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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Liberal Party has decided to flatter itself into oblivion.

The Liberal Party has come up with a way to improve its electoral fortunes.

Are you ready for it?

Here’s their great plan.

Gender quotas.

That’s right, they’re proposing to ease up on the whole meritocracy thing in order to make room for some good old-fashioned DEI.

Liberals Chasing Gender Quotes and Climate Change Solutions?

But that’s not all.

They’re also proposing to go harder on climate change. It’s what the young people want, apparently.

So, to summarise… the Liberal plan is to become more like Labor which just means they’ll be chasing their tails. Sorry, chasing their Teals. Tails? Teals? Same thing.

The Australian reported on Friday that an internal discussion paper had recommended the moves as a way of turning the Liberal Party into – and I quote – a…

“… fit for purpose political machine”.

Well, if your purpose is to continually bleed voters to One Nation while reassuring the ABC political panel you’re not frightening anymore… I’d say quotas and climate change are a wonderful strategy.

Queensland Senator James McGrath chaired the special commission that came up with these brain waves.

He has reportedly told Liberal members…

“Our question must be ‘what would Menzies do’.”

I think we all know the answer to that. Menzies would… vote for One Nation.

Menzies built a conservative party around ideas. McGrath and co propose to rebuild the conservative party around demographics.

Menzies believed people should be persuaded. The modern Liberal Party seems convinced they should simply be categorised so as to be more easily pandered to.

Let me take you through the key findings in this Liberal Party review…

According to Friday’s report in The Australian…

“The paper warned the parliamentary wing of the party was no longer representative of the average Australian, which it identified as a 38-year-old woman who was either born overseas or has at least one parent that was.”

To which I would reply… and?

The Liberal Party can fill their party room with 38-year-old female immigrants, and they’ll still be completely unelectable if they don’t work out what they actually stand for.

People don’t vote for a consensus. People vote for a cause.

The report says the Party’s stance on climate change is a turn off for younger voters.

It found…

“Climate change remains a top-tier issue for under-35s who perceive the party as resistant to climate action relative to our opponents”.

To which I would reply… And?

Win the argument!

If the Liberals are correct that the pursuit of Net Zero is sending us broke while making no meaningful difference to global temperatures… then make the argument and keep making the argument until you win the argument.

Leadership isn’t following the opinion polls. It’s changing them.

Instead, the internal Liberal review hints that it might be time for yet another climate conversation.

Will the Real Liberal Party Please Stand Up?

My advice to the Liberals would be to quit telling us what the polls say and start telling us what you believe.

Or… they could flip-flog… again.

Ironically enough, this is the exact thing Liberal leader Angus Taylor warned about after the Liberals were trounced in the Farrah by-election.

He said that for too long the Liberals had been a party of convenience rather than conviction. And that needed to change.

That warning looks to have had the shelf life of supermarket sushi.

The internal Liberal Party report worried that…

“Just 21 per cent of Liberal members are women, with men outnumbering women four to one on the floor of the lower house, meaning just 33 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians across the country are women — compared to Labor’s 53 per cent.”

To which I would reply… And?

So 53 percent of Labor MPs are female. And how’s the country going?

Has the cost of living fallen because Labor has more female MPs?

Did electricity prices collapse because Parliament reached gender equilibrium?

The Housing Minister is a woman… has the housing crisis disappeared?

No?

Funny that.

I think the Liberal Party will discover — hopefully not to their detriment — that voters tend to care far more about paying the mortgage than balancing the chromosomes in Question Time.

What’s more important? Correctly gendered politicians with incorrect policies?

Or politicians with sensible policies… irrespective of whether or not they’re wearing sensible shoes?

The internal Liberal review warns…

“It is increasingly clear that if serious progress is to be made in delivering greater gender balance in our parliamentary team, additional measures will be required.”

Delivering greater… gender balance?

How about serious progress delivering cheap, reliable power.

How about serious progress delivering a sustainable immigration program that serves the country rather than upends it.

How about serious progress delivering a budget surplus?

The Liberal Party appears to have convinced itself that conservative voters abandoned it because there weren’t enough women dressed in blue ties.

They didn’t.

They left because the Liberals increasingly looked like a pale imitation of Labor — less confident, less courageous and usually 12 months behind.

That’s why I find this internal review paper so astonishing.

It reads less like a paper on rebuilding the party, and more like an exit interview.

Menzies would be rolling in his grave… while voting One Nation.

Hey, the US Democrats do it.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report.

Image via Adobe.