As I remarked earlier, we don’t do ideology in Australia.  

If the IPA had its way, the Liberal Party would die.  John Roskam says ‘federal Liberals haven’t known what they stand for since May 2014’ – when Abbott and Hockey sought to end ‘the age of entitlement’. 

That had to fail.  We have depended on government since 1788.  Attempts to reduce its role are doomed.  As is any party determined to cut benefits or make government smaller.

Rather than asking itself what it believes in and seeking support for policies that reflect those beliefs, the Liberal Party is reduced to pandering to the enthusiasms of a loud and privileged elite.

The independents defeated party appointments because people wanted their MPs to listen to them, and not just toe the party line.  Mr Roskam asks the Liberal Party to do just that.  The IPA is the best argument the independents have.

And Mr Roskam pushes his barrow in a way that people have rejected – by invoking a banal catch phrase.  He says Liberals are ‘pandering to the enthusiasms of a loud and privileged elite.’  If that is how you dismiss issues about the environment, integrity or the standing of women, you are begging for oblivion.

Tim Smith went on the Outsiders.  A member of the Liberal Party doing that resembles a Cardinal handing out condoms after mass.  Mr Smith urged the Liberal Party to forget ‘woke elites’ in the inner suburbs. 

Why stop at one cliché if you can nail two?  Stick with the outer suburbs – where real men can speak their minds – as they can to Donald Trump.

And what is it about the ‘elites’ that troubles Mr Roskam and Mr Smith?  Those people are smart enough to know and call out real bullshit when they smell it.  And people like Messrs Roskam and Smith and Sky After Dark are full of it.

And, with grace, we have put them behind us.

IPA – Roskam – Tim Smith – elites – Liberal Party.