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Your suggestion aside, I find it odd that people call the Australian Liberal Party conservative. They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex mar

Your suggestion aside, I find it odd that people call the Australian Liberal Party conservative. They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex marriage legal. They've now introduced the largest welfare package in Australian history. In comparison to most governments in the world, they're probably considered center-left at worst.

leadingthenet 6y ago
Liberal does not mean left-wing. Thankfully, that particular Americanism hasn’t penetrated into Australia yet.
- vidarh 6y ago
  Well, it did back in the 18th century when the left/right split was first named and well into the 19th - it represented the split between monarchists and opponents in the French assembly after the revolution, and so the liberals made up most of the original left. You see the after-effects in e.g. Norway, where the liberal party is literally named "Venstre" ("Left") It's just that most places the liberals have been firmly out-flanked on the left since.
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    Yes, you're right. I concede that point.
bzb3 6y ago
Hating the right sells, so if someone does something unpopular, accuse him of being a conservative.
- stevenjohns 6y ago
  No it's a fairly well established meme in Australia that the Liberal Party is conservative. I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberal Party themselves promote the meme to try to win conservative votes away from the actual (socially) conservative parties. It sort of makes sense. The leaders of the Liberal Party are usually some combination of lawyer/dopey/religious but their policies are significantly less partisan.
  - jokethrowaway 6y ago
    Most left wing parties in the world sit on the right side of the economic spectrum (with eg. North Korea being an exception). For more info: https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 Sure, right wing parties say they want to lower taxes (but rarely do so) and left wing parties say they want to increase them (and often do so) but we're talking more about brand marketing and appealing to voters than significant changes. Right wing parties tend to be more authoritarian on some themes (gay marriage, drugs). Left wing parties tend to be more authoritarian on other themes (hate speech, gun control, more regulations). No one in politics really care about individual freedom if not to please voters close to the elections. We definitely should adopt a different system to categorise political parties - but to me the Australian Liberal Party looks liberal enough for today's world.
quink 6y ago
How is introducing a regressive tax that removed other duties, levies and taxes "left-wing"? How is being the only major party with MPs voting against same-sex marriage despite the public plebisciting for it "left-wing"? I'll give you the other two though, but on the welfare package that Labor introduced following the GFC they (and of course News Corp) would not shut up about how terrible a thing it was, despite Australia being the only country to come out of the crisis mostly unscathed.
- stevenjohns 6y ago
  I didn't say they're left-wing so I have no idea who you're quoting there. I just said that they're not conservative, and I stand behind that. On the plebiscite/postal survey though: the government in Australia isn't bound by the results of it. It's just a survey. The fact that the Liberal Party put the result into law[0] within 48 hours is their own doing, submitted by an LGBT member of the party no less. A conservative party would fundamentally not do this. You can scroll down in the linked Wikipedia article to see how everyone voted. You won't exactly see significant, genuine opposition. There was arguably more opposition from the left-leaning alternative, the Australian Labor Party, that had the most people abstain in the senate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition_and_Religious_Freedoms)_Act_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition...
  - quink 6y ago
    Wasn't it a Labor prime minister that called the Senate 'unrepresentative swill'? > A conservative party would fundamentally not do this. Experiences in Canada, Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand (of particular relevance to Australia), Sweden, the UK where conservatives in power had at least some if not most of their representatives vote LGBT marriage in is evidence to the contrary. Or is it that they aren't really "conservative" either by some arbitrary yardstick? And to say that they allowed its members to vote how they actually always wanted to vote (now there's a democratic deficit) within '48 hours' after delaying it for months and toddling around with a voluntary postal survey for BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS for months and months after years of intransigence is highly disingenuous.
ioseph 6y ago
The firearm ban is still being challenged by one half of the coalition (The national party). They were dragged kicking and screaming across the line for same-sex marriage. The GST reduced the tax payable on luxury items, so in essence was a more regressive sales tax.
skissane 6y ago
The term "conservative" is relative. What is considered "conservative" by the standards of one society may be considered "liberal" by the standards of another. I think part of the confusion is that some wrongly judge the Australian Liberal Party by American political standards. Conservative parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, often make decisions which would be considered "liberal" in an American context, but are actually centrist (or sometimes even right-wing) in the context of their own countries. A good example is the Medicare levy surcharge was introduced by the Howard government, to penalise middle and high income earners that don't take out private health insurance; in the Australian context that was a conservative decision (it was designed to prop up private health insurers, and many on the Australian left viewed it as a threat to the public health system and a form of corporate welfare), yet when the US adopted more or less the same policy (an insurance mandate) as part of Obamacare, that was a liberal one. The other issue is the ambiguity between "classical liberalism" vs "social liberalism"/"left liberalism"/"modern liberalism". The term "Liberal" in the name of the Australian Liberal Party is a reference to the former not the later. Classical liberalism has a huge amount of overlap with many versions of conservatism. And even "conservatism" comes in many different forms, and different forms of conservatism can lead to very different policies. In the US, some conservatives argue for an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East; others argue that the US should stay out of other countries' business. Both viewpoints are conservative, just the product of different versions of conservatism (neoconservative vs palaeoconservative). Similarly, while mainstream US conservatism combines "economic conservatism" (low and flat taxation, small and balanced government budget, low regulation, free trade, etc) with social conservatism, a significant minority of American social conservatives oppose economic conservatism (e.g. distributism, Catholic social teaching, Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative magazine, etc)
- vinay427 6y ago
  > Conservative parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, often make decisions which would be considered "liberal" in an American context, but are actually centrist (or sometimes even right-wing) in the context of their own countries. This is definitely true for fiscal issues or social welfare, and I think the example you provided is quite appropriate here, but compared to many places (particularly in the part of Europe where I live) I think the reverse is true about the US for social issues.
TOMDM 6y ago
Let's not pretend the liberal party is some bastion of LGBT rights, gay marriage was only passed after the politicians in Australia dragged each other through the mud for so long that the question was eventually put to a non binding plebiscite that they followed through on.
- shrewduser 6y ago
  Well at least they finally did it, each labor prime minister has been against it until they left office and miraculously started supporting it.
femto 6y ago
It's got multiple personalities, which are at battle with each other. The party was founded as a party of social liberals (with conservative economics), but for the last 3 decades has been eaten from the inside by a socially conservative wing resulting in a misnomer. The conservatives could have their own party, but the Liberal name and the remaining perception of liberalism attracts votes, as shown by the "Australian Conservatives" party which broke away from the Liberals and couldn't attract enough votes to survive.
sjy 6y ago
“Conservative” is consistently used to describe the right-wing party in a two-party system. It’s not a coherent ideology.
GlennS 6y ago
> In comparison to most governments in the world Technically probably correct, but it seems like the wrong comparison? Compare them to the G20 or OECD or similar. The Australian Liberal Party are pretty practical, they keep their nutters out of power, they didn't put forward a comedy prime minister, and they have a sense of duty towards the country. But, they're definitely a conservative party. The Treasurer cited Reagan and Thatcher as his inspirations this week.

leadingthenet 6y ago

Liberal does not mean left-wing. Thankfully, that particular Americanism hasn’t penetrated into Australia yet.

vidarh 6y ago
Well, it did back in the 18th century when the left/right split was first named and well into the 19th - it represented the split between monarchists and opponents in the French assembly after the revolution, and so the liberals made up most of the original left. You see the after-effects in e.g. Norway, where the liberal party is literally named "Venstre" ("Left") It's just that most places the liberals have been firmly out-flanked on the left since.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  Yes, you're right. I concede that point.

bzb3 6y ago

Hating the right sells, so if someone does something unpopular, accuse him of being a conservative.

stevenjohns 6y ago
No it's a fairly well established meme in Australia that the Liberal Party is conservative. I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberal Party themselves promote the meme to try to win conservative votes away from the actual (socially) conservative parties. It sort of makes sense. The leaders of the Liberal Party are usually some combination of lawyer/dopey/religious but their policies are significantly less partisan.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Most left wing parties in the world sit on the right side of the economic spectrum (with eg. North Korea being an exception). For more info: https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 Sure, right wing parties say they want to lower taxes (but rarely do so) and left wing parties say they want to increase them (and often do so) but we're talking more about brand marketing and appealing to voters than significant changes. Right wing parties tend to be more authoritarian on some themes (gay marriage, drugs). Left wing parties tend to be more authoritarian on other themes (hate speech, gun control, more regulations). No one in politics really care about individual freedom if not to please voters close to the elections. We definitely should adopt a different system to categorise political parties - but to me the Australian Liberal Party looks liberal enough for today's world.

quink 6y ago

How is introducing a regressive tax that removed other duties, levies and taxes "left-wing"? How is being the only major party with MPs voting against same-sex marriage despite the public plebisciting for it "left-wing"? I'll give you the other two though, but on the welfare package that Labor introduced following the GFC they (and of course News Corp) would not shut up about how terrible a thing it was, despite Australia being the only country to come out of the crisis mostly unscathed.

stevenjohns 6y ago
I didn't say they're left-wing so I have no idea who you're quoting there. I just said that they're not conservative, and I stand behind that. On the plebiscite/postal survey though: the government in Australia isn't bound by the results of it. It's just a survey. The fact that the Liberal Party put the result into law[0] within 48 hours is their own doing, submitted by an LGBT member of the party no less. A conservative party would fundamentally not do this. You can scroll down in the linked Wikipedia article to see how everyone voted. You won't exactly see significant, genuine opposition. There was arguably more opposition from the left-leaning alternative, the Australian Labor Party, that had the most people abstain in the senate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition_and_Religious_Freedoms)_Act_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition...
- quink 6y ago
  Wasn't it a Labor prime minister that called the Senate 'unrepresentative swill'? > A conservative party would fundamentally not do this. Experiences in Canada, Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand (of particular relevance to Australia), Sweden, the UK where conservatives in power had at least some if not most of their representatives vote LGBT marriage in is evidence to the contrary. Or is it that they aren't really "conservative" either by some arbitrary yardstick? And to say that they allowed its members to vote how they actually always wanted to vote (now there's a democratic deficit) within '48 hours' after delaying it for months and toddling around with a voluntary postal survey for BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS for months and months after years of intransigence is highly disingenuous.

ioseph 6y ago

The firearm ban is still being challenged by one half of the coalition (The national party). They were dragged kicking and screaming across the line for same-sex marriage. The GST reduced the tax payable on luxury items, so in essence was a more regressive sales tax.

skissane 6y ago

The term "conservative" is relative. What is considered "conservative" by the standards of one society may be considered "liberal" by the standards of another. I think part of the confusion is that some wrongly judge the Australian Liberal Party by American political standards. Conservative parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, often make decisions which would be considered "liberal" in an American context, but are actually centrist (or sometimes even right-wing) in the context of their own countries. A good example is the Medicare levy surcharge was introduced by the Howard government, to penalise middle and high income earners that don't take out private health insurance; in the Australian context that was a conservative decision (it was designed to prop up private health insurers, and many on the Australian left viewed it as a threat to the public health system and a form of corporate welfare), yet when the US adopted more or less the same policy (an insurance mandate) as part of Obamacare, that was a liberal one. The other issue is the ambiguity between "classical liberalism" vs "social liberalism"/"left liberalism"/"modern liberalism". The term "Liberal" in the name of the Australian Liberal Party is a reference to the former not the later. Classical liberalism has a huge amount of overlap with many versions of conservatism. And even "conservatism" comes in many different forms, and different forms of conservatism can lead to very different policies. In the US, some conservatives argue for an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East; others argue that the US should stay out of other countries' business. Both viewpoints are conservative, just the product of different versions of conservatism (neoconservative vs palaeoconservative). Similarly, while mainstream US conservatism combines "economic conservatism" (low and flat taxation, small and balanced government budget, low regulation, free trade, etc) with social conservatism, a significant minority of American social conservatives oppose economic conservatism (e.g. distributism, Catholic social teaching, Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative magazine, etc)

vinay427 6y ago
> Conservative parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, often make decisions which would be considered "liberal" in an American context, but are actually centrist (or sometimes even right-wing) in the context of their own countries. This is definitely true for fiscal issues or social welfare, and I think the example you provided is quite appropriate here, but compared to many places (particularly in the part of Europe where I live) I think the reverse is true about the US for social issues.

TOMDM 6y ago

Let's not pretend the liberal party is some bastion of LGBT rights, gay marriage was only passed after the politicians in Australia dragged each other through the mud for so long that the question was eventually put to a non binding plebiscite that they followed through on.

shrewduser 6y ago
Well at least they finally did it, each labor prime minister has been against it until they left office and miraculously started supporting it.

femto 6y ago

It's got multiple personalities, which are at battle with each other. The party was founded as a party of social liberals (with conservative economics), but for the last 3 decades has been eaten from the inside by a socially conservative wing resulting in a misnomer. The conservatives could have their own party, but the Liberal name and the remaining perception of liberalism attracts votes, as shown by the "Australian Conservatives" party which broke away from the Liberals and couldn't attract enough votes to survive.

sjy 6y ago

“Conservative” is consistently used to describe the right-wing party in a two-party system. It’s not a coherent ideology.

GlennS 6y ago

> In comparison to most governments in the world Technically probably correct, but it seems like the wrong comparison? Compare them to the G20 or OECD or similar. The Australian Liberal Party are pretty practical, they keep their nutters out of power, they didn't put forward a comedy prime minister, and they have a sense of duty towards the country. But, they're definitely a conservative party. The Treasurer cited Reagan and Thatcher as his inspirations this week.