In an article in The Age published on 17 October this year, Waleed Aly described the present condition of the Liberal Party.  I will set out parts at length.

But in the broader sense, 2025 was decades in the making. If the Liberal Party’s problems are now existential, it is because the very conditions that made it viable, indeed dominant, for so long have evaporated. Some of this is a function of the Liberal Party’s contradictions. But some of it is a result of its successes, too.

Menzies created the party by uniting 18 anti-Labor organisations. Politics in those days was organised largely around the Labor Party: either Labor formed government, or a coalition of ‘non-Labor’ parties did. That coalition might be free-traders or protectionists or nationalists, or some combination of these, but there was no nationally co-ordinated conservative party. Menzies remedied this by building a party on the foundations of liberalism, in which the individual reigns supreme, but even this was complicated. The Coalition as we know it expresses an unorthodox marriage of the Liberal Party’s individualism, and the Nationals’ agrarian socialism, which backed state support for primary industries.

This basic structure of Australian politics changed dramatically with the Hawke and Keating governments. Their signature economic reforms had a distinctly liberal flavour: floating the dollar, dismantling tariffs, deregulating the financial system, privatising Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank. Hawke and Keating were not Reagan or Thatcher, and did things such as introducing Medicare, but they funded such projects with a more liberal economics, which changed Labor politics forever. And that, by definition, changed the nature of non-Labor politics, too.

Politics became a contest between shades of a broadly agreed liberalism. Fights occurred at the edges, over issues such as means-testing, safety nets and levels of government spending. Only when someone seriously overstepped, such as John Howard with WorkChoices, did sparks truly fly. The days of socialism being (to crib Menzies) ‘the growing threat to all that is good in our beloved country’ were over.

The big difference was on culture. As Labor liberalised economically, it also did so socially. The White Australia party dreaming of a working man’s paradise ended up spruiking being part of Asia, celebrating multiculturalism and pursuing reconciliation. From John Howard on, the Liberal Party struck a very different pose. Howard emphasised our British ties, dismissed reconciliation proposals and began interrogating migrant communities on their acceptance of Australian values.

But Howard’s lengthy success obscured the contradictions the Coalition now embodied. Put simply, its free-market economics pulled in the opposite direction of its social conservatism. It demanded high immigration – especially from Asia – but bemoaned the cultural change that brought. It wanted to deregulate labour, making working hours more irregular and unpredictable, then bemoaned the hollowing out of family life. It wanted globalisation and nationalism all at once.

This was a winning combination, but also an unstable one.

England had, and still has, both a Liberal Party and a Conservative Party.  It has always been hard to say what the Liberal Party in Australia stands for.  But is easy to say what they stood against.

The Labor Party had a history and base in the trade union movement that was its strength and its weakness.  The middle class of my generation did not want to associate with a body that had a proclaimed alliance with and reliance upon government.  There was hypocrisy in this since we as a nation have been so much more reliant on government than the Americans, but people do not have to logical in their politics. 

The Liberal Party got by not for what it stood for but what it opposed.  The bogey-man was ‘socialism’.  My schoolmates were horrified by the thought.  They were climbing the greasy pole of respectability and they did not want to be seen with that blue-collar crowd in the Collingwood outer.

The Labor Party up to 1972 was unelectable.  It was run by ‘faceless men’, and marooned by ideologues and shysters – people who thought more of themselves, and refused to acknowledge that they could only achieve their proclaimed political purpose by achieving power.

All that changed in the 80’s and the apparently calm phase under Howard is not looked back on with favour.  It has a kind of sterilized and gutless mediocrity.  Why did I before 1982 have to wait for a Labor government to lift the inane and cruel burden of income tax and to introduce the now untouchable Medicare? 

And then there were the wars joined under false pretenses, and the pussyfooting about the First Nations and the Crown.  And in the meantime, the edifice of agrarian socialism was dismantled.

So, now the infighting in a failed party that stands for nothing is vicious.  It is now the Liberal Party that is run by ‘faceless men’, and marooned by ideologues and shysters.  And they look unelectable.  Who would want to join or stand for such an ugly motley?

Their trouble makers do not recall two fundamentals about politics down under.  The man from Snowy River is a myth.  We are druggedly dependent on government.  And we could not give a bugger about ideology, class wars or the like. 

Just get on with the bloody job and make as little noise as possible.  There are not many thrilling footy umpires, but we don’t mind those that are seen but not heard.  Most of us want to have as little to do with government as possible, but we all know we have to look after those not doing so well – because one day something may go wrong for us.

My sense is that now people are less likely to be tribally attached to either major party and more able to change – to ‘swing’, if you prefer.  If you have debarred yourself from voting for one side, you have in a way disenfranchised yourself.  Going into the booth to administer a kick in the bum can be very cathartic.  And then there is the allure of those who have had real jobs and are not scarred by a political machine or albatross.

Our system of democracy turns on two parties.  At both the state level here in Victoria, and federally, one party is incapable of doing its job in that system.  That is very dangerous, and I have no idea what the answer may be, except that those called ‘independents’ will continue to fill the gaps. 

I do not see any future for the Liberal Party.  Its white ants look unstoppable and entirely unrepentant.  That again takes us back to the dark days of the 60’s, and it is of no comfort to see both the U S and U K struggling with apparently inherent weaknesses in their major parties.

If the party system collapses, what follows?