Four months ago, at the federal election, the Australian people spoke with a clarity that reverberated across the political landscape. It wasn’t just a loss for the Coalition; it was a repudiation. The electorate delivered a stinging verdict on two fronts: a rejection of a Trump-inspired style of politics, and a punishment for a decade of obstruction and inaction on climate change.
Voters saw a Liberal-National Coalition that had grown uncomfortably close to the playbook of the Republican Party – dismissive of science, sceptical of institutions, and hostile to a civil and factual public discourse… and they wanted no part of it. With another strong showing by Teal independents, they sent an unambiguous message: Australia must be progressive, forward-looking, and responsible on the world stage.
So, here we are, a mere handful of weeks later, and what is the response from the conservative side of politics? Astonishingly, it appears the lesson has been lost in translation. Instead of a period of reflection and recalibration, we are witnessing the rapid ascent of an ultra-right faction, with voices such as Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Price seizing the microphone.
Their rhetoric, echoing the divisive culture wars of Trump’s America and amplified by the powerful megaphone of mining interests, suggests a party that has learned the wrong lesson entirely. The election wasn’t a signal to move further to the right; it was a plea for moderation, for consensus, and for a genuine plan for the future. When figures like Price dismiss the profound, lived experience of Indigenous Australians with colonisation, or when Hastie frames complex geopolitical challenges in the simplistic, confrontational terms of a bygone era, they are not leading. They are taking the Coalition down a path that voters have already declared a dead end.
This is more than just political infighting; it’s a battle for the nation’s trajectory. The mining lobby’s influence in this pivot is palpable, seeking to lock Australia into the energy systems of the past just as the world – and the Australian market – is demanding a clean energy future. To align with them is to choose a future of economic isolation and environmental decline.
The May election proved that a majority of Australians want a country that tackles climate change with the urgency it demands, that embraces its multicultural identity, and that seeks to heal rather than amplify social divisions.
If the Coalition, under the influence of its Trump-echoing right flank, continues to ignore this mandate, they risk not just another electoral defeat, but becoming irrelevant to the national conversation. The keys to The Lodge should not be handed back to a party that is being driven away from the mainstream and towards the fringe.
The Australian people have shown they are smarter, more compassionate, and more forward-thinking than that. The progressive, multicultural, and climate-conscious heart of this nation has already voted for its future. The question now is whether the conservative side of politics will ever catch up, or if it will remain a party looking backwards, led by voices the public has already turned down.
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In politics, one always gets some airheaded bowelbrained nobodies, talentless for the task, illequipped to comprehend, listen, relate, and, these types get noticed as would a boil on the bum. Hereabouts we have thrust upon us Captain Hastie and Mme. Price, the representatives you get stuck with without really having a decent representative. They actually represent egofixations, obsessions, prejudices, errors and fakery. No good comes of this. Vote for policy, philosophy, quality, clarity, honesty, service, duty. Vanity is useless, and used to cover up inferiorities.
I hope Australians never forget the Robodebt debacle 2015-2019.
LNP Were so arrogant smearing the names of Aussies as bludger. Innocent Aussies took they own lives for nothing. Centrelink staff became whistle blowers. Minister Tudge and Qld Stewart Roberts – absolute arrogance Not a single person has been held to account for the harm done. Why would you ever vote for a party with such arrogance? SBS has a series on Robodebt. Lest voters forget.
Yes Bev, the coalition gave us Robodebt but I would suggest it played a role their electoral flogging
Robodebt just about sums up the coalition view of the great unwashed.
“Look at all these freeloaders living the high life on our money, something needs to be done”.
A scheme was then devised, no doubt, in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge after a long fine, and free, lunch, a couple of flutes of Champagne, several snifters of fine Brandy and a Cuban cigar or two, to punish all the “freeloaders” on government welfare.
Labor may be a shit government but they are several orders of magnitude better than anything the coalition can put forward but Labor should also consider very carefully the fallout from the Robodebt fiasco.
Several of the players may yet end up before the beak with questions to answer.
Sigh, the left and centre aren’t right enough and the right isn’t hard right enough and hard right isn’t Trumpy enough for the Libs. Looming over them all is the greedy Gina Trump…I mean Rinehart and Rupert/Lachlan and the Mad Monk and Formaldahyde Howard, just to name four. The Libs, and Gnats, should have their names inscribed on the opposition benches because they’re going to be there for quite a few years at this rate.
“Labor may be a shit government but they are several orders of magnitude better than anything the coalition can put forward…” can you be so sure of that?
What did Labor do for those needing some help through welfare during a cost of living crisis? They told them our glorious leader was raised in a commission house, we hear you. What good did that do? Even the Coalition said they wouldn’t stand in the way of lifting the unemployment payments – did Labor lift them? No.
How many Labor politicians are members of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, snorting champagne? An easier question would be how many aren’t.
What did Labor do about the Robodebt fiasco? They nobbled the NACC to protect their fellow neoliberal extremists. Albanese even attended Morrison’s booklaunch, amongst other courtesies that have aided his endeavours in selling weapons and exploiting wars or whatever murk he’s into.
Labor has run its own robodebt with Centrelink payments. Granted they fixed it up after it was exposed without having to be dragged through a royal commission and they didn’t have a smirking turd labelling the victims as ‘bludgers’ but they used the same discredited system and they put innocent people through the same pain. They were also accused of running a robodebt like scheme with the NDIS at one stage.
Speaking of polishing turds. When Australian citizens were camped outside Labor offices asking, pleading, demanding that Labor do something to try to stop Israel from bombing children and people were protesting in the streets for Labor to opppose genocide, what did our glorious leader do? In an act of pure evil he teamed up with Peter Dutton and Sophie Scamp to ambush the Greens and accuse them of deliberately trying to destroy “social cohesion”.
“Social cohesion” for many Australians means denouncing their ancestral homeland and reasserting their allegiance to Australia at every turn, and certainly when any neoNazi sympethizing politician demands it.
I am convinced that Coalition politicians and their supporters genuinely believe that people are only poor because they’re lazy – they actually genuinely believe that garbage – what is Labor politicians and their supporters excuse for leaving something approaching a million Australians in poverty for well over 3 years whilst giving our gas away for free to foreign-owned companies? A delusion that because our glorious leader was raised in a commission house by his single mum that there must be a good reason?
How can you be so sure they are that much different?
Apologies Michael Taylor, the quote is not from you and the comment not directed at you, but meant to be directed to Ross instead.
Gonggongche
Well said.
Current Labor government is useless – very little if anything positive or substantial from these sycophantic, gutless, genocide abetting and war mongering “Christians”. Can’t list one significant thing they have done for the country and the bulk of Australians.
The liberals are on another level still.
All hypocrites and bought by big business.
I am also not sure whether Australians are up to the task of what is needed.
The Liberal Farty seems to be spooked by the fact that some Liberals are apparently drifting to one neuron, which is a truly bowel-brained farty. Swinging further to the right may bring some back, but more will swing away from the Liberals.
Correction: I incorrectly said that Labor didn’t raise the welfare payments during a cost of living crisis. “lifting the unemployment payments – did Labor lift them? No.”
Only it took Labor over a year despite having a friendly Senate on this issue. Even then it was only $40, less than the Morrespin government that raised it by $44 in a time that wasn’t regarded as a cost of living crisis.
Goodonya Labor.
And an opportunity to promote eugenics towards the unwashed, feeble minded proles and plebs…..
Gonggongche says:
“Labor may be a shit government but they are several orders of magnitude better than anything the coalition can put forward…” can you be so sure of that?
I doubt that anyone is going to be clear eyed here, and IMHO I agree with you!
We have the dancing, prancxing Albo who I cannot trust as far as I could throw him, and that’s not very far at all!
My misgivings have been articulated here in this article if anyone cares to read it:
https://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2025/09/18/anthony-albaneses-smoke-and-mirrors-routine-with-the-truth-is-out-of-control/
Every Journalist has an agenda and some are pretty good with their observations.
Heather
Yes, Albanese is a phoney.
He said “I like fighting tories”; he teamed up with the Coalition to nobble the NACC, rig coming elections in their favour, destroy our environment laws, smear the Greens for having the temerity to oppose a genocide, to mention just a few.
He said no one would be left behind, not once but twice, and then left something approaching a million Australians in poverty not once but twice.
He initially spruiked having once been a Labor friend of Palestine, yet has constantly pushed the talking points of a sadistic, homicidal, pyschopathic regime conducting genocide against the Palestinians.
The only times he has been critical of Israel was when the media was focused on the most outrageous atrocities Israel had committed – when it forces ambushed, executed and buried along with the ambulances the paramedics; when Ed Husic finally came out and said any dissention in caucus wasn’t being listened to; when the media was flushed with pictures of starving children; when other Western nations said they’d recognize Palestine (even then he wasn’t critical of Israel and instead pushed Israel’s talking points.)
Albanese plays politics; dirty politics. He’s modelled himself on Howard and Morrison, who’s career after losing th election he has protected and nurtured – fights tories, pull the other one.
Gina must be leaning hard on the Moron Party if they’re going try and run with The Rinehart…I mean P Duddy Nookalear Power Scheme that helped them lose horrendously in the 2025 election again.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nuclear-battle-to-resume-as-coalition-doubles-down-on-dutton-s-push-20251002-p5mzkr.html
The Liberals are far from being an effective opposition, and nowhere near having an even remote possibility of forming government.
They are locked in a battle with One Nation for the support of bigots, climate change deniers and economic illiterates.
Victoria is an example of the deep malaise that occurs when there is no pressure from the opposition.
It seems to be a lesson the Liberals are unwilling to learn
A Commentator
Agreed 100%.
For me it is a good argument for why Australia should be supporting a viable third choice. Indeed, why Australia should throw the duopoly out completely, over the last few decades neither Labor nor the Liberals have served the people well; they serve a corporate elite.
If I was Susssaaannn I would be extremely worried by Andrew “Mucking Foron” Hastie, Price and Hume ganging up to do a Caesar in the Senate on her.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/culture/inside-parliament/sussan-ley-faces-leadership-threat-as-star-recruit-quits-front-bench/news-story/4f9985de8ea028f40fc1f34514a5fbb3
Classical Machiavellian tactics by Hastie in preparation for a coup d’état but if he thinks that Senator Jacinta Price has a popular following in the community, he may be barking up the wrong tree. Price is unlikely to be re-elected to the Senate so the Liberals would have to find her a safe (very safe) seat to contest, if such a thing exists.
Timing is everything as Hastie knows and the next federal election will need to be held between May and September 2028 so he will need to make his move on Ley probably during mid to late 2026 so that he can settle in and get his shadow cabinet bedded down and also formulate some policies.
The question is, will Albanese hang on for a third term as Leader or, as I think sensible, hand over to Jim Chalmers?
The daggers in the party room are on hold, for now. Brutus Hastie got caught out now it’s time to be contrite and bide his time. For all his bullshit, he wants that top job in the Libs.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/right-wing-libs-rule-out-ley-challenge-as-hastie-prepares-manifesto-on-party-vision-20251004-p5n01r.html