Having suggested before the last federal election that Australians – despairing at what the Albanese government is doing to Australia – should give their first preferences to One Nation, and having repeated this recently, I am now being asked whether this should be changed following the elevation of Angus Taylor to the Liberal leadership.
While it is true that Mr Taylor is making the right sounds, the problem is that the Liberal Party – and to an extent even the National Party – has been tainted by a ‘Labor-lite’ philosophy. There has been a systematic dismissal of the rank-and-file membership by a class of apparatchiks who control the party machine.
The word ‘apparatchik’ is particularly appropriate here. Borrowed from the Russian apparat (the administrative machinery of the State), it described the professional functionaries of the Soviet Communist Party who viewed themselves as the masters, not the servants, of the people. These modern Liberal functionaries seem to harbour a similar disdain for their own ‘Forgotten People’, treating the grassroots as a liability to be managed. This was obvious in the last election, when Mr Dutton seemed to be under pressure to moderate his natural conservatism.
Even the most radical of these apparatchiks knew how to play the centrist card when the situation demanded it. Consider the case of the Soviet defector Vladimir Petrov. Born Afanasii Shorokhov, he renamed himself Vladimir Proletarskii in 1929 – literally ‘Mr Proletariat’ – to signal his ideological purity. However, when he was appointed Third Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, his masters decided such a name was too provocative for a ‘diplomatic’ mission. Without consulting him, he was issued with a passport under the bland name of ‘Petrov’. Just as he had to be camouflaged to hide his radicalism, our current Prime Minister has around 60 taxpayer-funded aides to help him mask his underlying, long-term Hard-Left factional roots.
If Coalition voters doubt that my advice to give their first preference to One Nation is sound, they should refer back to the example of the great founder of the Liberal Party himself, Sir Robert Menzies. In his retirement, Sir Robert became so profoundly disillusioned with the drift of his successors away from the foundational beliefs of the party that he took a stand at the ballot box. As his daughter, Heather Henderson, has recounted, Menzies cast his first preference for the Democratic Labor Party.
Menzies understood that a tactical vote for a third party was a necessary corrective to force his party back to its core purpose. Today, One Nation serves that same vital function. Far from being a mere ‘party of complaint’, One Nation offers a menu of detailed policies including a bold $90 billion Budget Savings Plan. This includes abolishing the $30 billion Climate Change bureaucracy and the $12.5 billion National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) – real policies to stop Australia from becoming the ‘Argentina of the South Seas’.
The apparatchiks will scream about ‘splitting the vote’, just as so many backed the ‘politicians’ republic’ in 1999, only to be defeated 55:45 by the common sense of the people. To save the nation, we must follow the Menzies mandate. Australians determined to change the direction of the country should ensure the greatest impact for their vote: give your first preference to the party of common-sense policies, One Nation.
