After an embarrassing defeat in the latest election, The Nationals David Littleproud, announced earlier today they will not be entering into the coalition agreement with the Liberal Party for the first time since 1987.
After an embarrassing defeat in the latest election, The Nationals David Littleproud, announced earlier today they will not be entering into the coalition agreement with the Liberal Party for the first time since 1987.
They’re called the Liberals, because that’s what liberalism is. Americans might better know this as classic liberalism, but the rest of the world knows it as liberalism.
Agreed on economic issues, but I disagree that liberalism is conservative on social issues the way that Australia’s Liberals are. I think classical liberalism in an American context would be most closely associated with American libertarianism. Liberalism has a huge hard-on for laissez faire economics, but it also should ostensibly emphasize individual freedom more than anything else when it comes to social issues. Both Republicans in the US and Liberals in Australia might speak platitudes about their desire for free speech, but if you challenge that even a little you’ll quickly find that they’re just hard right wing conservatives hiding behind the moderated mask of liberalism.
Laissez-faire economic policy is far more tied in with neoliberalism than classical liberalism, as is the conservative bent. American Libertarianism is effectively the farthest extreme to which you can take neoliberalism. Classical liberalism doesnt have a modern equivalent really in the US at this point.
It is interesting to me that many other countries dont utilize a perspective of neoliberalism in making these distinctions, considering neoliberalism is hardly an American-specific thing. Although America has taken it to the furthest extreme, in terms of having no social safety nets for people and whatnot. “If you fail its your own fault entirely, and has nothing to do with society at all” is very much a neoliberal tenet. Classical liberalism is far more balanced than that
It seems like many of these “liberal” conservative parties in other countries are just neoliberals in sheep’s clothing
The Liberals were originally a broad church, with its most salient feature being that its members were more likely to own property. The more socially moderate members (sometimes referred to as “wets”, a term borrowed from the British Tories) started dwindling in the long Howard era (1997-2007 and 2011-2022 or so) when the party pivoted to Murdochian culture-war conservatism, and eventually lost almost all their historic seats in wealthy suburbs, while outer-suburban party branches were taken over by religious groups (pentecostals and Mormons, IIRC)