The outcome of the Federal Election has no doubt provoked a great deal of reflection within the Liberal Party. With a Victorian state election later this year, it became clear on election night that a realignment is needed to win back voters.
It was interesting, then, to see the Victorian Liberal Party expel Bernie Finn just days after the election. The controversial Victorian MP previously maintained party support despite criticism for comments comparing Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to Adolf Hitler, describing a former female staffer as a ‘rat’, and sharing pro-Trump posts during the US Capitol riots. However his comments about praying for an end to abortion, and a follow-up comment about abortion not being acceptable for rape victims, were apparently a bridge too far. This is despite those comments being in complete alignment with Catholic teaching, echoing Pope Francis himself.
One would assume that the Victorian Liberal Party has looked at the numbers, and believes that religious conservatives no longer make up a significant proportion of their constituency. Certainly, the moral authority of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations has taken a battering in the state over the last decade, with many remaining openly hostile to religious perspectives.
If the pro-life movement was ever a significant force in Australian politics, that’s no longer the case. Abortion and euthanasia legislation has been passed across the country, often with the support of conscientious Liberal Party votes. South Australia became the last jurisdiction to decriminalise abortion in 2021, and buffer zones restricting pro-life activists from clinics have also been introduced in all states. Meanwhile, NSW recently became the latest state to legalise euthanasia.
Earlier this year, debate over the religious freedom act caused five Federal Liberal Party MPs to cross the floor, highlighting the internal division in the party on issues important to religious conservatives. In this light, preventing pro-life members like Bernie Finn from publicly expressing their views is about taking issues that might cause internal division off the table. It’s much easier to tolerate this situation, of course, when your own side has effectively succeeded in all its policy goals.
'While the Liberal party may think shifting away from pro-life issues will win it broader support, the result of abandoning religious voters may in fact be to create even more disruption in the landscape, and to weaken their base even further.'
The situation in Australia is markedly different to the United States, where a person’s