Victorian Election: Liberals In A Wilderness Between Longman And Wentworth

The disastrous showing of the Liberal Party at the Victorian state election has spawned the same number of theories as the total of seats the Liberals are likely to lose.

The left wing of the Liberal Party, the Labor Party, and the ABC are already saying Matthew Guy's Liberals lost because their policies were too "right wing" for a supposedly progressive state like Victoria.

Climate change is given as the evidence for such a claim — but the reality is somewhat different.  True, the Liberals said they would scrap Victorian Labor's renewable energy targets, but only because the Liberals said they supported national, not state-based, emissions targets.  For all intents and purposes the two parties' positions on climate change were indistinguishable.

There's nothing "right wing" about the Liberals promising, as they did, to have the government hand out half-price fridges and TVs to cut emissions.  Nor is there anything particularly "liberal" about such policies either.  "Redistributive semi-socialism" might be a better description for it.

It might be that the removal of a left-leaning Liberal prime minister in Malcolm Turnbull might have changed some Liberal votes in Victoria, but that doesn't change the fact that the Victorian Liberals had been behind Labor in the polls for the past five years.

If the Victorian Liberals had promised to implement an aggressive program of cutting state taxes, reducing the size of the public service, controlling lawless trade unions, winding back Labor's Nanny State regulations, and building a coal-fired power station then maybe there would be some merit in the left's claims against the Liberals.  Unfortunately the Liberals promised none of these things.

The Liberals campaigned aggressively on law and order, but Labor responded by pointing out that many of the things the Liberals said they would do, Labor was already implementing.

On top of all of this, Victorian voters contrasted the do-nothing approach to infrastructure of the Coalition Baillieu and Napthine administrations between 2010 and 2014, and the build- everything-immediately, regardless of the cost, approach of the Andrews government over the past four years.

These are all by now well-documented problems with the Liberals' election strategy.  A more fundamental problem for the Victorian Liberals was that the public sensed a lack of clarity of what the Liberals stand for.  And as has been witnessed since Saturday from the way state and federal Liberals are talking about what the election loss means, a number of Liberal MPs don't know what their party stands for either.

IDENTITY CRISIS

After nearly three decades of uninterrupted economic growth, what used to be the Liberals' election-winning mantra of fiscal prudence and responsibility seems to be no longer working — either at the state or federal level.  The Liberals are as enthusiastic about big-spending social programs as is Labor.  Unfortunately though for the Liberals, because most of these programs are Labor initiatives the Liberals don't even get electoral benefit for implementing them.

The Liberals, both state and federal, are at risk of not knowing what they stand for because they are now trying to appeal to two constituencies with very different belief systems.  The concerns of those in inner-city, wealthy, and cosmopolitan electorates like Wentworth in Sydney are different from those in working-class electorates like Longman in Brisbane.

This phenomenon played out in the Victorian state election.  Leafy, affluent seats in Melbourne's eastern suburbs swung viciously against the Liberals, while in some country and regional areas the swing against the party was practically non-existent.

The Liberals might have to realise that because an electorate has always been Liberal it doesn't mean it always will be, or should be in the future.  In an ideal world the Liberals would continue to use their "broad church" appeal to gain the support of both the Wentworths and the Longmans.  Once the Liberals could do this — whether they still can, is an open question.

It is not clear whether those Liberals who want their party to move to the left and embrace higher taxes and bigger government are saying so because they genuinely believe it, or because they think that is what is now required to win elections in Australia.  To avoid having a debate about ideas, some Liberals are now claiming ideas don't matter and the party should aim to be merely practical and pragmatic.

While the Liberals now engage on their necessary soul-searching they should remember that if you don't even attempt to fight the battle of ideas you will be guaranteed to lose.

LGBTIQX-Men

Stan Lee's contribution to modern pop culture was nearly without comparison.  His creations in the pages of Marvel Comics — the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the Daredevil and many more — have infused Western mythology.

Few writers could write the aspirational hero better than Lee, and his creations have said more about responsibility, leadership, integrity and living in service to others, than anything produced in recent years.  Lee did not re-invent the wheel, but how his characters strove to do the right thing — where the "right thing" was a universal and objective ideal, in contrast to the subjective morality of today — made the characters cultural touchstones.

The themes were at once recognisable and broadcast to a mass audience what was good about the West:  The Fantastic Four faced the same problems any normal family struggled with.  Iron Man was the story of unashamed masculinity and heroic capitalism.  The Mighty Thor was a god but had to learn the importance of humility.  The pairing of power and responsibility is related to the century's old doctrine of noblesse oblige, and leaders and thinkers throughout history have expressed similar views.  Only Lee catapulted it into modern popular consciousness in Spider-Man's first appearance in the pages of Amazing Fantasy 15 in 1962, with the narration "with great power there must also be — great responsibility!"

Lee's death at the age of 95 last week marked the end of an era in publishing characterised by relatable but complex characters, universal themes, and genuine escapism.

More than anyone else, Lee pulled superhero comic books into the mainstream.  Marvel Comics under his leadership not only became the dominant comic book publisher, but also led to enhanced cultural legitimacy for the medium.  He hustled for decades to bring his creations to television and film, an effort which only found significant success with the release of X-Men in 2000, which has ultimately given birth to the superhero blockbuster era.

Despite undoubtedly making many people a great deal of money, Lee's story goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.  His final years were riddled with accusations of elder abuse at the hands of his associates who hoped to profit from his work.  Meanwhile, Lee was being dragged to conventions to sit for hours on end for speculative collectors hoping to inflate the value of their wares by collecting his signature.  Shockingly, it was revealed earlier this year that Lee's own blood was stolen in order to mix it with ink to sign Black Panther comic books, to be paired with "a certificate of authentication that details the item as a 'Hand-Stamped Signature of Stan Lee using Stan Lee's Solvent DNA Ink'."

It was not enough that terrible people attacked Stan Lee, the person.  They also allowed his legacy to be almost obliterated.  As the face of Marvel Comics for decades, Lee built the superhero comics industry into a powerhouse.  The X-Men, created by Lee in 1963, had within three decades become one of the hottest intellectual properties in the world.  The launch of a new X-Men series in October 1991, which moved over seven million copies in that month alone, remains an industry record.

Marvel Comics is barely a husk of what it once was.  Now a subsidiary of Disney, it remains one of the two large publishers only by virtue of the fact that the same sickness has overrun the entire comic book industry.  Radical leftists whose only qualification for creative writing is sending out "woke" comments on Twitter have invaded the industry, and now use it as a platform for progressive political proselytising and virtue-signalling.  Social justice warriors are a destructive force in a creative industry.  The storylines are heavily agenda-driven, and existing intellectual properties are persistently devalued and transformed to fit the political proclivities of the writers and artists.  Major characters guilty of the crime of being white men — Iron Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, Hawkeye and others — have been replaced to increase diversity representation.  Iceman was a founding member of the X-Men and a heterosexual man for decades before he was abruptly transformed into a flamboyant homosexual.  Thor was incoherently written out of his own book, and was replaced by a female character.  X-Men has become a hotbed of left-wing politics, under the historical revisionism of the series being an allegory for civil rights struggle and homosexuality.  Only a progressive could be so cruel as to equate a homosexual with a mutated human.

Identity politics cannot coexist with a system of appointment by merit.  The idea that a character should only be written by someone who shares the same physical features, and can only be appreciated by an audience who also share those features is plainly absurd but has taken root in many creative industries, perhaps none more so that in comic books.

This was illustrated in August when Marvel announced that academic Eve Ewing would write Ironheart, a new series based on the black teenage girl who replaced Iron Man.  In a healthy comics industry, a writer whose only creative writing experience is in poetry would never be given a brand new series at a leading publisher.  But when an online petition (that failed to reach its target of 5,000 signatures) encouraged Marvel to employ Ewing because she shared Ironheart's skin colour, that was enough.

Identity politics also cannot coexist with a system based on competency.  Writers that share the politics of the editorial staff but fail to sell books will always find new work.  Iceman under gay writer Sina Grace was cancelled in late 2017, only to be resurrected under the same creative team in June 2018.  Kelly Thompson, whose female Hawkeye series was cancelled after 16 issues, launched a new series in August starring the same character.  Chelsea Cain's feminist Mockingbird series from 2016 was cancelled by Marvel after just eight issues, only for the writer to be given another new series — which itself was cancelled after the writer only managed to hand in 4 scripts over a period of two years.

Last week we mourned the loss of Stan Lee, but for true believers, the industry limps on, infected with an ideology that values propaganda over capitalism.

Daniel Andrews: A Threat To A Twenty-First Century Economy

Melbourne prides itself on its cafe culture, vibrant laneways, quality restaurants, and marquee sporting events.  This dynamic and cosmopolitan lifestyle that Melburnians enjoy owes much to the rise of flexible business models built around independent contracting and casual work arrangements, but it is under threat from the Andrews government's proposals designed to restrict the sharing economy.

These proposals have received little attention, but if implemented would put services like food-delivery, ride-sharing, and letting handyman jobs through Airtasker at risk, for the sake of favouring the union agenda to move all Victorians into the award system.  In particular, new laws would regulate if not eliminate key sections of the sharing economy, further restrict the labour-hire industry, and strike a blow at the hospitality industry through punitive laws covering so-called "wage theft".

Most concerning is the promised inquiry into the "gig economy", with the Premier justifying it with reference to "wages and conditions being offered to workers", a phrase that effectively denies that participants are independent contractors.  Framing the inquiry this way demonstrates the government's opposition to participants enjoying the flexibility that comes with the sharing economy, and suggests any recommendations by the inquiry are pre-ordained.

For example, currently Uber drivers earn money from trips made and control their own hours and conditions.  If the unions get their way, online platforms would be forced to directly employ workers, pay wages and dictate hours.  This would destroy the business model that has revolutionised the way Melburnians move around the city, which created an alternative to the highly regulated taxi industry.  It could also wipe out the food delivery services that are currently enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of busy Victorians, and which have expanded the opportunities for many entrepreneurial cafes and restaurants.

New labour hire laws secured by the government in 2018, set to come into effect next year, will add more red tape to the already beleaguered industry.  The licensing system being introduced was justified by the actions of a few rogue firms, regarding offences which were already illegal.  The issue could have been solved with better enforcement of existing laws, without burdening the industry with licensing fees and compliance costs.  The regulations line up with the anti-labour hire views of the ACTU's Sally McManus who has said:  "you've got to take away the incentive for employers to use labour hire".

Daniel Andrews has also promised to crack down on employers who are underpaying wages and entitlements with the introduction of new "wage theft" laws.  The eagerness to create new laws instead of enforcing the existing laws is concerning, especially when they would duplicate and possibly conflict with laws administered by the Fair Work Commission.

After its restoration by the Rudd/Gillard government the award system small businesses have to grapple with is fantastically complex, which makes errors virtually inevitable.  While employees should be able to get back any underpayments, there should be no in-built assumption that every breach is "theft".  Threatening jail time and massive fines will further deter employers from taking on the casual or part-time employees needed to service the needs of our twenty-four-hour city.  If we make compliance too hard and too risky for our world-class hospitality sector, Melbourne's hard-earned reputation will be lost.

Should the Andrews government be returned, we will see reduced opportunities for those thousands of Victorians who have shown a preference to work flexibly and as independently as possible.  The Liberal Party should put on record their opposition to these measures, and develop policy that will undo long-standing barriers to employment.  Rather than buckling to the union movement's self-interested demands, we need to foster a business environment that encourages innovation and opportunity and meets the needs of the lifestyle wanted by Victorians.

Loans Are A Wrong And Risky Way To Help Small Business, Mr Treasurer

The Federal Government's proposed $2 billion small business loan scheme is the wrong response to a real problem.

The decline of small businesses in Australia presents a substantial policy challenge.

In 2017 there were 6,000 fewer new businesses than a decade earlier, despite Australia's working age population growing by 20 per cent, according to my recent report.  Over the same time period, the number of Australians employed in a small business declined by seven per cent.

This means many of Australia's best and brightest are opting to work for larger, more established firms, which are typically less dynamic, entrepreneurial, and innovative than their smaller competitors.

In an attempt to avert this decline, the government has proposed a $2 billion government-run small business loan fund.  The fund would buy small business loans issued by non-big four banks and other financial organisations, with the intended effect of expanding the availability of credit to small businesses and lowering its cost.

While the government has its sights set on the right problem, the proposed solution is off the mark.  History is replete with examples of government-backed financing going bad, fast.

The State Bank of South Australia, the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, and the State Bank of Victoria via the subsidiary merchant bank Tricontinental all sought to expand the availability of credit to increase growth and all failed spectacularly.

The State Bank of South Australia, for example, was established in 1984 and lasted just seven years before its collapse in 1991 brought the South Australian government to the brink of bankruptcy.  The key cause, according to a report by the South Australian Auditor-General delivered in 1993, was "it grew too fast".  Risky lending, lack of oversight, and poor management resulted in the bank taking on too many bad loans.

The Victorian Economic Development Corporation, meanwhile, was so poorly managed that its Board didn't even have a policy on prudential lending limits and risk exposures, according to a report undertaken by the Victorian government in 1988.

The exemplar of government finance gone bad, of course, is the United States' Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which are quasi-government financial institutions.  At the behest of government regulation, Fannie and Freddie were forced to purchase a certain number of home loans from low income and minority borrowers to expand home ownership.  The problem was that there wasn't enough creditworthy borrowers for Fannie and Freddie to meet the governments lending requirements.  This forced them to lower their lending standards and promulgate bad loans which ultimately brought the US financial system to its knees.

No one is suggesting the small business loan facility would produce a similar outcome in Australia.  But the fundamental problems which brought down Fannie and Freddie, and the State Banks of South Australia and Victoria, will plague the small business loan facility.

And that fundamental problem is one of skin in the game.

The risk of lending is not lowered just because it is backed by taxpayers.  Rather, the risk is transferred from the private sector to the public at large.

In the commercial world, if a loan goes unpaid and there is insufficient collateral to recoup the loss, then it is the business — its workers, shareholders, and customers — which suffers the consequences.  The losses are contained within the sphere of that commercial enterprise, and not socialised to the broader public who had nothing to do with the transaction.

And the prospect of losing money and being out-competed by other lenders provides a powerful incentive to ensure the overall lending portfolio is both profitable and sustainable.

Conversely, there is no market-based incentive mechanism when it comes to government-backed finance.  Most likely, the new small business fund will provide lending based not on sound economics, but political favours and cronyism.  The temptation to channel funds to politically beneficial causes will be too great and drown out any offsetting commercial liability from such an undertaking.

Rather than funnelling more money we don't have and injecting yet more government into the financial sector, governments interested in boosting small businesses should instead be more focused on how they can get out of their way.

Study after study shows that red tape, government regulation, and bureaucratic interference are the key enemies of small business.  For example, 48 per cent of respondents to a survey published by Westpac earlier this year said that regulation was the highest hurdle to business success in Australia.  The next highest response was the 14 per cent of respondents who believed high business taxes was the biggest factor hampering business success.

And it is small businesses that bear the brunt of red tape.  They are less likely to have the lawyers, accountants, and human resource departments that are needed to navigate the array of licenses, permits, and conditions needed to set up or expand a business.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is right to recall the words of former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies who saw small business owners as "the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones".  But the words of another great leader, former US President Ronald Reagan, are just as important:  "government is not the solution to our problems.  Government is the problem".

Small business owners know what they are doing.  The best thing the government can do is get out of their way.

The Heavy Hand Of Free Speech

The British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton in a recent speech remarked that modern-day universities are increasingly reverting to the role they played in the Middle Ages.

Medieval universities, according to Scruton, studied dogma and were "devoted to identifying and extirpating heresies".  Individuals were sometimes able to express those heresies so that they could be examined in order to be proved wrong, but — "you were not in any real sense free to affirm them.  It would be quite misleading to say that the medieval university was devoted to the advancement of free enquiry."

As Scruton goes on to explain, the suggestion that the purpose of a university "was to advance knowledge regardless of where it might lead, and to make knowledge available to the rising generation" is a recent idea dating from the beginning of the 19th century, and by the publication of JS Mill's On Liberty in 1869, "it was widely accepted that free expression of dissenting views is important in all areas of enquiry, and not just in the natural sciences".

This is the context in which to view the announcement by Dan Tehan, the federal Education Minister, of a review into freedom of speech at Australian universities to be conducted by former chief justice of the High Court, Robert French.  Such a review is overdue and welcome and should be embraced by university administrators.

All too predictably though, the response of the lobby group representing the tertiary sector was that of the bureaucrat.  But, said Universities Australia, there were "more than 100 policies, codes and agreements that supported free intellectual inquiry".  Which of course proves nothing.  Famously, Enron's business ethics guidelines ran to more than 60 pages.  Presumably all Australia's banks have corporate responsibility policies, but as the Hayne royal commission has established merely having a policy doesn't mean it is actually put into practice.

A number of university policies are directly opposed to the idea of freedom of speech.  James Cook University, the university that sacked Professor Peter Ridd for the heresy of questioning the quality of climate change research in this country, has a "Bullying, Discrimination, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct Policy" that applies to all students and staff.  The definition of "harassment" includes making "a person feel offended" and it can result from a single incident.  It would be difficult to imagine a discussion about current American politics in a first-year international relations tutorial that wouldn't end up with at least one person, somehow being offended.  The possibility that a student could be accused of harassment for offending another student by saying for example "I think President Trump is doing a good job" is precisely the sort of thing Robert French should be turning his mind to.  He can do this after he reviews incidents such as police being called to Sydney University when left-wing students tried to shut down a public lecture by Bettina Arndt.

Universities Australia has criticised those calling for an inquiry into freedom of speech at Australian universities as appearing "to want government to override university autonomy with heavy-handed, external regulation and red tape".  Yes.  If heavy-handed government regulation is what's required to ensure freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry at Australia's universities then so be it.

University "autonomy" as interpreted by Australian academics means them spending other people's money on things they and their friends and the colleagues agree with.  There's nothing objectionable in Simon Birmingham, the former education minister, vetoing $4.2 million of government grants to universities for various humanities projects.

One of the projects denied funding by the minister was "Double Crossings:  post-Orientalist arts at the Strait of Gibraltar", which examined the way painters and photographers represented Muslim and Christian cultures.  The project's proponent, Professor Roger Benjamin, professor of art history at Sydney University, should be absolutely entitled to have the academic freedom to undertake such research.  But that doesn't mean he's entitled to taxpayers paying $223,000 for his travel to London and Tangier to do so.

If Australia's universities and academics really want to be autonomous they can be — all they have to do is hand back the more than $10 billion of taxpayer funding they get each year.

A Chance For Universities To Think Again

Free speech is fundamental to what it means to be a university.  It is fundamental to undertaking researc­h and ensuring students can grow intellectually.

The government's announcement that former chief justice Robert French will lead an inquiry into freedom of speech at universities is welcome and important.  Australia's universities should embrace the opportunity to ­review and improve their policies and institutional culture.

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan has said French will review codes of conduct, enterprise agreements and strategic plans, the effectiveness of the existi­ng legal framework, and international approaches to the promotion of freedom of express­ion in higher education.

Our universities are failing to protect free intellectual inquiry.

My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017, which assessed more than 165 policies and actions at Aust­ralia's 42 universities, found that four in five have policies or have taken action hostile to free speech.  It also found that just eight of Australia's 42 universities have stand-alone policies on freedom of expression, as mandated by the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

University policies prevent "insulting" and "unwelcome" comments, "offensive" language and, in some cases, "sarcasm".

Curtin University's student conduct policy, for example, define­s harassment as "any form of unwanted or unwelcome behavi­our that is offensive to you".  La Trobe University defines bullying to include "unintentional ... offence" and insists students not use language that causes "emotional injury".  A dozen universit­ies, including the Australian National University, Monash and UNSW, maintain blasphemy provisio­ns which forbid offending on the basis of religion.

There have also been a number of concerning incidents.

James Cook University sacked Peter Ridd after he expressed a contrarian opinion on the science behind the Great Barrier Reef.  The riot squad was called to the University of Sydney because of a violent protest against psycholo­gist Bettina Arndt.  The university charged students a security fee to host the event, encouraging the censorious "heckler's veto".  ­Victoria University cancelled an event featuring the screening of a film critical of the China-funded Confucius Institutes.

French will be able to develop a sector-led code of conduct inspired by the University of Chicago.  The Chicago Statement says that "it is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive".  While welcoming criticism of invited speakers, it also concludes it is wrong to "obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views".  Following the precedent set by a dozen US states, Australia should legislate the Chicago statement principles.

Policy reform is welcome and important.  Nevertheless, the challenge faced by Australia's universities is broader and deeper.

Australia's universities are lacking viewpoint diversity — differen­t perspectives challenging each other in the pursuit of truth.  This leads to a culture of censorship in which individuals who speak out are treated as heretics, and proposals such as those of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civil­isation are vehemently opposed.

The lack of viewpoint diversity also leads to self-censorship.  ­Earlier this month Andrew Marzon­i wrote in The Washington Post that "academia is a cult ... rooted in submission to a dogma manifested by an authority ­figure" in the form of tenured professor­s.  University of Adelaide senior lecturer Florian Ploeckl has warned that "funding is easier and more plentiful if you pick the right topic, publishing is easier if you don't rock the boat, and life in the department is easier if you see the world in the same way your colleagues do".

The purpose of a university is undermined by a culture that can't handle dissent.  Research depend­s on individuals with differen­t perspectives challenging each other's findings to defeat motivated reasoning.

Reforming policies is an important first step, but Australia's universities have a long journey ahead to once again become bastions of free intellectual inquiry.

Goodbye Old Blue-Ribbons, Hello New Heartland

The Liberal Party's dramatic loss in the Wentworth by-election last month reveals an irreconcilable philosophical divide within the Party.

Self-styled "moderates" within the Party are the first to write history, claiming a more credible stance on addressing climate change is required for the Liberals to hold seats such as Wentworth.  They are right.  The proportion of left-leaning voters in seats such as Wentworth in Sydney and Higgins and Kooyong in Melbourne is sizable and growing.  The Liberal Party must naturally adopt more left-leaning policies to hold these seats.

Lots of time has been wasted writing negative analysis about former prime minister Turnbull.  But he was welcomed into the Party after having first unsuccessfully sought a spot with Labor and was welcomed back after almost quitting after he lost the leadership to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2009.

Turnbull knew his electorate like the back of his hand.  Wealthy inner-city voters want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, favour international climate agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement, can endure the associated higher cost of power given their relatively high incomes, and are more concerned about refugees and funding for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation than petrol prices and traffic congestion.

The problem for the Liberals is not individual personalities.  It is that the "broad church" philosophy doesn't work politically or from a policy perspective in today's environment.

This problem is revealed in the fact that the gap in voters' priorities between Wentworth in Sydney's east and Lindsay in its west, or Higgins in Melbourne's inner east and Frankston in its south-east is growing.  And so too is the gap between the policy preferences in the moderate and conservative factions within the Liberal Party.

There have always been disagreements within both the Labor and Liberal Parties.  Disagreements can be healthy when they lead to rejuvenation, development of better policy, and the formation of a new consensus.

However, it is one thing to disagree over effective marginal tax rates, and quite another to disagree over matters that go the heart of the Party and the nation.

The divisions within the Liberal Party are over climate change;  the role of government in the electricity market;  how much national sovereignty will be sacrificed to international bodies;  the size, scale, and composition of the immigration program;  freedom of speech and freedom of religion;  the aggressiveness with which political correctness ought to be resisted;  what is taught in schools;  whether multiculturalism or assimilation of migrants is preferable;  and how foreign influence should be tackled.

In short, the disagreement goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation.

Holding Wentworth and Linsday at the same time is evidently no longer possible.  So be it.

The choice for Liberal Party is obvious:  either double-down and focus on re-capturing Wentworth and nostalgically holding onto "blue ribbon" seats which are becoming ever darker shades of green.  Or re-imagine the Liberal Party as a workers' party which unashamedly promotes the interests of working-class and middle-class Australian workers and families.

Working-class and middle-class Australians are largely unrepresented politically.  Labor has abandoned their traditional working-class base in their pursuit of identity politics, environmentalism, multiculturalism, identity politics, and a big immigration program.  But they have been able to hold onto many working-class seats because the Liberals have not been able to bring themselves to alter their policy agenda because they are so desperate to keep seats like Wentworth.

Consequently, the lives of many working and middle-class Australians are worse today than a decade ago.  Real wages in the private sector haven't risen for three years.  The cost of essentials such as child care, health insurance, and electricity are rising due to government regulation.  Commute times and congestion are worse.  Housing is unaffordable.  Taxes are rising.  And many are uneasy about two decades of rapid demographic change.

In practice, the conservatives within the Liberal Party need to form a voting bloc, develop a list of non-negotiable policies around energy, immigration, and the culture wars that will make the Party attractive to workers, and cross the floor in Parliament when needed.

Two recent major victories for conservatives came only after they threatened to cross the floor:  the scuttling of both the China-Australia extradition treaty and the National Energy Guarantee.

The Liberal Party should let Labor, the Greens, and left-leaning independents exhaust their resource fighting to take seats such as Wentworth.  Let them represent the out-of-touch elites.

This would allow the Liberal Party to take on mainstream policies more readily.

The Liberals can easily capture 20 per cent of Labor's vote in Western Sydney if they adopt a coherent policy agenda that puts working and middle-class Australians ahead of the political, cultural, and economic elites.

Now is the time for the Liberal Party to recognise the changing nature of the Australian electorate, adopt a policy agenda which reflects this change, and not get nostalgic over the "blue ribbon" seats of the past.

UTAS Risk To Freedom Of Expression And Human Rights

The University of Tasmania's draft behaviour policy is a serious threat to freedom of expression and basic legal rights.

The bedrock of university life is the ability to freely explore ideas.

It is only through the process of claim and counter-claim that it is possible to separate good ideas from bad and discover the truth.

Across the Anglosphere, from American liberal arts colleges to British universities and Australian campuses, a culture of censorship is forming.

Speakers are violently protested if not banned altogether, students are demanding protection from ideas they dislike, and academics are concerned that there is a lack of diversity of viewpoints.

In this context, university administrators should be doing all they can to protect free expression.

The University of Tasmania, however, appears to be heading in precisely the wrong direction.

The University's draft policy states that community members are expected to "behave and communicate in a manner that does not offend".

Avoiding causing offence may be an admirable goal.

Nevertheless, often when exploring ideas offence is taken rather than intended.  The hearing of an idea with which one disagrees can be offensive.

The feeling of offence is often unavoidable but necessary in the process of understanding, learning and developing ideas.

Australian National University chancellor and former foreign minister Gareth Evans declared earlier this month that "Lines have to be drawn, and administrators' spines stiffened, against manifestly un­conscionable demands for protection against ideas and arguments claimed to be offensive".

The proposed policy also lists 18 "protected attributes", ranging from gender, race, family and sexual matters to religion and political belief.

It then states that community members are forbidden from engaging in conduct which "offends, humiliates, intimidates, insults or ridicules" on the basis of these attributes in the eyes of a "reasonable person".

The inclusion of religion and political belief in the grounds that individuals cannot offend goes well beyond existing speech limitations in state and federal law.

The Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 (Tas.) includes an extended list of protected attributes.

However, it is notable that Section 17(1) only forbids offensive conduct associated with gender, relationship status and family responsibilities.

It does not prevent the causing of offence based on political belief or religion.

The inclusion of religion and political belief is an extraordinary overstep.

The causing of offence is not uncommon when discussing religion or politics.  Criticism of an individual's religion and political beliefs can be offensive — such as stating that a political opinion is invalid, immoral or inhumane or making a joke about religious belief.

This speech, however, can also be genuine part of intellectual debate and social commentary.

The policy states that an example of discriminatory harassment is "Making derogatory comments or taunts about a person's religion".

It may be derogatory, for example, to criticise the lack of acceptance of homosexuality in Leviticus, a Christian text, or to raise concerns about Mohammed's multiple wives in the Koran, the Islamic text.

The prevention of negative remarks about religion, akin to the blasphemy laws of the past, is a historical anachronism in Western liberal democracies such as Australia which value free expression.

My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 ranked the University of Tasmania one of the highest in Australia for freedom of expression.

The University is one of few with a commendable stand-alone policy that explicitly protects intellectual freedom.

If the university adopts the draft policy, however, the institution would be downgraded from an Amber ranking to a Red ranking in the Audit.

A further issue of concern with the policy is the removal of basic legal rights.

In Australia, an individual accused of sexual assault is innocent till proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

The draft policy, however, adopts a much lower threshold of the "balance of probabilities" for sexual assault misconduct allegations — meaning that the event is more likely than not to have taken place.

It is inappropriate for a university — which lacks the evidence gathering and judicial skills of the criminal justice system — to be making determinations of a student's guilt on sexual assault.

This raises the possibility that a member of the community is found not guilty by the courts in normal legal process and yet be punished secondarily by the university.

The University of Tasmania is a public institution, established by Tasmanian law and largely funded by the taxpayer and state-subsidised loans.

The University has a moral and legal responsibility to safeguard free expression and basic legal rights.

The Liberal's Church Without A Pontiff

Two weeks on, the Wentworth byelection result continues to be the Rorschach test of Australian politics in 2018.  Pundits and politicians are interpreting the outcome to mean whatever they want it to mean.  The loss of what was assumed to be a safe Liberal seat has been taken by left-leaning Liberal MPs to mean their party must "do more" on climate change for example, while right-leaning Liberal MPs claim that whatever happened in Wentworth doesn't mean anything anyway because the electorate isn't representative of the rest of the country.

Those Liberal MPs who lament the demise of Malcolm Turnbull argue that while under his leadership the party was behind in the polls the situation was not irretrievable.  They argue the Liberals and and their policies should shift to "the centre" (i.e. to the left of where they are now) to cater to the drift leftward of voters' preferences.

Those Liberals MPs responsible for the former PM's downfall reply that first there's no evidence Turnbull would have performed any better at the next election than he did at the last.  The Coalition under Turnbull as "the pragmatic centrist" lost 14 seats at the 2016 federal election.  Under the Abbott "the unelectable man of the hard-right" the Coalition won a total of 25 seats over two federal elections.

The debate over what Wentworth means for the Liberals is a proxy war over the future direction of the party.  It's a battle that gives every sign of being carried on for years to come — and while the Liberals are in opposition in Canberra.

One of the challenges the Liberals face as they ponder their future policy directions is they've got no process for debating and resolving philosophical differences.  The fight between the "wets" and the "dries" in the late 1970s and 1980s took more than a decade to be resolved in favour of the "dries".

In simple terms, at the federal level the parliamentary leader of the Liberals sets the party's philosophical direction and Liberal MPs then follow it.  In the modern-day Liberal Party the way to change a policy is to change the leader.

"CULTURE WARS"

Giving the Liberal leader effective carte blanche to make policy might not be a problem when that leader is Robert Menzies or John Howard.  But it is a problem when that leader is Turnbull.

Howard is correct when he says the Liberal Party was at its best when it operated as a "broad church", encompassing the variety of the non-left philosophical traditions in Australia.  Whether the Liberals can continue as a single political party that's a "broad church" party is an interesting question.

A "broad church" requires its adherents to subscribe to some common aims and objectives, that ideally for a political party would be more than just winning elections.

For much of the Liberal Party's history those aims and objectives were broadly agreed upon and centred on national security and economic policy.  Now the issues of national security have fractured into an argument about asylum-seekers and the level of immigration.  On economics, the Liberals have largely replaced the notion of fiscal restraint and smaller government to enter into a contest with Labor as to who can impose the most effective regulations.

Added to all of this is what to the Liberals is largely uncharted territory, namely the debate the nature of the country's traditions and values, the so-called "culture wars".

On all of these questions there is "liberal", "libertarian" and "conservative" perspective.  Sometimes those perspectives all align to produce a single agreed-upon policy, but increasingly they don't.  The suggestion that every policy challenge is susceptible to a solution through the application of non-ideological pragmatism is misguided.  Whether for example taxes should go up or down can ultimately only be decided according to values and philosophy.

What's forgotten by those Liberals who argue the party should abandon ideology is that such a statement is itself a statement of ideology.

The maintenance of a centre-right political party as a "broad church" requires the skills of a Menzies or a Howard.  No political party or system is sustainable if it can only be operated by a once-in-a-generation political impresario.

Minister's Veto Exposes The Rot Within The Humanities

The news that former federal education minister Simon ­Birming­ham vetoed several hum­anities research projects submitted to the Australian Research Council last year has sparked a flurry of protests by the academic Left.

The real cause of the offence and outrage is because these academics have been outed to the public.

Academics employed in hum­anities departments have cried that this was a case of unwarranted political interference that posed a serious threat to academic freedom.  However, this has nothing to do with political interference by a politician or academic freedom, as they claim.

Taxpayers have been given a glimpse of just how their money is being misspent, and just how far the humanities departments have strayed from their original purpose.

Birmingham's veto of several humanities research projects should be met with thanks by hardworking taxpayers.  His decision to scrap a total of 11 proposals submitted to the ARC last year has not only saved taxpayers $4 million but also has helped to expose what is going on in our universities.

His commonsense vetoing revealed just how corrupted the various humanities disciplines have become.  It is fine for academics to research whatever they want, but not at our expense.

Birmingham simply was using his common sense and doing what his position required of him.  This is not a parody — some of the projects he decided to scrap were entitled "Beauty and ugliness as persuasive tools in changing China's gender norms", "Post-orientalist arts in the Strait of Gibraltar" and "Writing the struggle for Sioux and US modernity".

These research projects are a complete and utter waste of time and money, bad scholarship and bogus education.  The only error of judgment in what was an excellent decision was to keep his decision quiet rather than publicising the rot in the humanities departments.

It turns out that Birmingham was just doing his job.  He was not, as opposition innovation, industry, science and research spokesman Kim Carr put it, "pandering to knuckle-dragging right-wing philistines".

An examination of the application process for funding as explained in an infographic on the ARC website entitled "I have applied for a grant from the ARC.  What happens to my application?" shows the last two stages involved:

• Recommendations to the minister in which the minister for education determines proposals for funding and the budget for each proposal.
• The minister for education and training determines proposals for funding and the budget for each proposal.

It is a pity that in his time in office Birmingham did not choose to veto yet more risible projects, such as "A history of women as consumers" using "Filipino elite and migrant women between 1902-2010", and "Modern women and poetry of complaint, 1540-1660".

From the Renaissance until the 1960s, the humanities, derived from the expression studia humanitatis, or the study of humanity, made it their purpose to make sense of and understand the world through the Western tradition of art, culture and philosophy.  There appeared in the 70s and 80s, however, a range of "new humanities" subjects that completely rejected this tradition and that are underpinned by a range of radical post-structuralism and postmodernist theories.

This is just the latest case that exposes the corruption of humanities departments by an academe that is obsessed with radical identity politics.  Most notably, three academics in the US pulled off a highly successful grievance studies hoax by having several fake papers accepted by respectable and referred journals.

They discovered in the process that in making absurd and horrible ideas fashionable, they managed to have them accepted.

One paper proposed that dog parks were "rape-condoning spaces".  Another, published in a gender studies journal, was a reworking of part of Mein Kampf, entitled "Our Struggle is My Struggle:  Solidarity Feminism as An Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism".

One of the most wicked examples is a paper presently waiting for revisions and that espouses the chaining of privileged students to the classroom floor.  If it weren't so profoundly disturbing, it would be laughable.

In their journey of enlightenment and discovery, the hoax's authors also showed there was a religious element to this entire business.

Certainly, the response in Australia has been one of intense moral outrage, horrified that an outsider or nonbeliever, a mere politician at that, has dared to venture into the sacred and unknowable world of the humanities.  The main tenets of this new cult of identity politics are that privilege is sin, whiteness is bad and Western civilisation is responsible for all evils in the world, past, present and future.

This religious fervour was displayed on Monday night at the University of Sydney when a group of academics gathered to argue against the introduction of a Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation course on the grounds that the centre, and thus by default Western civilisation, was "structurally, institutionally, morally and epistem­ically violent to other know­ledges".

The fact this is the pervading orthodoxy in academe is even more of a reason as to why we need a bachelor of arts in Western civilisation.