It seems to me that the senior leadership of our government is being very consistent. That does not mean I approve of what they do, nor do I enjoy it. Many of their actions are deeply disappointing. However, no one should be surprised.

There is something perfectly natural with the leader of our government desiring time in China. Likewise, it is consistent that his senior ministers are focused on increasing trade with Beijing rather than being focused on the sort of diversification that increases our supply security of manufactured goods.

It is logical that the Labor leadership proclaims crises in the environment, in energy, in welfare, in health care, in economics, and early childhood education. And naturally, they consistently explain that all these crises are caused by external factors.

This way of thinking gives them permission to increase their involvement in every area of our lives. A crisis must be solved by government intervention… Government provides for their ‘saving actions’ by raising taxes.

It also makes sense that they are disinterested in increasing defence capabilities while also hailing the compassion involved in giving barely scrutinised visas in a hurry to Gazans. We do not know if these refugees value the core beliefs of this country or not. The government’s narrative does not need to know, because they are rescuing people from harm.

Why is none of this surprising? Because these actions reflect the values behind their policies. The bottom line is that they need generic concerns so that they can promise generic (government-funded) heroic solutions.

In the same way, focusing on China makes sense to Labor because they are globalists. They avoid the USA and even Japan and South Korea, because they are all focused on protection their nations.

Globalists dominate our Federal Parliament and keenly agree with bodies like the United Nations on matters of economics, the environment, energy supply, and international relationships.

Their rationale is that their internationally-minded ‘friends’ know best because they have the expertise (based on their (pseudo) science) and will rescue us all if we just trust them. This extends to redefining the most personally intimate aspects of humanity – such as when unborn children can be terminated (functionally, at any time), when the end of life can be brought forward (functionally, increasingly almost at any time), and when a child can change their birth sex (functionally, in any affirmation clinic).

This is why the Labor government promotes socialist economic structures in which a majority of adults are dependent on full-time work leaving very young children at the mercy of the government’s narrative about life. The allied strategy is controlling what teachers do – what they teach and how they teach it – in early childhood centres, schools, and tertiary institutions.

It is naïve to tell these political leaders how they ‘should’ think and act differently. They cannot, unless they change their basic assumptions on which they pin their core values. According to Jonathan Haidt (in The Righteous Mind), it is because these kinds of politicians only value liberation, justice, and care.

To be seen as liberators, they must find sources of oppression – such as ‘whiteness’ in identity, ‘colonialism’ in our history, ‘misogyny’ in history and literature, and ‘restrictive morality’ within traditional modes of speech and in traditional family structures. Similarly, they recoil at the thought of any inhibitions towards the definition of sexuality that is not emotivist and individualistic – that is, to provide guardrails for a common understanding of biological sex is, in their thinking, simply an assault on their feelings, and thus an assault on their individual freedom. In their minds, these oppressive forces are the cultural equivalents of the proletariat being suppressed by the bourgeoisie.

Caring better for people in this framework can therefore be consistently framed as implementing justice – that is, rescuing people from structural injustice, thus saving them from harm.

Based on the combined left-leaning votes that gave our current government a large majority in the last election, these strategies seem to work, at least for now. This was exemplified by the re-run of the Medicare scare campaign.

But there is a cost to using these three values that only hold together through a contorted ideological stance. The disorder in the left’s thinking is that they have a fantastical understanding of humanity. Greg Sheridan said it well in this week’s Australian (Why does the left wage war against the poor?):

But the underlying truth is that every big idea the left has had in the past 40 years runs in some way against human nature. Because the left, since it parted ways with Western tradition, has been trying to refashion humanity to fit the various ideological constructs which it itself very often doesn’t fully understand.

What then for the Opposition? Will they have a better view of humanity? They will not if they only engage with these three basic Leftist value assumptions – care, justice, and liberation. If this is also their range of values, then they will justly earn the label ‘Labor-lite’.

Can the LNP re-imagine care that is given through accepting the sanctity of life? Can they call Australians to an elevated view of who we are as humans? Perhaps a starting point would be defining biological womanhood and providing subsequent respectful and just protections. Might the same consideration be given to unborn children, the elderly, and families wanting to raise children through the home, and not government-run indoctrination centres?

Can the LNP recommit to the universal application of law, justice, and welfare to those who call Australia home, regardless of their ethnic origins? Can they also commit to stopping those who want to destroy the soul of this nation – internally? Can they insist on no incitement to violence being exercised in our streets, cafés, places of worship, and child-care centres? Can they act on those who stop elected politicians and their constituents having free access to their places of work?

Can they support the way this kind of care is best expressed – through local associations, or the ‘little platoons’ of society, as Edmund Burke expressed it?

Such respect would also, contrary to the Leftist pattern described by Greg Sheridan, mean caring for the poorest in the structures of daily life (e.g. affordable cost of energy). Gaia is not more important than our neighbour.

Can the LNP provide the contrast to the Left and their deconstructionist actions? Haidt suggests there is a blind spot in the Left’s values thinking – the question for us in Australia is whether both sides share the same loss of sight?

Nonetheless, if you are trying to change an organisation or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire, and why communist revolutions usually end up in despotism. It is the reason I believe that liberalism – which has done so much to bring about freedom and equal opportunity – is not sufficient as a governing philosophy. It tends to overreach, change too many things too quickly, and reduce the stock of moral capital inadvertently.

So, dear Ms Ley – we are waiting to hear from you.