Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on a matter of public interest concerning the disintegration of the Liberal Party. The barbarians are at the gate of the Liberal Party. That is how we describe an event where the victims are watching things unfold but can do nothing to help themselves. The origin of the expression lies in the fall of Rome. The victims in this case are the moderates in the Liberal Party who are powerless to prevent their party being overrun by the barbarians at their gates.

Who are these barbarians? They are the extremists. They are the Tea Party imitators. They are the remnants of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. They are the radio and newspaper bullies whose ignorance is in direct proportion to their pay packet. If you get close enough, you can smell the fear of the Liberal Party moderates as Mr Abbott leads them down to the dry well of fear and ignorance.

The Liberal extremists are a far cry from the party of Robert Menzies, who warned them against taking the path they tread today. In a radio broadcast on 24 July 1942, Menzies had this to say of his liberal creed:

Nothing could be worse for democracy than to adopt the practice of permitting knowledge to be overthrown by ignorance. If I have honestly and thoughtfully arrived at a certain conclusion on a public question and my electors disagree with me, my first duty is to endeavour to persuade them that my view is right. If I fail in this, my second duty will be to accept the electoral consequences and not to run away from them. Fear can never be a proper or useful ingredient in those mutual relations of respect and good-will which ought to exist between the elector and the elected.

And so, as we think about it we shall find more and more how disfiguring a thing fear is in our own political and social life.

“Men fear the unknown as children fear the dark.” It is that kind of fear which too often restrains experiment and keeps us from innovations which might benefit us enormously. It is the fear of knowledge which prevents so many of us from really using our minds, and which makes so many of us ready slaves to cheap and silly slogans and catch-cries. It is the fear of life and its problems which makes so many of us yearn for nothing so much as some safe billet from which risk and its twin brother enterprise are alike abolished.

The essence of Menzies’ words in 1942 is the virtue of principled political leadership. Many of today’s Liberals must yearn for a leader like Robert Menzies. Today they have an unprincipled leader, who shamelessly peddles fear and ignorance. Nowhere is this clearer than in his fearmongering and vacillation on climate change. He described himself to the former Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, as ‘a weathervane on climate change’. On 18 December 2008, Mr Abbott supported an ETS. On 10 July 2009, he supported a carbon tax. Just over a fortnight later he was back supporting an ETS. Then in December 2010 he was against both an ETS and a carbon tax. On the same day, in July 2009, when he indicated support for an ETS he said he was unconvinced by climate science. Six months later, suddenly: ‘Humans do cause climate change.’ A year later, human activity is still contributing. But a week later, on 14 March, he is back to undermining climate science. Then the very next day he slipped back from the side of ignorance to the side of knowledge. Mr Abbott is not so much a weathervane; he is more a catherine wheel. Mr Abbott simply cannot be believed. He has a clayton’s climate change policy. The truth is: he does not believe the science. He is anti-science and he is deliberately misleading. He is a peddler of fear and ignorance. He is an unprincipled man who will do and say anything in pursuit of his personal ambitions.

It is not just on climate change that Mr Abbott is utterly unprincipled and a slave to silly slogans and catchcries. On the subject of race, asylum seekers and religious tolerance, Mr Abbott substitutes Menzies’ notions of leadership with appeals to fear and bigotry. When the shadow immigration minister, Mr Morrison, made his disgusting remarks about the appropriateness of helping the relatives of dead asylum seekers to attend the funerals of their loved ones in Sydney, it was not Mr Abbott who repudiated him. That job was left to the shadow Treasurer, and I commend him for doing so. Mr Abbott was deliberately mute. Presumably, Mr Morrison took his cue from shock jock Chris Smith, on radio 2GB, who runs a so-called quiz ‘Smithy’s Mystery.’ The day before the funerals, Smith introduced his puerile quiz this way: ‘Ah, it’s good,’ Smith said of the prizes—‘a great book, a great movie and a great DVD.’ He went on:

… how many asylum-seekers killed in the December tragedy will be buried in Sydney this week?

Smith ran a fanfare of applause when he announced the winner. It was a despicable bit of radio. Why Macquarie Radio allows him on air is beyond me. And he is outside parliament today, peddling lies and disinformation, pretending he is leading Tony Abbott’s ‘peoples’ revolt’ against a carbon price. He is one of the barbarians at the Liberal Party’s gates. He should go home—his village is missing its idiot. Does Mr Abbott ever rebuke these people? No, because they are central to his repudiation of Menzies and his embrace of the politics of fear and ignorance. When Senator Bernardi engaged in his divisive, sectarian nastiness, by claiming:

… Islam is a totalitarian, political and religious ideology—

was he repudiated by Mr Abbott? No, he was not. And, when the shadow immigration minister took a proposal to shadow cabinet to exploit fear and ignorance in the community about Islam, did Mr Abbott repudiate him? No, he did not. And, even on the occasion of the Christchurch earthquake, Mr Abbott just could not help himself. He just had to use the occasion as an opportunity to have a blow on the dog whistle. The House of Representatives Hansard of 23 February records Mr Abbott as saying:

As the Prime Minister has said, New Zealanders are family; they are not foreigners, and that is why this disaster has especially touched the hearts of every Australian.

While the Prime Minister did describe New Zealanders as family, only Mr Abbott saw the need to point out that they are not foreigners. Mr Abbott is the most self-indulgent of populists. His brand of populism poisons the well of tolerance, compassion and reason in public debate. He is intolerant of alternatives; he views them as ideas that only fools could favour.