organise her own army of bigots. Now she's back again, and out for some well-deserved revenge. She's going to push the Liberal Party into all-out civil war, and then dance on the ashes.
• "Smokin' Joe" Hockey (MP for North Sydney, 1996-present. Treasurer, 2013-2015. Ambassador to Australia 2016-present.): Guess who led the charge against negative gearing being abolished? Once claimed that "poor people don't drive cars" and that "people will live to 150" as justification for cuts. Hung his Liberal colleague out to dry when General Motors was pondering closure; while MacFarlane was trying his best to negotiate with them, Hockey and his ilk were shooting their mouths off and taunting them into closing their plants. Update: It's a good thing Brandis is dragging Hockey down with him as they both go over the cliff. See, this is why failed political appointees are not ambassador material.
• Greg Hunt (MP for Flinders, 2001-present. Minister for Unhealth, 2017-present): He allowed in a mining operator which is notorious for dodging tax environmental non-compliance, and hiring foreign workers (despite promising otherwise). They are being prosecuted for negligence and fraud in many countries, including their home base, India. You wouldn't trust them to dig up a veggie path.
• Craig Kelly (MP for Hughes, 2010-Present): No set would be complete without John Ashcroft! Climate change denier, known for his carbon tax rants on social media.
• Alan Jones: A feedback loop has begun. The CO2 level will increase exponentially, eliminating all life on earth. But we have this radio "priest" preaching to the masses that it's just "a lie". Consider also that Jones has made remarks about killing the Prime Minister, and helped incite this riot of rednecks. His advertisers began withdrawing their money, and he responded by calling them "cyber-terrorists," even comparing them to Nazis. He posts factually incorrect, racist, anti-gay (weird because he himself is one), anti-windmill rants in ALL CAPS so you know he means business. (Equal distribution of capital is obviously communist.)
• Andrew "Welfare on Tap" Laming, M.D. (MP for Bowman, 2004-present): YOU LIE! ARE CORRUPT! Not often that you see Bronnie eject a fellow Liberal. (Turns out all they have to do is be in a process of self-immolation.)
• Sussan Ley (MP for Sport 2014-16, Minister for Health 2014-17): Another resignation! ...to the backbench. Well, MPs can't very well resign, now can they? That would trigger a by-election where the Libs could lose the 1 seat by which they hold a majority. Bronwyn is literally the last person Sue needs to go to bat for her. (Sorry, Bronnie, can't hear you over "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring in the background.)
• Ian MacFarlane (Minister for Industry and Science 2013-2015): The son and grandson of scientists. Boy, they must be proud he became a politician. Once Abbott was booted, he fled back to the National Party; not sure why they bothered, but the Libs still tried to stop it. The LNP is like Scientology: once you're in, you can never leave.
• Sophie Mirabella (MP for Victoria, 2001-2013): Slept with her Law professor to get ahead at Uni, after which she continued to hit him up to fund her campaigns and buy a farm in Wangaratta (gifts she didn't register, by the way) and when he became too old, she made herself the executor of his estate and sole beneficiary of his will. (Watch out, Malcolm; maybe Sophie has her eye on you as the next victim.) An expert on submarines: Highly qualified at sinking like a rock, then re-surfacing unscathed, somewhere totally unexpected.
• Scott Morrison (MP for Cook, 2007-present. Treasurer, 2015-2018 Prime Minister, 2018-present): He's an ex-Property Council of Australia member (PCA) who still has a property council mindset. Lest we forget, ScoMo is also with Hillsong. God wants YOU to be rich (via property ponzi)! Australians should shudder at the thought of Morrison taking control during a recession; that bible-thumping maggot will be cutting oxygen tubes to people in hospital just to save a few dollars.
• Campbell "Here We Joh Again" Newman (MP for Ashgrove, Queensland State, 2012-2015. Premier of Queensland, 2012-2015): Premier Putin Newman sacked tens of thousands of public service workers and blocked a 2% payrise...to fund a $57,000 wage hike for MPs. He later tried to argue that he deserved the same salary as President Obama ($400k). Update: Another one bites the dust.
• Kelly "The New Sophie" O'Dwyer (MP for Higgins, 2015-present. Assistant Treasurer/Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, 2015-present): And so it begins. The pin-stripe mafia has infiltrated the government, destroying it piecemeal by writing in tax loopholes. Justified corporate welfare by drooling over a $6000 toaster, in a roomful of low-income workers, no less. Even Andrew Bolt is sticking the boot in.
• Larry Pickering: A former News Corp employee, and one-time LNP candidate in the eighties. He's a political cartoonist who thinks his musings are the equivalent of scientific journalism. Pickering pretty much nailed his AGW argument right here: you "won't read it anywhere else' because it's mostly bullshit. His new show is just a ripoff of Last Week Tonight. ("Spicks and Specks" was Nevermind the Buzzcocks, only 9 years later and more shit.)
• Christian Porter (MP for Bateman 2013-present. Minister for Social Services 2015-present): This clueless cunt is defending a computer system which is driving more Australians toward financial hardship and suicide. Of course, there are no instructions on how to appeal. Are they trying to start a class war?
• Christopher "Poodle" Pyne (MP for Sturt, 1993-present. Minister for Defence Industry, 2016-present): He asked a total of 3 questions on education in his entire time as shadow education minister. He did produce some policy under Labor, but it was based on heavily-flawed data that Pyne stuck to like glue because it supported his vision. An ardent Catholic, every time Pyne brings up school funding, he whines about how the poor, neglected religious schools are being beaten up by the state schools. Update: Faced with the threat of Nick Xenophon running a candidate for his seat, Pyne is shitting his pants and trying to rebrand as a moderate. Best of luck, mate.
• Geoff "Tummy Eggs" Shaw (MP for Frankston (Victorian State): 2010-2014): Religious zealot who does not play well with others. Not even the Victorian Liberals wanted him because of his extreme wingnuttery.
• Gina Rinehart: Fossil fuels, housing, cattle-grazing. Pretty soon, Australians won't own any of their land. She writes the policies for Centrelink; her policy on "dole bludgers" is what forced the government to shift the tax burden onto the working class. Gina probably thinks kids should inherit wealth from their parents as she did... oh wait.
• Andrew Robb (Minister for Trade and Investment 2013-16): Negotiated deals that some feel were in the interest of others apart than Australia. He went straight from politics to working with companies in whose interests he had worked.
• Luke Simpkins (MP for Cowan, 2007-present): When all you've got is your blind hatred of wogs, everything is an ISIS flag!
• Angus Taylor (MP for Hume, 2013-present): Refers to AGW as "the new climate religion", claimed that windfarms "drive up energy prices", and tacitly promoted "wind turbine syndrome". Capped off with his dog's breakfast suggestion that open-plan offices are what made Silicon Valley great! (Remember him, the next time Turnbull makes his pathetic claim that the Liberal Party isn't run by factions.)
• Alan Tudge (MP for Aston, 2010-present. Minister for Human Services 2016-present): As Tudge sees it, being on the dole means you are unequivocally a failure, an embarrassment. Having the deck stacked against you is a feature, not a bug. You need to feel the constant weight of that stigma while living on the system so that, by the time you get out, you're all too eager to heap it back on anyone who didn't have the guts & determination to dig their way out of the hole like you did. (Can we have a computer system to track false travel claims, please?)
• Malcolm "In the Middle" Turnbull (MP for Wentworth, 2004-present. Prime Minister September 2015-August 2018): Slick as castor oil on a duck's ass, Turnbull is "classically liberal" (that's a wank way of saying free-market fundamentalist) and a Sinophile, so his instincts are to throw the gates open to Chinese money. That's his plan to drive the economy, i.e. more radical undermining of everything distinct and desirable about Australia, or what's left of it. The press adores him because he wears a suit well, waves his glasses around, and articulates the value of business experience. They particularly enjoy his rags-to-riches story where he inherited a few million as a young man. (He really has the common touch, doesn't he? Been taking tips from Zac "never seen a pint before" Goldsmith and Dave "hotdog with a fork and knife" Cameron.) At least Tones had a moral backbone. Malcolm is shaping up to be the worst PM to date. He will be forever remembered as "Mister Broadband," having annihilated Australia's internet service speeds.
• Tim Wilson (MP for Goldstein, 2016-present): There are a surprising number of these shiny suit-wearing, "openly gay" hatchet-men with their private school haircuts and real estate portfolios. They identify as millionaires first, and gays second. (Between elections, stuff like broken marble tables is just a bit of 'tut-tut'. During an election year, a little more scrutiny is given to each member's expenses.) Now we know this venal little prick will not just sell out the rights of others to further his career, he'll sell out those of his loved ones and himself as well.

The Not-so-Insane Liberals

• Sue Boyce (Senator for Queensland, 2007-2014): voted in favour of same-sex marriage, acknowledges the existence of man-made climate change, voting in favour of emissions trading.
• Russell Broadbent (MP for McMillan, 2004-Present): Broadbent is the last of small-"l" liberals: He was one of three who crossed the floor when Howard ordered asylum seekers to be processed offshore. More recently, he challenged "those on [his] side of politics" (read: Christensen) who were "cuddling up to Hansonite rhetoric" to think again. He will either retire at the next election or get knifed in pre-selection by an Abbott clone.
• George Brandis (Senator for Queensland 2000-present, Vice President of the Executive Council/Attorney General 2013-present, Leader of the Government in the Senate 2015-present): Yes, really; if only because he calls Pauline out on her hate-mongering, and publicly acknowledges the existence of climate change. Though he is nutty in other areas.
• Mathias "Arnold Schwarzenegger" Cormann (Senator for Western Australia, 2007-present. Minister for Finance, 2013-present. Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate, 2015-present): Once you've mastered the art of doublethink like our finance minister, his language will make perfect sense. He is, however, prepared to set his personal beliefs aside and vote for gay marriage.
• Warren Entsch (MP 1996-2007, 2010-present) Criticised his Queensland Liberal colleagues for homophobia and general bigotry.
• Malcolm Fraser (Prime Minister 1975-1983): Howard, Fraser, Hewson, Reith...the people who used to run the Liberal Party now hate it. Handed in his membership when Abbott was elected. It is amusing seeing intellectual pygmies like Dutton and Mirabella criticise him. (Someone should remind Dutton that he is Minister for Immigration and not a bloody historian.)
• Josh "Mr Coal" Frydenberg (MP for Kooyong, 2010-present. Minister for Environment and Energy, 2016-present): MINING: Well the coal industry's absolutely totemic to the company. STEEL: Ink on the TPP's not even dry, and already I'm screwing you. To his credit, he freely acknowledges that coal will be going away soon. Earlier, he spilled the beans about the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
• Sarah Henderson (MP for Corangamite, 2013-present): Actually supports things such as renewable energy (even if only cynically), is opposed to super trawling (again, even if only cynically) and supports same-sex marriage.
• John Hewson (Opposition leader 1990-1994): Really dodged the bullet with this one back in the day; never layout your economic scheme too early. (He would have left the unemployed to die. Mass homelessness. Not pretty.) Now he's turning Green in old age: He opposed participating in the Iraq War, acknowledges the existence of man-made climate change, and blasts the extremist rabble who have taken over his party. Abbott was Hewson's media secretary in the '89 election, so it is significant to see him criticise a protege.
• John "Desiccated Coconut" "Non-Core Promise" "Man of Steel" Howard (Prime Minister, 1996-2007): The "Gold Standard" of PMs (he's called that because he had an unprecedented amount of money to buy votes with). Before that, he was a pretty incompetent Treasurer in the Frasier government. Went through two of the biggest booms in history (dot com and mining) and came out of it with nothing. To counter the $12b deficit, he sold Telstra, and Australians have been paying for it ever since. Authorised bribes to Saddam Hussein in order to secure wheat contracts. Later sent troops to Iraq; 100,000 protested in Sydney alone. Howard responded on the evening news by saying it didn't mean anything (I mean not everyone in Australia marched, right?). However, he did ban sales of automatics after the Port Arthur Massacre, so he'll always have that.
• Barnaby "Who Let the Dogs Out" Joyce (Senator for Queensland, 2010-2013. Deputy Prime Minister 2016-present.): It's a terrifying time for Australia when Barnaby is the voice of reason, though technically he's no longer a Liberal Party member. This isn't the first time he came out against Hanson: He was for accepting Syrian refugees, and he is a pretty strong supporter of Halal certification. He's a rose amongst thorns. (More like a thorn amongst weeds.) (UPDATE: Found sleeping with a member of his staff, so now he's not even head of the Nationals anymore. Great work, Barnaby!)
• Craig Laundy (MP for Reid, 2013-present): supports the role of the ABC, supports the Racial Discrimination Act, supports Palestinian rights, and supports multiculturalism and increasing Australia's relatively dismal refugee intake.
• Barry O'Farrell (Premier of New South Wales, 2011-2014): Supports gay rights, same-sex marriage and supported the federal Labor government's education reforms. It's a pity that a bottle of wine was his undoing...wait, $3k for a bottle of wine? Jesus, NSW, pull yourselves together.
• Peter Reith (Leader of the House 1996-2001. Minister for Defense January 2001-November 2001): Fracking activist and killer of children. (Brandis learned from the best.) Reith was the latest negotiator sent in to try and defuse the hostage situation in Canberra: Abbott is holed up in the metaphorical bank with one gun pointed at Australia's international reputation, and another pointed at the Liberal Party. He shot them both in the kneecaps to show he's serious. Reith is also calling for a marriage plebiscite—when he knows, according to the Libs' own poll, that around 70% support marriage equality. In other words, he's asking for a vote he knows will pass and put pressure on parliament to follow up with legislation.
• Wyatt Roy (MP for Longman, 2010-2016): Supports same-sex marriage, and believes climate change is... "plausible". Siding with Turnbull was very naive considering his electorate, and he paid the price.
• Dean Smith (Senator for Western Australia 2012-present): Guess they didn't expect a vote so tight that one lowly Senator could sink them. This is the same greedy coward who got elected by opposing same-sex marriage and only changed his mind because the manager of the cafe in the Sydney siege was gay and was killed. Somehow Labor is to blame for all this!
• Judith Troeth (Senator for Victoria, 1993-2011): Voted in favour of emissions trading and acknowledges the existence of climate change.
• Jason Wood (MP for La Trobe, 2004-2010, 2013-present): Has campaigned on environmental issues and is a member of Greenpeace. He also supported emissions trading.

See also

• Carbon tax (Australia) — People don't care about climate change when the economy is on their minds.
• Banking crisis — The Coalition look at the newspapers with envious eyes: the ass-hats overseas who crashed the world economy were bailed out, and then got bigger. Make no mistake, Rinehart and co. want a recession.
• Institute of Public Affairs — A major source of their policies.

Videos

• The Dumbest Decision Ever Made
• Bronwyn Bishop's Arrested Development — "Ditch the Witch"

External Links

• A pretty good likeness. The nose could be browner.
• Abbott cackling like a Bond villain at rising sea levels, is unaware of the microphone. — "Adults in Charge"
• $12.8 billion well spent — "Sooner, Cheaper, and More Affordably"
• Incredibly not satire.
• Aussie McMansions, courtesy of McMansion Hell — They're 10 years behind the US in everything, why not in ugly monuments to housing bubble hubris as well?
• It's An Exciting Time to be a Public Relations Firm
• Happy to smash collective bargaining to bits, not so happy when it happens to them. — Delicious irony, gobble it down while it's hot!
• Budget Surplus by 2020 was a "projection" not policy — How about we cut the Coalition as much slack as they gave Labor? (Not one millimetre.)
  • Yeah, and let's hold Labor to account for knifing their leader!
• Well, they couldn't manage it with consumer confidence, economic equality, legislation passed, deficit reduction, full-time jobs or wage growth. Still, at least the Coalition managed a rise in this graph.

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