It is both the name and the delivery of ‘Conservative Politics’ that is losing the votes and voters.

As I have said to friends and associates: ‘Don’t you dare call me Conservative!’ I was the young body surfer who got so tired of pulling up her bikini bra top after a good wave that I took it off before entering the water. And yes, I loved university so much I have returned four times across different disciplines, but my first years at Uni were so much fun creating friendships that had us all heading off to do something much more interesting than lectures (like sailing, horse riding, horse race going, picnics…) and we all graduated. But those friendships remain, and by the age of 25 I had started my first of five businesses that had me employ over 200 – mainly as casuals but several as permanent – over the next four decades. This is called ‘free enterprise’ and it comes with a huge component of risk management of product, costs, staff, and marketing right through to the fun of – and celebration of – achievement. It used to be known as the ‘engine room of Australia’.

What it doesn’t come with for the ‘enterprising’ owner is a guaranteed income or hourly rate as per all the professionals identifying as conservatives. But what it does come with is a huge amount of energy on the part of all involved wanting to make each job memorable so more will follow. That has another name – ‘progress’.

This is why I would like to propose ditching the constant promotion of the adjective ‘Conservative’ beside those politicians who are meant to be advocating for the various freedoms of individuals’ pursuit for themselves, their businesses, their staff, and the future. My suggestion for a needed re-branding is to create ‘Freedom of Enterprise’ parties that recognise individual effort from business ownership level down to the newest apprentice.

What should also be seriously challenged is the oft-quoted link of Judeo-Christian principles to the word Conservative. Does this mean those of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhism, Taoism etc … and the irreligious ‘need not apply’ to tick the voting box for non-socialist/green political candidates? I have a bit of background into the Judeo-Christian ‘back story’ as my maternal grandfather was a member of the Philologists who could read ancient Greek was one of the team handed The Dead Sea Scrolls. I have his papers relating to the theft by the Roman Catholic Church of the scrolls that didn’t agree with their recreation of Jesus in the image of this needed church’s teachings. This is not to demean Jesu ben Josephus, who was an amazing man across any time span or culture.

It was Machiavelli who pointed out in the 16th Century that the simplest way for the geographically massive Roman Empire to manage its multiple ethnic and tribal masses across the Mediterranean and Europe was by religion. This was at a time when the Emperor Constantine’s mother was suffering multiple hallucinations (possibly caused by lead poisoning) and he may have been influenced by her ‘visions’. So perhaps, in a re-branding, the personal religious preferences are set to one side as not pertinent to the fiscal, legal, and individual freedoms options offered at the ballot box in a democracy.

On this same point are the historical origins of the ‘vote’. It wasn’t Rome but Greece that first implemented a civic voting system and this allowed males over 18 who paid a tithe (1/10th of their earnings to the State) to vote by casting pebbles into urns. Remembering that Plato, Socrates, and Plutarch were all Greeks – their combined IQ overwhelms. Perhaps, on a user-based economy, only those who pay income tax can vote?

The other issue is to look at voting age demographics to see who wants the appellation of ‘Conservative’. If you add in Gen Z, Gen X, and Millennials that is a huge voting block that may not like to associate with the brand ‘Conservative’ and is much greater than the Boomers and their still extant parents.

So for all those who support the concept that each and every one of us can ‘have a go’ and do our ‘own thing’ which was probably behind a truck driver called Lindsay Fox starting a trucking company it is time to recognise the ‘Can Doers’. Vote Freedom of Enterprise as together we will be to foes of socialism and authoritarianism.