Sep 15: The Demise of the Liberal Party
1. The Menzies, Fraser and Howard Era (1944-2007)
From Menzies to Howard, the Liberal Party of Australia was a united party which got things done.
They were a convivial marriage of liberals and conservatives and they governed more often than their opponents because they generally all agreed to get on with one another.
2. The Tony Abbott Era (2008-2018 and beyond).
The friendly collaboration was dispatched to the dustbin of history when Howard departed in 2007. Tony Abbott stepped into the chasm vacated by Howard and introduced us to his adversarial crusade of sniping and inter-factional warfare, disrupting policy making and trying to turn them into an Ultra-Conservative Party.
He destroyed Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, seizing the leadership for himself and for religious conservatism. When the ALP government imploded, he became Prime Minister in 2013 but was not up to the task.
He governed from the extreme right using slogans and religious convictions but would not - could not - explain himself or his policies coherently. His incompetence became obvious to all except the blind on the far right. The Party was heading for electoral defeat after one term. Turnbull replaced him and managed to win the 2016 election.
Abbott promised to be supportive but undermined and sniped throughout Turnbull's period of government and engineered his party room defeat in August 2018.
The fools, they booted out the wrong person!
After ten years of internal disruption and wrecking by Abbott, in a foolhardy attempt to take over the Party for God and for Conservatism, the Liberal Party is now on life support, bleeding profusely from both its left and right extremities.
It's a bloody Party, it's an unhappy Party and it's a divided Party. It is almost an Ex-Party.
Shame on all the wrecking ball participants.
Take a bow Tony. You must be so proud of leading the Liberal Party to destruction.
