Queensland Election - Some Personal Observations

I was just walking down Margaret Street contemplating making a post about the Queensland State Election, the LNP and why I fear an LNP victory when the Borg Express passed me by. I’m not usually a superstitious person, but the coincidence has firmed my resolve to get a couple of things off my chest.

I actively opposed the merger of the Liberal and National parties, for a range of reasons. But I guess the biggest reason is my complete and total rejection of what the National Party represents.

A cheeky wag once pointed out that Billy Hughes (former Australian Prime Minister) had been a member of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party (mark 1), the United Australia Party, the Nationalist Party, the National Labor Party and the Australian Party. Said wag asked why Hughes hadn’t ever joined the Country (now National) Party. Hughes responded by saying that even he had some standards. I support his sentiments.

With few exceptions the National Party represents rank sectional interests: pastoralists seeking government favour, agricultural interests seeking protection of their unsustainable farming practices, small and unsustainable communities who have been left behind by changes to industry, communications and technology. The National Party has historically been a foil against progress, either economic or social.

The great liberal reforms Queensland has undergone in the last two decades: trading hours liberalisation; the legalisation of brothels and prostitution; abortion law reform; electoral reform; and legislative modernisation – among others – have occurred in spite of the National Party, not because of it.

For decades Liberal Party activism ameliorated the worst of the National Party’s excesses. Without Liberal support the Nationals found it difficult to form Government, and securing Liberal support required a muting of the National Party’s worst tendencies toward extreme reactionism.

I fear that with the merger those voices of progress and reason will be gagged and systematically annihilated. We have already seen this happen in relation to tree clearing policy and daylight savings.

The former Liberal Party may have been dysfunctional, but at least it stood for something. It stood for a reliance on free markets and lesser economic regulation, it stood for modernisation and progress. It also, in many parts of the party, stood for social liberalisation, in extending social freedoms to people in the same way that the party’s philosophy argues for economic freedoms for individuals.

The National Party believes in little or none of this.

I truly hope that the LNP wins, and that as a result of its election a tranche of moderates are elected to the Parliament who will help dull the National’s natural tendencies. But I fear that this simply won’t happen.

That’s one of the reasons why this blog exists. Because there is a fourth way, a way that is neither collectivist, conservative or liberal (in the European sense). There is a way forward that celebrates individuals and individualism; that promotes economic growth through lesser regulation and a greater reliance on economic freedoms; that promotes social cohesion through deregulation of or social sphere and rejection of homogeneity.

There used to be a political vehicle for people who wished to promote these ideals, and now it is gone. Subsumed into a party that has little to offer Queenslanders except a (partial) return to the dark bad old days where Queensland was (rightfully) a backward backwater full of reactionary hicks, corrupt officials, brown paper bags and no Sunday shopping.