Polling is concerned with the House of Reps so forecasting the composition of the 40 senators to be elected this weekend is fraught. There is, however, a likelihood that each of the states will elect a ‘freedom candidate’. The various ‘Freedom Friendly parties’ simply need to tightly preference each other and one of them will win … and all indications are that the tight preferencing message has seeped down to the ‘freedom voters’.

If the ‘freedom movement’ is going to send representatives to Canberra, it is in the interests of the ‘freedom movement’ that the voters send the best available. Let me make the case for the Liberal Democrats via a process of party elimination (easiest to hardest).

Don’t vote for the Greens because they’re commos.

Don’t vote for the ALP because they’re pinkos.

Don’t vote for the Liberal Party because they are now a finely tuned machine that consistently hovers a tad to the right of whatever the ALP and their woke mates say is the latest thing. In the pursuit of holy re-election the Liberals will do anything … including a trillion dollar debt, a Covid police state, and a zero-carbon economy.

Don’t vote for the National Party because they are the above multiplied by unashamedly institutionalised pork-barrelling. They are also the authors of the disgraceful Ministry of Truth Policy from the Coalition.

But do vote for a ‘freedom party’ because, if after two and a half years of Covid hysteria, the electorate doesn’t rebuke its leadership, they’ll do it again and worse.

The phrase ‘freedom party’ has become synonymous with ‘minor party on the right’. They all opposed lockdowns etc (great) and have therefore proudly worn the freedom badge ever since. But it’s one thing to call yourself a ‘freedom party’ and another to be a ‘freedom party’.

It’s as binary as a see-saw. Power can be either mostly with the state or with the citizens. A true freedom party wants to significantly reduce the power of the state and there’s no way to do that without cutting taxes, spending, and regulations in a big way. We want Canberra house prices to decline in value because the public sector will be noticeably smaller.

Australia needs more billionaires like Clive Palmer – i.e. ones that aren’t desperate to be fawned over while lecturing us about global warming. More importantly, Clive cares about his nation. He’s shaping up to make politics his focus for the rest of his life.

Pauline Hanson is an Aussie legend. I was in the public gallery in late 1996 when she gave her Maiden Speech and have since been a defender in public and private.

But neither United Australia nor One Nation are proposing economic rationalism as the cure to our coming economic woes. They are not proposing it in 2022. They’ve not previously proposed it.

In the good ol’ days (ie the 1980s) economic rationalism was something every leader wanted to be associated with – including lefties. But economic rationalism today is (like deregulation, user-pays, privatisation, economisation) ignored at best and disparaged at worse.

These ancient articles of faith however live on in the Liberal Democrats. They are in our DNA. We want conditions for citizen prosperity and not grand central plans pronounced from on high.

We are hounded to the outer rim of public debate but our Freedom Manifesto is the finest policy platform since Joe Lyons rescued Australia in the 1930s. If we have a disappointing result on Saturday, nothing changes. We’re not going to be like the Liberals post Fightback or Labor post-Shorten and announce we were wrong about everything and will now cook up something else. We’ll continue to champion the Freedom Manifesto whether we win lose or draw.

The Liberal Democrats have had fewer parliamentarians than One Nation and United Australia but the half dozen or so that we have had have all been superb defenders of the ‘freedom movement’ before there was a freedom movement.

John Ruddick is the Liberal Democrat senate candidate in NSW. This article first appeared at iamspartacus.

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