On the October long weekend this year (2022) I attended the Australian CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) event in Sydney. The ticket to the event was given to me as a gift from my loving and outstanding adult children. Previously, I had toyed with the idea of attending CPAC, but decided against due to budgetary constraints. I have attended a few conference-style meetings over the years for the purposes of business, sales, personal development and workplace training. But other than a couple of small local meetings, this was to be my first political event, especially of this size and nature. Being someone who isn’t that “outgoing”, I was quite anxious about attending such an event on my own. But my misgivings were quashed as soon as I arrived at the venue in Darling Harbour. Everyone, and I mean everyone that I met, spoke to, interacted with was incredibly friendly. The atmosphere was one of positive energy and genuine interest in the thoughts of others. I met engineers, builders, political party workers, council workers, government employees, mine workers, a nurse, and yes, politicians themselves just to name a few. They were predominantly from Sydney but also from places such as Orange, Parkes, Canberra, Queanbeyan, Wagga Wagga, and one guy even flew in from Perth, WA. A couple of hours into the first day, it was obvious to me that this was going to be a fun and engaging event. The speakers were interesting and entertaining, the event itself was slick and professional, and the audience was clearly enjoying themselves and responding to the speakers in a positive and encouraging manner. The opening ceremony contained the obligatory “Welcome to Country” ceremony, along with a stirring rendition of The Seekers’ “I Am Australian” and our Australian National Anthem. I can honestly say, I’ve never heard an audience sing those two songs with such volume and pride as I heard on that day. We were off to a good start. The first speaker on Saturday Morning was the incredible Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Her reception by the audience was that of a rock star, receiving cheers and a standing ovation. This was to be exceeded only by her departure from the stage after delivering her speech. Jacinta is, in my opinion, a star, and the Australian people need to embrace her, and learn from her, and work together to begin to genuinely improve the lives of Aboriginal Australians, and especially our people in Australia’s remote communities. For brevity I won’t elaborate upon her speech, but you can watch it online (and I recommend that you do). After Ms Price, the official opening took place where we heard from (among others), another outstanding Australian, Mr Warren Mundine. An impressive person who is worth listening to (even if he does use the plural word for “you” - Youse). It annoys me that we don’t see or hear from Mr Mundine in the legacy media more often. I do know why - his political leanings these days don’t comply with the media narrative. I’m sure if he was the leader of an Australian Socialist movement, he’d be the ABC and The Project’s poster boy! Next highlight (for me) was during the “Outsiders” panel featuring James Morrow, Rita Panihi and Rowan Dean. Within the first minutes of being on stage, Mr Dean conducted a light-hearted experiment where he successfully divided the room and set 90% of the audience against the other 10%. What this exercise turned out to be was a demonstration of how easy it is to divide a group of people, and then set the majority against the minority. Whilst Mr Dean’s example of population division was firmly tongue-in-cheek and based upon the individual’s feelings toward the music of Bob Dillan, the message was clear and a stark reflection of our Covid policies over the last couple of years. As an unjabbed individual, I began to feel uncomfortable as Mr Dean’s experiment started (I could see where he was headed). By the end of his demonstration, however, it was obvious that the audience was fully on board with the absurdity of this shameful chapter in our history. Mr Dean and the audience were vocal in their condemnation of our government's covid response, and the lack of conservative values within our political class that should have known better and spoken out. Mr Dean poignantly said “...we are in a war against authoritarianism, we are in a war against the collective”. Other highlights came from Senators Amanda Stoker, Matt Canavan and Alex Antic. Former prime minister Tony Abbott received a welcome akin to that of Bruce Springsteen. Nigel Farage was as interesting and as entertaining as you might expect. Ross Cameron, Mark Latham, Ian Plimer, James Allan, rapper and social media influencer Zuby, authors and environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Zion Lights were all interesting and thought-provoking. Having said all of that, the best was yet to come. Three segments on Sunday afternoon were to provide an emotional rollercoaster where the audience was moved through sadness and distress, to relief, joy, inspiration, dismay and seething anger. Topher Field is a political commentator who became prominent during covid when he spoke out against the Victorian government’s response. He was joined on stage by three other Melbournians that suffered under the Victorian government's oppression during covid. Their mix of live speaking was interlaced with excerpts from the documentary film “Battleground Melbourne”. The courage of these individuals is astounding. Amazing. It’s a pity that more of us weren’t the same. When you are speaking out against injustices that are supported by (seemingly) the whole world, it’s difficult, scary, and in today’s modern world, it is proven to be dangerous. The team from Battleground Melbourne and indeed all of the speakers up until 4:00pm Sunday afternoon, whilst speaking on different subjects, had a couple of common threads. Firstly, Conservatives must speak up. There is no room in today’s political environment for “cowardly conservatives”. That’s when you end up with people like Scott Morrison, quite possibly the most ineffectual Prime Minister in our lifetime. It’s when you end up with people like Dom Perrottet, the NSW Premier. Mr Perrottet sent a video message to CPAC, which was roundly booed or at least groaned at. A great example of someone who talks the talk, but stumbles in the walk, as previously-stated convictions are not anywhere to be seen when true leadership is grasped. Same could be said for Peter Dutton. Perrottet and Dutton say they value small government, free speech, freedom of association, and sensible energy policies. Both have stated a dislike for the woke agenda. And yet, neither are speaking up or acting in a manner that supports these values. When Malcolm Roberst spoke towards the end of the final day, the audience were keenly attentive and supportive. Mr Roberts took aim squarely at the Liberal party. He said: “In this last Parliament, Australia’s Covid response asked many questions of our elected leaders. Questions like: What happened to my body, my choice? What happened to the vaccine approval process? What happened to freedom of movement and freedom of association? What happened to the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship? What happened to free speech? And how could a virus infect you in a small business, but not in a big business?” Mr Roberts (and, previously, Mark Latham) went on to call for a grand coalition. Where the Liberal and National parties work together with the minor parties to make sure that the toxic wokeness of the left is severely restricted in both houses of the Australian Parliament. The so-called “Freedom Parties”, mainly the Liberal Democrats, One Nation and United Australia Party, are all at their core right-leaning conservative/Libertarian parties. However, at the last federal election, the Liberal Party still preferenced Labor ahead of parties such as these in many seats. All very valid points from Mr Roberts, that reflected the thoughts of the majority of the audience. And, so to the most surprising, gob-smacking and dismaying panel discussion of the conference.Up until this point, late on the Sunday afternoon, all of the speakers had been positive, open, upbeat and encouraging, despite the sometimes troubling subject matter. But that changed with the next panel discussion entitled “The Road Back for the Coalition”. The panel featured three popular Liberal Party heavyweights: Teena McQueen, Amanda Stoker and Nick Minchen. The panel was moderated by Nick Cater. Mr Cater’s opening remarks reflected upon the diversity of views expressed during the two days, to which Ms Stoker replied that it would “be good if we spent a bit of time kicking the other side and not our own side”. Immediately, the audience realised that these three leaders within the Liberal Party had not been listening, and certainly not learning from previous, well-received and thoughtful speakers. You can’t win elections by simply bagging the other side. You need to offer something to the voting public that has more meat on the bones than “we are better because they are bad”. It seemed that the Liberal party was expecting full support from the audience, despite not earning that support! Mr Minchin, totally misreading the audience, supported Ms Stoker’s comments and took aim at the minor parties, saying that the only way to defeat Labor is through the Liberal Party. “You’re not going to defeat the Labor Party by joining UAP or Malcolm Roberts, you do it through the Liberal Party,” Picking the audience’s unhappiness with this, Mr Cater then asked Mr Minchin if the party was “an immutable force or can people still actually get in and change it from within?”. Things really got heated when Mr Minchin replied that he didn’t think that “...the Liberal Party needs a whole lot of changing”. The audience interrupted into boos and heckles. Mr Minchen then responded loudly “Hey, calm down will ya?” he said. “You’re worse than a socialist audience!” The audience then erupted into an indiscernible rabble of exclamations directed at the panel and Mr Minchin. Mr Minchin said “I’m not going to take any rubbish from you lot, I’m sorry. The Liberal Party’s values are values you should all support. Go and read the platform of the party, read ‘we believe’. We stand for small government, we stand for low taxation, we stand for federation, we stand for good government.” The first line from the Liberal Party’s page Mr Minchin referred to reads: (We Believe:) In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative. Obviously, someone within earshot of Mr Minchin must have suggested that the party candidates and elected representatives need to familairise themselves with these very beliefs! He replied “The candidates we select are a function of you, it’s a function of the members of the party. We have plebiscites around Australia, we select the candidates and we decide who goes into parliament, and it’s our job as party members to keep them honest, OK? Again, the crowd called it’s displeasure with his apparent lack of self-awareness. I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one there who called out to Mr Minchin to try to remind him that the party by-passed this democratic process by appointing no less than 12 “Captain’s Picks” candidates last election. Mr Cater and Ms Stoker then tried to bring the crowd back into unity with the panel, changing the conversation and referring to the audience’s heroes, such as Tony Abbott, Alex Antic, Jacinta Price, and the popular Matt Canavan, which was met with polite applause, until Ms Stoker suggested Angus Taylor, at which point the applause fell near silent. The Liberal party power brokers displayed in full that they don’t understand just how angry their grassroots constituency is with them, but the audience did their best to smack reality into them. You cannot tell a group of people who are obviously conservative in nature that it was their fault that the Liberals lost the election. You can’t tell them they should stick with the Liberals when the inaction of the Libs over the last two years was a large cause of the audience’s pain. The Liberals need to flush the green-left powerbrokers out of their systems, and accept responsibility for their spectacular mistakes during covid. It’s not a coincidence that when the Liberals lost their conservative values, they lost the election. Because that is exactly what Morrison did. He adopted Net Zero, was blind to the human rights abuses during covid, tried to justify abhorrent situations such as babies dying because they couldn’t use their nearest hospital over a state border. He enabled the egregious Vaccine Passport regime, and watched as tens of thousands of good people were sacked from their jobs and an untold number of small businesses pushed beyond the brink. And while the display of the senior Liberal’s lack of self-awareness was one thing, the fact that they doubled-down and counter-attacked the crowd in response was reprehensible. If these party leaders feel that they cannot be criticized, and think that ‘they know better than the voters’, we are in for an extended period of the Liberal Party being consigned to the wilderness. There is only one way forward for the Liberal Party. They need to change their leadership, sack the political advisors who always urge caution, change their policies, act upon their own stated “beliefs”, apologise for their failures, and start again. Voters don’t want popular politicians, they want politicians who stand by their own shared beliefs in liberal democracy and conservative values. Now it’s up to Peter Dutton to decide whether he will embrace liberal conservatism, or will he join the belief that “...the Liberal party doesn’t need to change.” And if they truly need some guidance on what the common voter is thinking and feeling, all they need to do is scrap their inner-city focus groups and reach out to their supporters and members. Personally, I have voted Liberal/Nationals all of my life up until recently. I can’t see myself going back to the fold until they show in action, not just words, that they support me and my fellow conservatives across the country.
