Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia likes to think that it has a two-party system, but what we really have is a political photocopier. Labor presses the button, and the Liberals take the copy. Sometimes they change the letterhead, but that's about it. A two-party system only works when there is a genuine contest of ideas, strong values and competing visions—socialism versus capitalism, big government versus small, control versus freedom. But when the major parties mimic each other and quietly collude, that system collapses. That is exactly what we are watching in real time. The proof is in the polls. Voters are abandoning the major parties because they can see the game. Labor and the Liberals came together on hate speech laws to criminalise Australians for saying the 'wrong thing'. They came together on electoral reforms designed to lock new entrants out and lock themselves in. Time and time again, we see them nod along together to the World Health Organization, even the United Nations, like junior managers terrified of upsetting head office.

The two-party system has failed our country. It has failed Australia and must be torn down. But voting alone will not rescue Australia. People must get involved at a grassroots level. They must join parties, participate in preselections and put their hands up to run. That is how you break a duopoly. Reject the careerists, whose only ambition is to toe the party line and preserve their crappy jobs. The two-party system didn't fail because it existed; it failed because the two parties are almost identical. The jig is up, and it should excite anyone who genuinely cares about the future of this country. Both sides of this chamber have failed Australia.