The months of speculation are over. The Liberals have a new Opposition Leader, likely to take the Coalition to the next federal election, come what may in Farrer, NSW. Unless he doodles and dawdles on key issues like energy prices, inflation, and housing, which are on everyone’s lips, including the Prime Minister’s. Taylor has promised to attack Labor at every turn – that may be enough to stave off a leadership challenge but not to defeat a 94-seat-strong Labor with a 42-seat Coalition (with the seat of Farrer already at risk).

We know that at heart, Angus Taylor does not buy climate alarmism. But the party moderates hush the truth-tellers. Yet, with respect to climate, he needs to use that ‘scam’ word loud and clear and often enough to keep the Coalition from bleeding members and donors to One Nation (ON). It is my view that the climate racket is the second-largest scientific scam of all time, and Taylor should say so, damn the moderates.

Even that will not win him an election unless there is another security failure and tragic terrorist attack on Australian soil before people go to the general election polls. If that happens, Labor is done.

What else can Taylor do besides mimicking ON’s policies? He can take the momentum away from ON with creative input which the Coalition has sorely lacked. There is one such measure. It will have phenomenal long-term consequences for the future of this country.

The Fairness Doctrine (US, 1949-87)

In the US, fearing conservative takeover of media, the Left argued for and implemented a Fairness Doctrine (1949-87).

Lawmakers were concerned that the rich (‘conservatives’) would buy all ‘scarce spectrum’ media licenses and effectively control the media. The Fairness Doctrine required that broadcast networks devote roughly equal time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. The US Congress backed the policy. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) called the doctrine ‘the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest’ – no renewal of a license could be granted unless the doctrine was adhered to. Broadcasters obeyed.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) upheld the doctrine. The SCOTUS relied on the scarcity of radio spectrum to justify the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969). The FCC required the broadcaster to afford individuals an on-air opportunity to respond to personal attacks aired by Red Lion broadcasting. Broadcasters argued these rules abridged their right to broadcast whatever they choose, citing the general right of an individual to ‘say or publish what they think’.

By 1987, the tide had turned in favour of the First Amendment. Some broadcasters had avoided controversial topics altogether, fearing the FCC’s snooping eye and exacting control. When Congress sought to push the doctrine into law, President Reagan vetoed it. Under Reagan, the FCC eventually abandoned the doctrine.

Public Assets like the ABC and SBS

However, a most crucial distinction slipped both President Reagan and the FCC. Private broadcasters should have the freedom to air whatever views they wish to. But taxpayer-funded broadcasting assets, like ABC and SBS television and radio, should not be allowed to exclusively peddle only one side of controversial issues like the climate alarmism hypothesis and its highway-robbery consequences of stealing from consumers and fossil-fuel projects to subsidise unstable energy sources, or to exclusively air only one side of the absurdity of a central bank setting interest rate and inflation targets (as against a gold standard moderating money supply and zeroing inflation for a century), or only one side of the unscientific nonsense that men can have babies.

Coincidentally, by 1987, neo-Marxism (aka Cultural Marxism) had become the dominant cultural force in both education and media in all of the West. Hordes of intellectuals left the Frankfurt School (Goethe University) for the US in the 1930s and 1940s, and by the 1960s, entrenched a neo-Marxist pedagogy in the Humanities at major universities. Later, the oppressive theory attacking gender, family, and narrated imperialism percolated down to high schools all over the West. So much so that universities began to discriminate against Jews and Asians who would have otherwise been admitted to Ivy League schools in higher numbers than their pro-rata share of the population.

By the 1990s, the legacy media was theirs for the taking. The dominant discourse changed the intellectual culture. The first Club of Rome meet was in 1968. By 2006, politicians were spruiking a global warming theory with zero predictive ability and no evidence. By 2013, DSM V had amended gender-identity disorder to gender dysphoria for psychologists and psychiatrists – the politicisation of science and research funding was thoroughly entrenched; now the neo-Marxists could dictate an expert-driven policy agenda, but the well-paid experts were only ever selected by the fascists. All this cultural territory was won by the neo-Marxists without ever lifting a gun. Antonio Gramsci was laughing in his grave.

Suddenly, the Left did not want a Fairness Doctrine to destroy their monopoly on education and public media, now that the shoe had landed on the other foot.

But a Fairness Doctrine policy must be imposed on taxpayer-funded influential assets in Australia, particularly state-owned media and higher education, where the curriculum is essentially controlled by TEQSA (the Tertiary Education and Quality Standards Agency). Education, too, must respectfully convey all scientific sides of controversial issues.

Politics Downstream of Culture, Which Is Downstream of Philosophy

ON may launch this policy first if Taylor is not quick. But it would be worth mirroring anyway. So let me say that Angus Taylor has a fantastic opportunity to not only startle the media and his Labor and ON opposition, but throw a spanner into the nonstop upward trend of Australian youth signing up to the nonsense of climate alarmism and transgenderism. Unless that philosophical trend is reversed, the minor and major right (well, who are the minors now, ON or the Nats and Liberals?) may only win one of the next two federal elections at best, and that too, as an aggregate of ON, LNP Queensland, Liberals, and Nationals all together amassing 76 seats in the lower house – a ‘governing coalition’ of the Coalition itself with ON.

Much damage has been done to young minds. But it can be reversed in many who are not yet fully brainwashed.

If only the Fairness Doctrine was in play today – then the ABC would have needed to allow the right-wing media to answer their critics on public media, too. The ABC would even be forced to air an equal amount of time of Professor Ian Plimer as they do of Chris Bowen’s gabfest – now that would be a treat to watch.