Last week we presented a solution to the nation’s current economic, social and political malaise.

We noted that facts and figures no longer mattered. That arithmetic, engineering, economics and, of course, common sense were now out the window. We also lamented that forums, podcasts and other intelligent conversations with world-leading authorities also no longer have any political effect.

But just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, along comes the nation’s Treasurer with a Whitlamesque plan to remake society and the economy using 

Values-based capitalism involving public-private co-investment and collaboration and the renovation of key economic institutions and markets.

We will renovate the Reserve Bank and revitalise the Productivity Commission

It’s not just our economic institutions that need renewing and restructuring, but the way our markets allocate and arrange capital as well

Mr Chalmers proposes to do this through the efforts of ‘business, labour and government’.

If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, I don’t know what would.

Economist Dimitri Burshtein predicts the Treasurer’s version of values-based capitalism will leave the nation broke.

To stop this madness, the major parties’ hands need to be forced through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.

As discussed, at the last Federal election, the total centre-right (CR) vote would have been enough to get a senator elected in every state. That equates to 12 senators elected over the two-election Senate cycle.

Substantial political power could be achieved if the CR parties formed a single party bloc, namely a:

LIB-DEM ONE-NATION UNITED-AUST SF&F FAMILY PARTY Coalition.

Note I have since included the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party who, it must be acknowledged, did well in at least two states at the last Federal election.

Such an alliance would see One Nation and UAP with 4 of the 12 seats in the parliament, Libertarians with 2, Christian Family Parties 1 and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party 1 Senate seat.

As discussed, having even one Senate seat gives a party a platform, a status, and a portal into the Federal Parliament for its members.

Working together, a twelve-seat Senate bloc would be a formidable political force.

For any project to succeed it must work effectively on three levels – strategy, tactics, and operations.

Strategy is the big picture. This is the primary aim. In our case it is to have twelve senators who can hold together for a minimum of twelve years.

Like anyone who has ever done a jigsaw puzzle, it is vitally important to have the picture on the box before you start. In other words, what the puzzle will look like when it’s finished.

In our case, we want twelve senators, representing five constituencies to hold together to save the nation from people like Jim Chalmers.

Tactics is about which Parties get to represent which States and at which election. Initially, agreement would be reached for both the 2025 and 2028 elections.

To have six senators elected in 2025 and six more in 2028, it will be vital that all six parties, in all six States agree to work together and for each other, keeping an eye on the prize.

Operations is the day-to-day admin, compliance and member servicing. A modest size Secretariat would be able to manage this.

It’s time to face facts, there is a dirty word in Australian politics: ‘freedom’.

The ‘freedom movement’ is not popular and thatis a hard pill to swallow for many liberty-loving Aussies.

Australia does not have an embattled history of freedom, like the United States. We did not fight for our freedom, we accepted British rule. While our Forces have gallantly fought for freedom on foreign soil, we have never had to fight this battle at home. ‘Liberty’ is more likely to be associated with a petrol station than the fundamental tenet of Western society.

All we need to do is look to election results to see where the freedom movement stands in Australia. And while I am not suggesting all hope is lost, we are a very long way from the majority. When I mention this to some, they have a hard time accepting it. From ‘rigged’ elections to lies, damn lies – the excuses are endless.

ELECTIONS ARE NOT ‘RIGGED’

The first stage of grief is denial and the final stage is acceptance. It’s time we move out of denial and work towards acceptance, lest we remain permanently traumatised.

It is obvious that Australia is a coddled nation.

When something goes wrong we turn to the government for solutions. When there is a tragic accident on a local road, we cry for lower speed limits. When a new start-up industry emerges, we demand bureaucracy and regulation. When we fall on hard times, we beg the government for money. ‘Personal responsibility’ is a term that dare not be uttered in our holy chambers of Parliament.

It is no surprise that many parts of Australia endured some of the longest and harshest COVID restrictions on the planet. And it should come as no surprise that ‘freedom parties’ only achieved approximately 10 per cent of the Senate vote in the May 2022 Federal Election.

ALL IS NOT LOST

Deep down in the Australian psyche there is a rugged pioneer spirit. A spirit that saw a land filled with hardscrabble deserts and dangerous animals turned into one of the most prosperous nations on Earth. We must tap into that.

It is also worth noting, 10 per cent is not nothing. Before the American Revolutionary War, less than 10 per cent of the people of the then-colonies supported independence. By the end of the War, it was almost universally supported and now it is often considered the true beginning of the United States. I am not suggesting we take up arms against our government, but highlighting that a critical mass is all that is needed and 10 per cent is more than enough to form a critical mass.

THE BATTLEGROUND OF CULTURE

Politics is always downstream from culture, so we must take this battle to academia, HR departments and, most importantly, suburban Australia.

The success of the Greens and the left-wing movement is no accident, it is the result of decades of grassroots campaigning. Fighting block-by-block, street-by-street and house-by-house. Slowly ensuring left-wing ideology remains an insoluble part of Australian culture. This has only recently translated into consistent electoral success.

Political parties are entities specifically designed for electing candidates to public offices, and perhaps it is convenient of me to say (being the President of a political party), but there is only so much political parties can do to shape the battleground of culture.

Become an empowered individual. Become a community organiser. Become a local leader of liberty. Whether it’s your local footy club, your place of work or even just amongst your family and friends, become the person who lives and breathes the fundamental values of liberty: free-speech, free-association, bodily autonomy and personal responsibility. Apply these values to your everyday life. Be the go-to person for these issues in your community. Before you know it, you will be someone who can regularly and reliably activate 10, 20, or even 50 people.

UNITY OVER DIVISION

Imagine thousands of people across Australia who can regularly and reliably call upon 50 people for grassroots campaigning and volunteering; politics will take care of itself. But this does not mean political parties can get away with doing nothing. Political parties must support these people where they can, without turning them into partisans.

Liberty-minded political parties also need to put aside their differences. The Greens average at least two Senate seat per state because they are one unified entity, rather than several disparate entities. This means they can ensure voter discipline and, ultimately, electoral success – and if they do fail, they can ensure their preferences are headed Labor’s way.

If the freedom movement voted as a bloc and practised preference discipline, we would see similar results for the United Australia Party, One Nation and the Liberal Democrats.

But despite tireless campaigns to ‘put the majors last’, it rarely materialises in electoral success.

In the recent Victorian Election, we saw ‘freedom-friendly minor parties’ choose tactics of division rather than unity. This was a squandered opportunity. Under a group-ticket system (which, contrary to popular belief, is a far superior system), several parties opted to direct their preferences to the Liberal Party before other like-minded minor parties. This very nearly resulted in the Liberal Party gaining a second seat in South-East Metro, to the exclusion of Liberal Democrats MP David Limbrick.

But it is easy to criticise others and not so easy to lead by example, so I will leave with this:

I am willing to work with any like-minded political party (or independent) to the fullest extent. Nothing is off the table, from party mergers to formal coalitions to ensuring greater preference discipline. If we are ever to succeed, we need unity now more than ever.

Here’s the quick political segmentation for you to ponder.

The Australian political landscape has two overarching groups: the Extremists and the Democrats.

We must actively counter the Extremists in the public square regardless of their form or stripe. No exceptions. No nuancing or qualifying. Their idealogies are all abhorrent. This includes five sub-groups: the Communists and Socialists, the Fascists and Ethno-Nationalists, and the Militant Jihadists as well.

We don’t weaken our democracy by banning them.

No! As Democrats, we must do the hard yards engaging and countering them.

We expose their dire histories, their graphic, heinous results, their intolerance, ulterior motives and their totalitarian DNA. We reveal and mock, we eviscerate and make them look odd and utterly untempting.

We built alliances among the Democrats in this regard, we unite with them against the Extremists and focus our message towards the disenfranchised, marginalised and dispossessed so they don’t drift to the Extremists.

As and once we win, we turn next to our fellow Democrats. With our democratic fellow-travellers, we reason and convert.

Now, inside the Democrats, there are two sub-groups both with long and proud traditions. They are the Democratic Left and the Democratic Right. As the names suggest, both are democratic but of different flavours. Both are ice cream, just one is strawberry and the other chocolate. Here the flavours are more government and more freedom.

We start with our great democratic opponent, the Democratic Left. This group comprises the Social Democrats with their penchant for the welfare state in the name of compassion. They are fairly united right now, sitting inside the Australian Labour Party, the Australian Greens and Animal Justice and representing a cohesive, fighting force. If we do not impune their motives but show them the results of their policies, we might have a chance. Far more effective is that we promote policies which contrast, wedge and split them. AUKUS is emerging as a wedge issue for the Democratic Left.

History suggests it will be hard to convince them. And if that be the case, so be it.

Next, we must strengthen the Democratic Right for future battles.

So what do we discover?

Well, the Democratic Right are highly fragmented at the moment. In fact, there are 8 segments, all fairly distinct sub-sub-groups if you look hard enough but with some smudging at the edges which reveals affliation across some of the grouping and that people migrate between them.

Here are the 8 segments:

1. The Moderates
   We’re talking here about people who self-describe as small-l philosophical liberal or modern liberal. Moderates see themselves as fiscally responsible and socially liberal. Since 2007, if loyal party members, this segment hasn’t noticed they are frogs in the slow-boiling saucepan fiscally. If new to party politics, the ranks of the Moderates now include people who have a tendency to be big government spenders rather than economically lean, and that expenditure has often been on social projects they wouldn’t have chased in the Howard years. We are talking about Liberal Party members and Teals.
2. The Libertarians
   This group, most likely you as a reader of Liberty Itch, sometimes self-describe as classical liberal or liberal. Like the Moderates, they see themselves as fiscally responsible and socially liberal. Unlike the Moderates, the Libertarians are philosophically-driven and so their policy prescriptions are consistent and predictable. And they are very dry fiscally, to the point of reducing the size of government. This sometimes results in a doctrinaire approach and an obsession for philosophical purity tests. We are talking members of the Liberal Democrats.
3. The Disaffected
   These people are probably ex Liberal Party supporters, probably slow to leave, currently political refugees, probably moderate, probably white collar, and looking for a new party which expresses their values. They are confused and disoriented. They are upset. They feel the political rug has been pulled from under their feet.
4. The Populists
   Here, we’re talking probably about former Liberal Party members who self-describe as conservative but, on closer scrutiny, their views taken in total show a mixed or inconsistent framework. This inconsistency can sometimes cause them to err into dangerous territory and be drawn to a charismatic leader. They are mostly blue collar, and have already migrated to One Nation and the United Australia Party.
5. The Conspiracy Theorists
   This segment doesn’t know which political party they belong to, are skeptical of authority, and yearn to make sense of the world. They frequently latch onto theories about globalists and global bodies but, with emerging critical reasoning skills only and craving certainty in an uncertain world, cannot discern between fact and fiction. You can find these people in any of the parties but they are particularly concentrated in Australia One and the sovereign citizen movement.
6. The Agrarians
   This segment lives in rural areas or regional towns with a strong agricultural influence. They are conservative, but fiscally slip into protectionist economics and bigger spending rural services. They are in the National Party, Liberal Party and the Shooters Fishers and Farmers.
7. The ConservativesAs I’ve documented, conservatives love to conserve whatever the status quo of the day. Since resistance to change is their modus operandi, the work tirelessly to halt or slow undesirable change. However, Conservatives rarely come up with new policy themselves and what they do come up with can be anti-freedom. Think bans, quick-to-judge court proceedings and higher taxes to fund conservative causes. This puts them on the back-foot constantly for lack of policy flair. You’ll find conservatives and self-described conservatives everywhere.
8. The Christian Right
   This segment has no monopoly over right-wing Christians. The difference between the Christian Right and all other Democratic Right segments is that it is exclusively Christian and it seeks to assert Biblical authority into the state as a kind of theocracy of one potency or another. The other segments mentioned will assume a plural, secular, liberal democracy. The Christian Right is usually evangelical or orthodox, usually Pentecostal, always family-oriented. You will find members in Family First and the Australian Family Party.

The challenge for the Democratic Right is to bind these 8 segments to form a Centre-Right Coalition, win against the Democractic Left and put the Extremists out of business.

Leaving aside for a moment the question (very ably posed by LibDems South Australia President James Hol) of when exactly the Liberal Democrats became known as a right-wing party, former Senator Bob Day’s diagnosis of the state of modern minor party politics to the right of the Greens is characteristically sharp. 

Henry Kissenger once said of Germany that it was ‘too big for Europe, and too small for the world’; so too do the political parties hovering between 2.5% and 4.5% of the federal Senate vote glance suspiciously at one another even as they cast a wistful eye towards Canberra.

I agree with Day’s assessment that the Australian minor party landscape of the centre and right have shared interests, in particular a shared enemy in the Liberal and ALP cabal whose determination to protect their political turf may soon make Whigs of my party (sorry Kenelm, it won’t happen).

Former Senator Day challenged readers to explain to him why the Coalition would raise barriers to entry for non-left minor parties, and I would gladly take him up on that gauntlet. The simple truth is that the Coalition is more afraid of having its ideological bankruptcy permanently exposed by former Senators like he and David Leyonhjelm than it is of temporarily losing seats to the left in the ebb and flow of electoral cycles.

It is crucial to realise, and to explain to our members and the voters we ask to support us, that we are the barbarians at the gates of Canberra!

All of this makes discussion of co-operation between parties like One Nation, United Australia Party, and the Liberal Democrats, more than mere idle musing, and I know as I read Bob’s words that he is serious. So in this reply, I outline why this has yet to happen, what barriers may need to be overcome, and how this process could begin.

Discussion of an alliance of minor parties and greater co-operation, in particular at a Federal level, is nothing new. Founder and former president of the Liberal Democrats John Humphreys has long said that some kind of pragmatic alliance would be a way around the ever more formidable Great Wall of Canberra.

An arrangement whereby key minor parties ran a joint ticket in each state for the Senate at the next Federal election, determining who would have number 1 spot by negotiation could allow a group of parties together to break through where each would fail or underperform alone.

So why hasn’t this already happened?

The first is that we are often our own worst enemies. Like the best game theory experiments, each party holds out hope that this election will be the election they become the next Greens in terms of electoral success and representation. The incentives not to co-operate, at least on the surface, are strong, and the consequences for betrayal high in the minds of those navigating fraught terrain.

The second is a fear that co-operation might lead to a loss of individual party autonomy or policy independence. The Liberal Democrats, for example, hold views on drug reform that might make Family First or One Nation baulk. The party is not, nor have we ever been, conservative. However, though I am proud to say that unlike a broad church I was formerly a part of, many conservative libertarians find a welcome home in our party.  

These challenges and the psychology that underlie them are rational. In a zero sum mindset, it is easy to perceive only risk and negative consequence, while losing sight of possible benefit. However the impact that even half the number of senators that Bob Day suggests is possible would be immeasurable, as not too distant political history has shown.

Greater co-operation and the ability to recognize and leverage opportunities for shared interests to be realized requires a cultivation of personal relationships. This is true at all levels of our parties; at the grassroots membership, the organising level, and the political leadership.

Without knowing each other better, accepting vulnerability, and taking risks, trust cannot be built. There is an element of boldness required to take a step into the unknown, and if we are to turn our combined arms against our bipartisan oppressors rather than brandish them at one another, someone must be first to place them back into the holster.

As Australia’s foremost libertarian party, the Liberal Democrats are ready to try.

Just when you shudder at the Treasurer’s blueprint for ‘redesigning capitalism’ and the limp response from the Coalition we have come to expect, along comes Senator Ralph Babet (UAP, Vic).

Classical liberals everywhere, take heart. There is hope that, finally, we have an advocate for our principles, and one uncaptured by the Coalition.

Straight from the Senate floor on 8 February 2023, in a speech titled Government Intervention Makes Things Worse …

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that
handing-out large sums of money will destablise and manipulate the market.

Common sense, right?

Then, warming to the opportunity to let them have it, without a care how the parliamentary-careerists might react, he openly chastises the Liberal Party and National Party who took us down the wrong path …

“Never again can our country run-up such an irresponsible amount of debt
like the former Government did.”

Just in case that didn’t sit you upright and start cheering, these gems then flowed-freely in a kind of declaration of intent …

“Less stimulus. Lower taxes. If government removes financial barriers,
the market will naturally provide adequate supply
at a price acceptable to consumers.”

Well, bravo Senator. Bravo!

Now in full flight and infusing the red chamber with his particular brand of optimism, long-missed plain-speaking and unequivocal classical liberal rhetoric …

“For too long, the focus has been on government
incentivising the demand-side of the equation with taxpayer money.
It’s time to focus on the supply-side.”

If he keeps this up, the Senator will be mercilessly attacked.

That, of course, will be the sign he is threatening the cosy status-quo.

As Ralph Babet emerges as a first-time senator, it will be interesting to witness how he handles his philosophical opponents.

However, one thing is clear. Do not underestimate the good Senator from Victoria.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7uHSl1Sglag?start=29s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0