Overcoming Conservatism in Australia
A brief journey on how I stopped voting Liberal.
I’ll cut right to the chase. I voted Liberal in my first two federal and state elections as an adult. I voted for parties led by Howard twice, Doyle once and Baillieu once. I did this largely in part of what my parents instilled in me. It was pretty much an automatic alignment with where I was meant to be in life. A private school alumni, voting Liberal without much thought or fervour. What a cliché.
But that changed. Now I’m a woke inner city leftie. Why don’t I tell you how I got here?
Adulthood (18–24)
You know what bothered me most of all politically back then? Myki.
F#*king Myki. $1.35 BILLION in 2003 for a ticketing system that didn’t work and wasn’t needed. It blew out by hundreds of millions and is still, in 2022, a god damn mess. You still cannot use your iPhone as a train pass.
The rest of the time all I cared about was meeting girls, skipping TAFE, then skipping Uni and playing video games in the arcade. My car. I cared about my car too.
Labor had cemented the reputation I had as being unable to manage infrastructure, the economy or technology, which was the only thing I was really interested in. I knew Howard invaded Iraq. I supported it because I terrorism was terrifying. What I thought of Tampa and refugees was a reflection of my father, an immigrant from Italy, who instilled in me a belief people should wait their turn to come to Australia considering how many people did. It was something I thought our government could, should, be able to manage to ensure all who want to come can come. It wasn’t racist to me. It was an effective and sustainable immigration policy.
I didn’t care much about foreign conflict. The economy seemed good. Homelessness was non existent in my world.
I really didn’t care much about where we this country was heading.
Late 20s (25–30)
After my last Liberal vote ever in 2007 things really started to fall off the wheels of the stable political environment I had come to know. A lot of what I thought about Labor had been verified by the news. Pink bats. School halls. Rudds ego. A refugee crisis. Political infighting. It all fit a narrative I had been told of Labor. Every bit of it.
Gillard knifed Rudd before the 2010 election.
The Liberal party didn’t offer much of an alternative either. I supported gay rights, generally. I supported social justice, generally. But none of these things really affected me. When refugees started dying against jagged rocks in the ocean trying to come here all I started to think how tragic and desperate it all was and why was it even happening in the first place?
In 2010, I left my ballot paper blank… unable to decide who was better of the two major parties. I didn’t even consider voting Greens or Independent.
Much of this played out in state politics too, so the same thing happened on my ballot.
And again in 2013.
I was now in a political wilderness.
Early 30s (31–35)
Now we’re into the meat of where this transition goes. In my late 20s I lived in Japan for three years. Nothing magical happened there other than it being a period of defining who I am and what I stood for. Coming back to Australia things started making less and less sense about the way things are.
In Japan, society operates broadly well. People are courteous, enough. Things run on time, more than enough. Life is ordered in a way that makes things easier, generally. Japan isn’t perfect, but returning so many things here just became so clearly individualistic. So blistering selfish, to the point I started to think Liberal ideology was damaging the constructs to how society works.
This was reflected everywhere.
The failure of the NBN. The children of refugees in detention. The degradation of the education and the Arts. Housing affordability. The bitterness to and from indigenous Australians. The ridicule of climate change. The cheapening of institutions. The increase in homelessness. Why people have lost interest in serving this country. The infighting and division. The lack of accountability. Weirdly, why was free to air TV so crap, idolising just the worst this country offers? These questions no longer were explained simply by management of the alternative party that held power for six years of the last thirty.
The same things… worse things than Myki were swept under the rug. Ignored. Accepted. None of it made any sense to me.
Nothing seemed to be in the interest of improving the country. Nothing seemed like it made society better. It started looking like you should only look out for yourself. Homelessness in Melbourne became a visual reminder of the growing inequality. I had never seen homelessness in Melbourne in my early 20s, but now tent camps were being setup at Flinders Street and Edinburgh Gardens.
The Liberals kept fighting and backstabbing. Switching leaders to who ever had the best chance of winning the next election. The entrenchment of the 3 year cycle of politics ensured that was all that mattered. Holding on for another 3 years. Labor offered big policy ideas about fixing the housing crisis.
It was starting to look like the Liberals fault.
Then we elected Scott Morrison.
Now
That leads me to now. Two years ago I started studying a Masters of International Relations at Melbourne University (cliché, I know) and I tell you what… I’m not half bad at it.
I believe this completely. There has been no worse Prime Minister in Australian history than Scott Morrison.
I don’t need to list all the reasons why this man is so hated. I’m sure you’ve heard them all but let’s outline the big ones.
- He has a demonstrated record of compulsive lying.
- He has weaponised politics, gender, sexual preference and race to have us fight against our own self interest.
- He has done more damage to our international reputation than any other Prime Minister in history.
- He has shown his corrupt nature by refusing to back a Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission.
- He has no plan to fix the problems facing this country.
Scott is a morally bankrupt cretin of a politician. A man incapable of making things better for anyone other than himself.
No longer is this the consequence of one man either. This is what the Liberal party stands for.
The road the Liberal Party is leading this country is worse off in every way. If we do ‘stray from the path’ as he warns, we will be better off. Better financially. Better health wise. Better education wise.
We will be worse off under another Liberal Government and in a decidedly better position should we do as he says and ‘stray from the path’.
Voting out the Liberal party saves this country.
That’s it. That’s the ball game.
— — —
When I trace back how I overcome my conservative views growing up in Australia it really comes down to one simple thing. This society instilled in me a belief regardless of creed or colour, we are all one. To borrow a lyric ‘From all the lands of Earth we come.’ Yes… the clichés continue, but that belief had to mature and come up against the reality of the world at its own pace. Apparently thinking about the future of this country makes me an ‘inner-city raving lunatic’.
But the truth is that when that reality I faced stopped matching the narrative from politics, that was the moment when I stopped thinking as a conservative in Australia.
At the age of 36, I volunteered in my first election ever in the seat of Kooyong in Victoria. I’ve knocked on doors. I’ve dropped letters and I’ve stood on the street asking people what matters to them this election.
I’m doing this because the Liberal party no longer stands for the conservative values I believed in growing up. It is a party of vile corruption and partisan hatred towards the electorate they serve.
I see it just about everywhere and I’m doing something about it.
