To quote the great songsmiths Lennon and McCartney, ‘I don’t want to spoil the party’, but the idea that Australia’s Liberal party and National party have each become bastions of solid right-of-centre thinking and policies now that they are led by Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan, respectively, is somewhat short of plausible. Or, at least, the evidence so far certainly shows improvement, but how much? Let’s recall that the traditional values and beliefs associated with conservative political parties across the Anglosphere – and clearly this is a spectrum with variability and reasonable disagreement within it – are some melange or combination of these. Firstly, that actions count far more than mere words. Secondly, that civil liberties and free speech matter immensely and yet that it is the job of elected politicians – not of unelected judges drawn from a privileged, woke and these days heavily left-leaning lawyerly caste – to protect and uphold them. Thirdly, lower taxes, smaller government and less public spending are significantly preferable to the big government, big spending and big taxing reality we see all around us. Oh, and this one may be contestable but I would add that the most important attribute of any politician on the right side of the spectrum, certainly in today’s world, is his or her bravery – not being articulate, not raw brain power, not the sort of reproductive organs being brought to the preselection. Nope, it’s bravery.

And this is more true than ever today.  Why? Well as my buddy Ramesh Thakur rightfully has been pointing out, cultural questions (think patriotism, think national identity, think scope to speak one’s mind, et cetera) now matter more to most conservatively inclined voters than the old right-left economic battles. (Digression: if you are someone who actually believes that money and what’s in one’s pocketbook are the definitive issues of importance then notice that you have swallowed hook, line and sinker the reductionist Marxist belief that the economy and the struggle for resources trump all else. This worldview then easily sees individuals as mere cogs in some group or other, the proletariat, the capitalist, women, minorities, and ultimately ‘the oppressed’ and ‘the oppressors’. I think that outlook is pure garbage and, personally, would sacrifice a lot of my pay cheque to get back freewheeling humour, free speech, patriotism, a deep respect for Western culture, assimilation not multiculturalism, not importing people who shoot up Jews on the beach (and notice which religious group has just committed four terrorist attacks in the US – it ain’t the Buddhists.)

So bravery and calling things the way you see them matter a whole heap of a lot. And it is the patent, undeniable lack of bravery in most right-of-centre politicians that has triggered the rise of so-called ‘populist’ parties around the democratic world. (Full disclosure: I was so disgusted with the Peter Dutton campaign last election that I gave my first preference to One Nation.) It is the ‘say one thing but do another’ attitude that has given birth to the massive distrust of so many voters as regards our political, media, medical and professional elites. This collapse in trust, in my view, is wholly warranted. They have earned it. And it expanded exponentially during the aping of communist China’s thuggish, illiberal Covid lockdowns that blew a giant hole through all of the four traditional conservative beliefs I listed above. Indeed, there is plenty of indirect evidence that one big cause of the migration of Coalition voters to One Nation is a hangover from the actions of the ScoMo Coalition government, including enabling what the likes of Dan Andrews did to us. I have not forgiven them one iota. Have you? They blew apart any claims to being better, small-government, low-taxing husbands of the economy. They lit on fire any civil liberties values associated with them. They showed zero bravery, even to the point of expelling the one or two brave MPs in the party who dared – dared, I say – dissent from the vaccine, lockdown, ‘this virus is the worst since the Spanish flu’ near religious dogma the elites rammed down our throats. And this despite those such as the great Jay Bhattacharya noting that the biggest sources of disinformation during the two-plus lockdown years were government and elite professional bodies. I think we can all agree that the traditional conservative political parties around the Anglosphere showed zero bravery and zero principles.

My point is that this, and other cultural issues – not least opposition to mass inwards immigration and multiculturalism, but also the impoverishing pseudo-religion of the net zero Paris Accords and more – matter more for many, many right-of-centre voters than tax rates, or capital gains tax minutiae.

So what do we see when we look at Australia’s political universe? We see a very brave One Nation party that opposed the thuggish, illiberal lockdowns far more than any others. We see a One Nation party prepared to vote to leave the Paris Agreement when the Libs voted the other way and the Nats found other things to do. Bravery should be made of sterner stuff, to paraphrase the Bard.

Oh, and the hate groups legislation cunningly proposed by Albo?  The Libs voted for it, save for Alex Antic. Either they believed this was good legislation (in which case I will not vote for them) or the Lib party room wholly lacks bravery (which poses the philosophical conundrum, ‘is that better or worse?’). The excuse of the Julian Leesers of the political caste that this is what Jewish organisations wanted is factually wrong as the Australian Jewish Association (one of the more conservative of the Jewish groups) sensibly opposed the bill as a bizarre response to Bondi. They rightly believe Bondi called instead for a focus on the radical Islam motivation, the Islamic hate-preachers, deporting non-citizens who support terrorism, and making clear that all such hate-speech-type laws are mere deflections to avoid the real problem. I would add that they are counter-productive because they will be enforced selectively (you guess which side will suffer) and in no way deliver good overall outcomes. But the Libs opted to mimic sheep, abandon any principled commitment to civil liberties and bravery, and help Albo out of a tight spot. And then, inexplicably, Angus Taylor puts Mr Leeser (the go-to pro-Voice and pro-hate speech laws guy in the party room) into his shadow cabinet. WTF?

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Matt Canavan was an early critic of the Covid madness. And he’s been comparatively brave against net zero. As for Angus Taylor, I’m prepared to give him a bit more time though as an economist it’s not surprising he seriously underestimates the role of culture.  And, rightly, he wants to change the candidate selection rules – a must! Leader selection too because if we go down the Canadian conservative party ‘every party member gets a vote’ we can lock in long-term bravery.

But in my view the attacks on Pauline Hanson are seriously misguided. Working with Barnaby and Hanson is the only hope for the right. And they have shown the way as far as bravery is concerned. Consolidate your holds on your own parties and then be brave.