The Liberal Party doesn't need a majority to inflict damage on our democracy

The threat and possibility of minority power

I just thought that the question they ought to ask was not “How can I make them like me?” but “How can I make them hear me?”

—Ellen Willis

There is this fantasy that the Liberal Party of Australia will somehow go back to their "moderate" roots, retake the teal seats, reassume dominance of "middle Australia", blah, blah, blah. This is unlikely to happen. The party mechanisms for doing so are corrupted beyond repair. But worse, the framing misunderstands the way in which conservative power is increasingly organising itself.

Perhaps, all political power in Australia.

To put it another way, that Liberal party no longer exists and a significant section of its “base” doesn’t even want to be “the party of Menzies”. Menzies may well be, in a sort of conservative irony, the forgotten person of Australian politics.

You can get into a cause-and-effect argument about this, but the reason the Liberal Party is melting, falling apart like a slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, is part of a worldwide phenomenon…