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Tony Abbott has been in public life for a long time. Most recently there has been his meteoric rise to leadership of the Liberal party and to a hair’s breadth from the prime ministership itself. Charming and disarming as he can be, there is something deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role.
It would be easy to cast a donkey vote or a vote for a minor party and to thus wash your hands of the responsibility for our governance for the next three or so years. In a representative democracy, a vacuous election represents a lazy polity.
Opposition presents the Liberal Party with a rare opportunity to recover its conservative soul and abandon Labor's vapid brand of politics. The only way forward is for the Party to replace Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott as its leader. August 2009
Turnbull's and Hockey's personal dilemmas are now great. Could they in good conscience stand as Liberals in the next election, which they will know was provoked by the machinations of climate change denialists and carbon lobbyists whose views now control the Liberal Party?
The Liberal Party now contains deeper and wider ideological divisions than the Labor Party. This will be true regardless of who emerges as leader today. The question is whether the party can survive such deep differences without fragmenting.
Turnbull has forced his party to see thereis no way forward without serious internal reform. Maybe he will not beable to lead them on, but while lesser members seem blinded byseemingly irrational caution, Turnbull has called the game with ablinding clarity.
Senator Judith Troeth is one of few Liberals who have spoken out against harsh features of immigration policy under Howard. In crossing the floor to vote with the Government this week, she said the Liberal Party 'has a proud story to tell on immigration, but both parties over the last 50 years have written some bleak chapters too'
With Nelson's departure the Liberals have lost yet another experienced but relatively youthful member of its leadership team. Even if the Party loses the next election they should urge Turnbull to stay on in a lesser role, possibly to serve with distinction in a future Liberal Government.
Opposition presents the Liberal Party with a rare opportunity to recover its conservative soul and abandon Labor's vapid brand of politics. The only way forward is for the Party to replace Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott as its leader.
A recent editorial in The Australian regretted that Australian conservatives have conceded the intellectual high ground to Labor. In fact, the Liberal Party and its supporters have arguably been far more astute than the ALP in nurturing academics and research fellows sympathetic to the 'liberal conservative' cause.
The WA Liberal Party has shown that it is more worried about the damage its 'rough diamond' leader might cause to its electibility than the hurt to the human beings involved in the recently-revealed inappropriate behaviour incident.
Even senior traditional hard men of the Liberal Party like Bill Heffernan and Shane Stone have indicated that it is time to act. It is time for Brendan Nelson to draw the line so that we can move on, committed to reconciliation and improvement in Aboriginal health, education, and life expectancy.
49-60 out of 61 results.