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 talked 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 now 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.
More satire from Rossleigh:
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The liberals are not what they were; neither are the ALP. Menzies and Curtin have long departed. What have we now? Hanson? Ley? Farce? Tinytip? But, keep hoping for better…
The truth is, Mr. Rossleigh, is that the surviving major party(with 34% of the first preference vote), is only slightly less out of step with the punters than the smoking wreckage of the world champion economic managers.
Surplus or deficit really only makes any sense if your country is run by the big four , or merchant bankers, or property developers, or Murdoch’s trash media, etc. etc.
Time for Labor to grasp the nettle, take the bull by the horns,or simply wake up.
They could do worse than listen to old Laborites like Barry Jones and Paul Keating, or they will end up as irrelevant as the former Liberals.I doubt Albanese is up for it.
I saw Senator James Paterson [Shadow Minister for Finance] on Insiders – apparently the Liberal Party is prepared to die in a ditch to preserve the tax concessions for millionaire mates with over three million dollars in superannuation.
When will they ever learn ?
Thanks. I needed a new earworm.
… just give me land, lots of land with the starry skies above …
The Liberal Party has chosen to latch onto an era in Australian history and say that every time they win government, they will take Australia back to that era. Tone the Botty farted that Labor would never be on treasury benches again, but with the thumping majority that it now has, I would suggest that he discard that crystal ball.
Harry Lime mentions Hanson, who farted that the only Immigration Minister in touch with the Australian people was Arthur Calwell. Yet, by the late 1960s, amongst younger voters, Arthur Calwell was viewed as an historical curiosity instead of a serious politician. Hanson couldn’t vote before Calwell died, anyway.
FFS, how long can the Libtards keep trying to live off the dubious reputation of that notoriously misogynistic, non-achieving, racist Australian “Tory” elitist, Robert Menzies? My God, the ONLY “distinguishing” thing about Menzies’ endlessly boring career as the most stagnant PM in Australia’s history is that he NEVER EVER – not once – achieved a single thing – Not. One. Single. Thing. – that provided working – or middle-class Australians (even those foolish enough to vote for him) with a single benefit or advantage that would enhance their lifestyles in ANY way! THAT long list of achievements can be attributed to the dedication and collaboration between our hard-working unions and unionists who fought against the LNP every step of the way to achieve such benefits that we now take for granted, such as 40 hour working week, long service leave, four weeks’ annual leave, accumulative sick leave, maternity leave – and the list goes on and on! Needless to say the Australian Tories, ie the LNP, fought long and HARD against every single one of those benefits in order to appease and kowtow to their “lord and masters”, ie wealthy employers or avaricious corporate predators (often foreign-owned) in the Top 1% who didn’t want to share their bloated profits with ANYONE outside of themselves and their families at OUR expense!
Menzies was a rusted-on racist who openly favoured and protected the notorious White Australia Policy; furthermore, he was a crawling sycophant to England and obsessed with Australia’s British roots; he idolised elitism which is why he worshipped the monarchy. Menzies despised anyone or any political party that did not strictly adhere to the rigidly misogynistic and racist agenda of right-wing extremism which is why he hated the Communist Party enough to want them outlawed. Menzies was a tyrannical autocrat – almost a borderline fascist – who strictly oversaw a highly protected, regulated economy. In many ways, Menzies was the last bastion of an Old Australia, Australians (especially most Australian Baby Boomers and young X-Y-Z Gen Australians) would hardly recognise today. Menzies openly favoured the elite; despised the working class and, like his adoring disciples: Abbott, Morrison and Dutton et al, Menzies proved to be a crawling sycophant to both England and America.
In a disastrous attempt to curry favour with an ungrateful American President who saw Australian troops as nothing more than expendable cannon fodder in their despicable wars, on 29 April 1965, Robert Menzies was more than prepared to sacrifice the lives of countless young Australian men and women (except, of course, the children of his OWN family or friends) by announcing that Australia would send a battalion of combat troops to Vietnam . The decision was motivated by a desire to strengthen strategic relations with the a range of insular American Presidents whom, we suspect, would have trouble pointing out Australia on a global map! Of course, this fateful decision caused the needless death of so many young Australians who sacrificed their lives to fight an internal conflict between North and South Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a highly unpopular war against which thousands of Australians (and Americans) justifiably protested, even rioted, against and in which the overwhelming majority of our nation’s population believed we had NO PLACE interfering. Tragically, Vietnam was a war that America (and its allies, including Australia) disastrously, and inevitably, lost! Despite that loss, it took yet ANOTHER war mongering, right-wing Republican President, George W Bush, to ILLEGALY invade Iraq and Syria and it took yet ANOTHER cowering, LNP war monger, John Howard, to – once again – sacrifice the lives of countless Australian soldiers not to mention the millions of innocent lives of Iraqi and Syrian men, women and little children!
Clearly, history has PROVEN that whenever the LNP inevitably start to stink in the polls, they look around for a DISTRACTIONARY WAR in which to get involved in order to tear the attention of ordinary Australians AWAY from their own appalling level of incompetence, rusted-on racism, stifling elitism, condescending misogyny and inherent corruption! In this way, the LNP (sadly) have neither progressed nor changed – not one iota – from the bad old days of the war mongering Menzies’ era!
In his early days Menzies was a lover of Hitler and fascist Nazis (as he wrote in letters to his sister), and that is likely a carryover from his British (Scottish) white-nationalist / racist roots.
He did nothing useful, spending most of his time toadying to Britain. It was hard working ordinary Aussies and European immigrants that developed Oz after WWII. So it is this that the Libs anchor themselves to – utter confabulations and fantasy!
Of course, it is just so. Later, after USA showed interest, the Libs (via Howard) restarted the toadying back to Britain & USA and the new and viral neoliberal / neoconservative union smash & wealth gouge on ordinary folk. It has never changed, despite the neoliberal/neoconservative gouge now being realized for sending the ‘west’ down the gurgler.
Better economic managers? Pigs might fly!
What’s the bet that Abetz (who will wait until it’s almost all over before being the last to plunge his metaphorical dagger into Rocliff) becomes the, “Oh, I am so surprised, humbled and honoured to be chosen as leader.” of the Libs here in Tasmania?
@10.40 am.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/jun/10/australia-news-live-miriam-margolyes-gaza-israel-sanctions-anthony-albanese-donald-trump-tasmania-election-jeremy-rockliff-premier-ntwnfb
Sound economic management??????
In Tasmania, the ordering of new Ferries but neglecting the need to actually have a working harbour facilities able to accomodate them, so parking them in Scotland for a few months at a cost of who knows what the final bill will be but millions will do, the number before that remains a mystery…. oh and then being suckered by the wealthiest sporting code in Australia, and if we measure it per head of population of the states that are AFL states, one of the wealthiest in the world, to pay about a billion dollars to build a stadium which will be restricted to just football, the roof makes it unsuitable for summer use for cricket…. Ah yes, the Libs have always been such astute financial managers, going back to the very founder, who in the the 1960’s used the pension fund, transferring that money into general revenue, to balance the budget…. and hang an albatross around future governments who needed to pay the pensions out of general revenue…. thank Labor for superannuation… And who can forget how the Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison government screwed the most vulnerable to balance the budget with a wonderful scheme called ROBODEBT or cancelled the carbon pricing deal of Labor, froze wages to ensure that company profits took precedence over fair returns for labour….. yes, far better financial managers.
Unfortunately, there are still a few who actually believe that.
You put me down for preselection (no doubt in a blue ribbon hard core Lib seat) OR ELSE!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/11/moira-deeming-john-pesutto-bankruptcy-offer-liberal-party-victoria-preselection-ntwnfb
And in the political wilderness will aimlessly roam and fight and squabble amongst themselves for years and and…
Reynolds has a reputation that she wants back? Why would anyone want a reputation of being a thoroughly greedy, nasty and self-centred person back.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/12/linda-reynolds-alleges-mark-dreyfus-had-conflict-of-interest-when-he-signed-off-brittany-higgins-24m-settlement-ntwnfb