I’ve decided to weigh in on the Liberal Party and its path back to government. I know this will be a tremendous relief to John Howard, Alexander Downer, and the granddaughter twice removed of Sir Robert Menzies who, to this date, have carried an enormous burden here – I know it’s my time to shine.

I immediately reached for the complete works of Edmund Burke, the Menzies Lectures, and On Liberty (as you do when you are the guilty recipient of an almost free arts degree and devoid of credibility).

I’ve lucked on another thinker with something to say to a party whose every instinct is wrong – George Costanza of the Seinfeld TV series…

For those unfamiliar (I suppress my contempt) George famously opined ‘every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong’. George decides to change his life by doing the opposite of what his instincts tell him to do.

Let’s apply this to the Liberal Party.

To do this I will make reference to the Liberal Party of Australia website and specifically the ‘Our beliefs’ section which is conveniently situated.

Go to the footer, click on ‘our beliefs’, click on ‘download the Federal Platform’ and you are there. Those of you in web page design must agree why clutter up the front page with unnecessary content? Except that herein lies my first opportunity to do a George.

Liberal Party, if you have beliefs, they are the starting point for your strategy. This is why you exist.

If you believe in ‘equality of opportunity’ don’t create tax advantages for tax minimisation for property development that aren’t available to other asset classes. If you must fund people’s private school educational lifestyle choices be equal in it and offer an educational tax credit or voucher to every parent. That would be equal opportunity. Of course, I know the 12-year-old hard heads within the Federal Secretariat, the political advisers who will one day make an appearance at a preselection for a Liberal safe seat (if they still exist), will be coughing into their chai lattes.

‘What chance have we of regaining the doctors’ wife vote?’ they will ask, and then cite Marx – Groucho not Karl – ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.’

And they do have others.

Another plank of the platform: ‘In government being sufficiently responsive so that it can meet its proper obligations to its citizens’. Here the Liberal Party instinct is to respond to the obligations of people who can afford to spend $45k per year (after tax!) teaching their boys how to yahoo on trams, while developing their property portfolio.

Forget about the doctors’ wife vote that is solid Teal. If the Teals were to offer a tax deduction for the use of Country Style, Vogue Living, and Luxury Travel magazines in a medico’s surgery waiting room, doctors’ wives would laugh contemptuously because they are probably already tax deductible. But I digress.

Another aspect of the Liberals lately has been their emphasis on small government.

Under Dutton and Morrison this was given effect by reducing the scale and scope of the policy the Liberals developed and campaigned on. This proved spectacularly successful with recent campaigns being primarily about showboating to small government zealots ‘look we have no policies’.

The working assumption, I think, was that a government elected with no policies would in office have no immediate legislative agenda and therefore have less opportunity to stuff things up.

It was a harm minimisation approach.

I can see the sense in this. It’s sort of like the Hippocratic oath – first do no harm. In any account, any incoming government worth its salt will be droning on about ‘correcting the neglect of the {INSERT NAME HERE} Labor government’ rather than rolling our policy promises.

Unfortunately, many Australians wanted to know what the Liberals were going to do if elected.

It’s a bit like when your 18-year-old son asks to borrow the car for schoolies. If he plans to fill the boot with ice, score some special k, and drive to the Gold Coast you want to know about it – at least for insurance purposes. Having some policies would seem to be a good idea.

So, a Georgian approach is that Liberals do the opposite and develop some policies before the next election. I know – it’s a bit out there.

Given that the unlikely scenario that the Liberals will win the next election, the Libs should feel liberated by this new policy contaminated environment. This can make policy development a lot easier. For starters, the Liberals don’t have to worry about any policy implementation issues. All sorts of things that the Liberals in opposition will critique – responsible economic management, open and accountable government, smaller government, fixed four-year terms, integrity – can be floated as policies without fear or concern that it will constrain their ability to govern in the near term.

Governing is the least of their worries.

Another place the Liberal Party can do a George is at the ABC. The Liberal Party platform says, ‘In government keeping to its core business and not competing with the private sector.’ The media might be a place to start.

The Liberal Party seems conflicted here.

It wants to satisfy its rural constituency who insist on hearing Macca on Sunday morning receive calls from some bloke in a caravan near Oodannatta bemoaning that we don’t make things in Australia anymore. At the same time, Liberals complain that the rest of the programming is about Aboriginal disadvantage, intersectionality, trans rights, and the climate.

My suggestion here is pure George – outsource Australia all Over with Macca to a new Boating, Camping, Fishing media hour – it will be BCFing fun. If BCF want to advocate for the return of a tariff-protected car industry between crosses to a bloke in Oodnadatta, I’m on board, just for the entertainment value… As for the rest of the ABC, take a leaf out of the left’s playbook and defund it. Reduce its annual funding until David Spear’s hair stylist is made redundant.

Better still, merge the ABC and SBS.

Finally, we should talk about leadership. I should let this go, but given Barnaby Joyce’s current efforts, I can’t resist.

Back in the Tony Abbott period Barnaby was the opposition spokesperson on finance. I will pause for effect and breathe deeply.

When, in the future, there is a run on the Australian dollar, or Standards and Poor are contemplating the ballooning Commonwealth debt, or we need further consideration of horizontal fiscal equalisation – we want some sober, boring, and financially astute Minister to tell the necessary lies. Barnaby Joyce is not quite what I have in mind.

So, the Liberal Party needs to present a sober responsible form of leadership. This sounds easy but when there are 20 portfolios to cover and they only have 20 members of Parliament it’s not as easy as you think.

In Barnaby’s case, he was an accountant so make him finance spokesperson was the thinking. Let’s go with that – so you want a good sport to be the Sports Minister and someone who is a defendant to be the Defence Minister? I think we can see the limits of that approach on leadership.

Which brings me to Ted O’Brien, the shadow Treasurer.

Ted has a Masters of Economics and Business, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and has a background in marketing. The last bit saw his star ascendant under Scott Morrison. For many that would seem to be qualification enough. What is becoming more apparent is that his disconcerting grin is not modelled on Scott Morrison at all. It’s something that he came up with on his own.

He’s smart and an innovator – perfect! Saying that he will consider reviewing the GST carve up that gifts WA so generously that’s encouraging – there is actually some substance in that – Georgian already!

Highlighting Australia’s growing debt is easy. But what are you going to do about it, I hear you ask.

First of all, I recommend setting the scene. Rudd’s 2007 declaration that this ‘reckless spending must stop’ drew the ire of the Socialist Equality Party. On that basis, it’s been market tested, certified A grade, grass fed, take it the bank, perfect for the Liberal Party to rip off now that we are trillion dollars down the shitter. Actually, it might highlight how we have slipped from no debt to big debt in just eight years. It will grind Labor gears just to hear their words played back at them.

Now you ask, (if you are a lazy ABC journalist, who parrots the Labor Party attack lines and expect that an opposition two years out from an election they have no chance of winning and without a Treasury to do costings must have detailed costings on everything) how are you going to pay for it?

The perfect set up. Here are some things that you shouldn’t say that you did.

We will cut back on consultants. We will cut back on government advertising. We will cut back on waste.

In all these examples, Liberals appear to have adopted another Georgiansim coined when George advised Jerry on beating a lie detector. ‘Remember Jerry,’ says George, ‘it’s not a lie if you believe it.’

If this isn’t lying, and Liberals do believe that we can save a trillion dollars on those things – well we don’t need a doctor to declare that this political patient is brain dead.

What I would have the Liberals say is something like this…

There will be cuts to a bloated public service. Just for example, the Chief of the Defence Force is paid significantly more than the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Our defence force can’t deliver a friggin frigate. While we are at it, there will be reform of the Independent Remuneration Tribunal and the Public Service Commission that created, in my opinion, this and other disgraceful misallocations of taxpayer money. There will be savings from the elimination of the duplication of State/Federal functions.

A Liberal government will be defunding the parasitic, chardonnay socialists of the ABC and outsourcing Australia All Over.

Tell me that this policy wouldn’t be red meat to the Liberal heartland and swinging seats generally. Of course, Canberra itself will pay a significant price in unemployment, job losses, and dislocation which is another reason this policy is electoral gold for hardworking Aussies and bludgers like me.