Continuing in the spirit of Cate Speaks

The Liberal Party of Australia

Summary

Website: www.liberal.org.au
Social Media: FacebookTwitterInstagram
Slogans: Stronger Economy. Stronger Future.
Themes: You can’t trust Labor
Look at everything we’ve done for you (but not too closely)
You can’t trust Labor
Electorates: Upper House: All states
Lower House: Almost all electorates
Preferences: The Coalition’s preferences are an interesting balancing act. There’s the obvious pandering to Clive, with the UAP coming in at 2, followed by a desperate scramble to find fellow right wingers who aren’t batshit crazy. This leads to Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party getting the number 3 slot, followed by the Liberal Democrats at 4, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party at 5 and the Australian Democrats at 6. UAP aside, these are among the more moderate parties to be found in the centre and right of our spectrum. It’s also notable that every last one of them is a past or current Parliamentary party, at least at a state level (in the case of the SFF).
Previous Reviews: 20192018 (VIC) — 2014 (VIC) — 20132010 — all these are on Cate Speaks

Policies & Commentary

I’m not going to go into too much detail here, as you presumably have some idea about the political positions of the party that has been governing this country for nearly a decade now. Suffice to say that only the fact that there are crazier parties running stops them from being at the bottom of my ballot.

Besides, if we’ve learned anything at all from three years of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, it’s that we can’t rely on any election promise actually becoming a real thing, so why waste time analyzing them?

Still, I can’t resist making a few observations.

It’s fascinating that very little of the policy material on the Liberals’ website actually talks about either their intentions going forward or their achievements while in government, being instead preoccupied with criticising the ALP. There’s very few statements made without a comparison to what the ALP did, despite the fact that the ALP has been in government for six of the last 26 years, compared to 20 for the Liberal-National Coalition. It very much appears that they’d like to run against Labor’s record rather than on their own.

Many of the statements are also, shall we say, a tad disingenuous. For example, Defence spending is presented as an unambiguously good thing in its own right, and the higher the figures the better – with no mention at all about value for money, or, for example, the $5.5 billion still to be paid to France after this government decided to cancel its deal to buy submarines. Or the claim that:

More than 152.2 million bulk billed GP services were delivered in 2020-21 – 46.4m more than in 2012-13.

Without any reference to the fact that Australia’s population increased by 2.6 million people in that period, or that there was – maybe you remember this – a global pandemic taking place. Indeed, had the government’s response to the Covid pandemic not been characterised by endless fumbles and blame-shifting, the number of bulk-billed GP services in that period might have been lower by several million – and surely a healthier nation would have fewer GP visits in any case? Is the Liberal Party seriously claiming that Australia got less healthy under their government and that’s a good thing?

There are also two fascinating omissions: nowhere is it mentioned that it was the Liberal-National Coalition that made Same Sex Marriage legal, despite this being one of the most lauded pieces of legislation any Australian government has ever passed. And there is no mention, anywhere, of any sort of ICAC or other anti-corruption body. No mention of a need for accountability from our political leaders – despite this being something they promised (and signally failed to deliver) at the previous federal election, and a most definitely a live issue in the current campaign.

The closest it gets is a policy regarding accountability for unions:

We have introduced a new Registered Organisations Commission.
This protects two million workers belonging to a union or employer group, by requiring these groups to be as transparent and accountable as companies.

Considering how poor corporate accountability is in this country, this would arguably constitute a reduction in the requirement for transparency and accountability for the unions.

And then, of course, there’s women. There’s a proud boast of having spent $3.5 billion on women’s safety since 2013 – which is to say, over nearly a decade, this government has spent less on women’s safety than it spent on the above-mentioned French submarines we won’t actually be getting. And this figure includes $1.3 billion pledged in this year’s budget, so the actual figure is more like $2.2 billion, or a little over $200,000 a year. There’s also some stuff about increasing access to childcare, although it’s a little odd – one of the triumphs they boast of is

We have removed the annual Subsidy cap of $10,655 for families earning over $190,015 so that no family has an annual cap on their subsidies.

This represents less than a quarter of all Australian families, but does, by some strange coincidence, represent that group that least needs this financial assistance, but most likely to vote Liberal.

That’s enough of my time and yours spent on this, I think. Decide to vote for them if you must, but do it with your eyes open.


Just a reminder that Maz and I lack the necessary Eurovision knowledge to choose the songs that Catherine liked to include, but we’d love to see what you suggest in the comments below 🙂

5 Comments

  1. Peter Lawson

    Love your work. We’re doing early voting and you are helping me decide the order of the under th Eline voting

    • Loki

      Thanks Peter. It’s a labour of love.

  2. Alison

    Minor correction, but not all parties preferenced by the Libs in the Senate are parliamentary — Democrats don’t have any seats.

    • Loki

      Not currently, but they have previously been one. I might have to rewrite to make that clearer.

  3. Paul Williams

    Thank you very much, Loki and Maz, for putting all these summaries together. It has helped me a great deal with making sense of all these candidates, even though my views are somewhat more centrist than your own. I really appreciate the huge amount of time you must have put into this!

    Also, just a small correction on this one; $2.2b over nine years is a lot closer to $250m/year than $200,000/year 🙂.

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