But How Can The Liberals Be The Party Of Menzies When They Lost It?

From time to time I’ve read someone from the Liberals saying that they’re “the party of Menzies” which is a reference to some guy who once made a deal worthy of Donald Trump, where he sold iron ore to Japan which they tried to return to us by invading… or something like that, I’m a little hazy on the details because it was before I was born, although I do remember someone referring to the founder of the Liberal Party as “Pig Iron Bob”. The reason, of course, that they’re the party of Menzies is because he founded the party after his United Australia Party became unpopular in order to give people an alternative to the Labor Party who were likely to turn us all communist which would have led to the sort of equalisation of wealth reminiscent of the AFL draft system.

Of course recently when anyone talking about “retaining Menzies”, I immediately presumed that they were talking about holding the electorate of Menzies rather than their founder but I may have been wrong.

Whatever, the point I’m making is that most voters weren’t alive when Menzies was elected and with each passing year, there are more voters for whom Prince singing “Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1999” makes them wonder why parties were better in that year. Or to put it another way, the eighteen year olds who vote in the next federal election weren’t even born when John Howard lost to Kevin Rudd.

All of which brings me to make the point that when Bing Crosby hit the top of the charts with “Don’t Fence Me In” in 1945 it was closer in time than we are to the release of Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing”…

I mean, last century is just so yesterday.

Yes, I know that you know this. I’m just pointing it out in case some politician reading it can direct the Liberal and National parties to this obvious fact and they can start to have a serious look at why they’ll keep losing elections until they go the way of the United Australia Party (the first one, not the rebranded Clive Palmer one which has no gone the way of the first one and he’s moved on to the Trumpet of the Patriots until he changes the name to something more catchy like the Saxophone of the Countrymen). 

With each passing election there are more and more young people who don’t remember when politics was a choice between a stern father (the Coalition) and generous aunt (Labor). I mean, every now and then it was good to go on a trip with your aunt and she’d spoil you with lollies and other treats but you knew it wasn’t good for you because your father had told you so and sooner or later you’d have to do the right thing and go back home and work hard and think of the future and…

Ok, it was never the actual reality but the austerity of the Liberals always sounded more like it was the good thing, even though unemployment and budget deficits kept growing under the Fraser government, and it was the Hawke government that eventually delivered a surplus. And spending to avoid a recession during the GFC just sounded reckless, even though we were one of the few countries to avoid one.

It makes no sense to anyone who wasn’t alive last century for the Liberals to say that we’re the party of sound economic management who will deliver surpluses even though we didn’t when we were in office and the Labor government were just lucky and now they’ve got a deficit, so ha!

It makes no sense to most younger voters to say that we’re the party of lower taxes but we oppose the tax cuts and reducing your HECS debt.

It makes no sense to most younger voters to say that we’re committed to net zero but not to actually doing anything about it. Yes, we’ll do nuclear but first we’ll need to burn more coal. And, oh, Labor’s renewables plan won’t work because there’s no way of storing power when the sun doesn’t shine because batteries aren’t efficient enough yet and we need cheaper power so let’s spend money on nuclear… no, it’s not $600 billion it’s less than half that. Trust us.

And it makes no sense to most young voters to call some things “woke”, when you don’t understand the term and use it to describe any idea that happened after Bing sang “Don’t Fence Me In”…

And it makes zero sense to keep on appealing to old white males like me when, with each election, there are fewer and fewer of us. The idea that people will lose the idealism of their youth and become more realistic leading them to vote for the conservative parties who are more competent only works when the parties are actually demonstrating competence. The Liberals have made the mistake of trying to win the 2025 election with the 2013 strategy. They forgot that nobody ever jumps into the same river.

This, of course, is the potential danger for Labor too.

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