Liberals jump to the left and lurch to the right
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 28, 2009
IT IS hardly an exaggeration to seek in Armageddon a metaphor for the battle that has erupted this week in the Liberal Party. The Bible tells of a catastrophic battle at the end of days. The Liberals' political Armageddon has been already been catastrophic and bloody. It calls into question the very existence of a united Liberal Party. It is hardly less significant for the future of our democracy.Both the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, and his opponents claim to be standing on principle, but both offer pragmatic reasons for their position. Turnbull believes, rightly, that the Liberal Party is unelectable if it appears opposed to an emissions trading scheme. Turnbull's opponents believe, also apparently with justification, that the party will split if it is asked to support the carbon pollution reduction scheme. For the sake of party unity, they want to delay. The party is thus forced to choose between what is good for the Liberal Party, or good for the country. We believe it must choose the latter.Coalition rebels claim to have encountered a barrage of complaints from supporters urging them to delay the carbon pollution reduction scheme. That Coalition members should ignore the wishes of the vast majority of Australians to pander to the hard core of sceptics in their party base is a telling indication of what they think will happen at the next election.The prospect of a Coalition victory at the next election is a distant one. The more pressing question, though, is whether it will avoid the kind of annihilation that will leave it in the wilderness for decades.Turnbull's strategy of climate-change action is designed to appeal to middle Australia - those swinging voters the Coalition needs to win government. His opponents, in appealing to hard-core climate doubters and conservatives, take a small-target strategy to bolster the party core. That strategy contradicts the lesson taught most recently by the Liberals' most successful politician in decades, John Howard. Howard, a sceptic for years, smelt the change in public opinion on climate change ahead of the last election. Even he could see the futility of doing nothing. But his loyal lieutenants, bereft of their old leader and forgetting his pragmatism, have resorted to ill discipline and outright war. They are retreating to the ideological trenches before the election battle has even began.The present split in the party goes beyond the Liberals' long-standing division between conservatives and libertarians. The conservatives have always tended to win the fight in the long run: they have stayed in the party while moderates or progressives have formed the Liberal Reform Movement in South Australia, and the Australian Democrats.Howard and the dries triumphed over wets such as Ian McPhee and Fred Chaney in the 1980s. But this is different. Climate change has changed politics. Turnbull realises it, but the Liberal traditionalists do not. Doing nothing (the preferred traditionalist position on climate change) is in fact the most dangerous form of radicalism in the face of the environmental threat. A true conservative position is one that seeks to stabilise the environment, or at least mitigate catastrophic change. That is why in this battle it is Turnbull who represents the party's genuine mainstream, and his challengers who, paradoxically, have turned their backs on the past to chase a dangerous illusion.Unlike past leaders under challenge, Turnbull does not sound or look defeated. To his credit, he is still set on dragging the Liberal Party into the 21st century, or go down trying. If he does fail, it will be a great tragedy of modern politics - the felling of a leader just as he began to seem most leader-like. If the party switches to Joe Hockey the tragedy will be twofold.Hockey has publicly backed an agreement with the Rudd Government on emissions trading. If Hockey wavers in his support to win the leadership, he will lose credibility. It would destroy one of the party's few leadership options for the future. The alternative challenger, Tony Abbott, is less likely either to unite the party or to convince the electorate the Liberals know what to do about climate change.Can the Liberal Party unite? Events are unfolding by the hour, by the minute. History warns what happens when corrosive divisions are left to fester and split a party in two. A split kept the Labor Party out of power for two decades in the middle of the last century. Australia needs a united opposition. Now, more than ever, it also needs an intelligent, engaged approach to climate change. The Liberals should be listening to Turnbull, not tearing him down.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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