Victorian Liberal President David Kemp has told David "Rodney" Rood of The Aged "there is an issue with the Liberal brand" and that is causing difficulty with membership levels.
He's wrong.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the Liberal brand. Or the Labor brand.
They attract millions of voters - even in elections where they have offended many with either bizarre elitism (Big Paul) or policies seen as some kind of betrayal (Little Johnny)- and there is no sign of anything bigger or better coming along.
People are just not joining traditionally functioning organisations like they used to. They don't have time and even if they do, what awaits them couldn't be any less welcoming, interesting or attractive.
The mind-blowing formality, utter obscurity and absolute pettiness of most of what is transacted at party branch meetings is enough to put off all but the most politically ambitious or fanatical maddie.
The stifling suspicion of and often racially charged hostility for newcomers - especially in the ALP but not restricted to it - disguised as concern for branch-stacking is probably one of the great scandals of modern politics.
A CASE STUDY OF DYSFUNCTION
There is no uglier example of this than the Higgins FEA of the Labor Party. With internal ALP elections on in earnest in Victoria, few contests are as tiny or as viciously contested as those fighting for the right to party in the meant to be safe Tory seat of Higgins.
Led by Diane Anderson, who perversely lives half a world away in the United States and even when in Melbourne lives outside the electorate therefore disqualifying her, the looney left in Higgins are howling especially loudly at the moon right now if their most recent missive is any guide.
In a document recently circulated purporting to be "Candidates (sic) Statements", Anderson has published only a select number of statements from the candidates.
BARRY POND: THE NON FACTIONAL FORMER FACTIONAL UNION HACK CONFERENCE DELEGATE
One Barry Pond seeks election to the office of Returning Officer and seems to have all the fervour and independence of election officials in the employ of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
Pond insists in one para - in the McCarthyite phrasing - that he is not and has never been a member of a faction.
And yet admits in the next to being a member of a union once aligned to the Socialist Left and now part of Dean Mighell's CEPU supporting Union and Community Alliance faction.
He then proceeds to rip into his foes, including Labor Unity member Tim Lisle-Williams who he says has no relevant experience, although we understand that Mr Lisle has extensive practice counting ballots at the Melbourne University Student Union where he worked for Benjamin Cass' highly regarded election administration company GTS. He is very well qualified.
Not to be outdone is candidate Rolf Sorensen who admits to being a faction member (Socialist Left) and then praises the purportedly not factional "Left-Aligned" candidates.
Oscar Wilde once said "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative" and they certainly have big imaginations in the Higgins Left.
A NEW SPACE CADET EMERGES FROM THE WILDERNESS
The fruitcake gets nuttier the deeper you cut too. Candidate Des Carroll proudly boasts of his number of arrests ostensibly in the aid of various dubious causes. He explains that he spends large amounts of time alone in the wilderness which does seem to rather explain a lot.
His pitch for support in an internal ALP election continues:
I am most unhappy in the Labor Party!
He is also particularly unhappy about genetically modified crops and is so concerned about it that he even gets the name of what he sees as the diabolical American company responsible "Monsato"(sic) wrong.
He's just warmed though declaring the ALP's most important decision making body "a sham and charade", attacking Premier Brumby and pledging to keep a close eye on them all.
TRADITIONAL FAVOURITE: YANKEE GO HOME
Diane Anderson is made to look sane by the lunatic Des Carroll but doesn't completely disappoint.
The ALP she says "is a party of the ideological right embracing Economic Rationalist (OC: note use of caps) based policy" that resorts to "undemocratic tactics that reward branch stackers" and suppresses "genuine debate".
Her party is at an "ethical low" for which she partly blames patriot State Secretaries Feeney and "Newman" (sic).
And it's not just those two, she reckons. Policy committees have "degenerated into farce" and somehow "vulnerable to corrupt practice" and "abuses...courtesy of the Labor Unity Faction."
It all makes a lot more sense if you stand up and read this out really quickly in an American accent:
The Labor Unity Faction dominated Head Office under the Newman (sic) regime has presided over the metamorphosis of the Victorian ALP into the Liberal Party in which the politicians dictate policy and use the organs of the party to rubber stamp their wishes...
She even declares herself the "conscience of the Victorian ALP", which does would if true make one worry about what kind of psycho-tropic drugs its mind had to be on to stop its bloated body from kitchen-knife wielding at branch pie-nights.
SOCIALIST LEFTISTS ARE THE SANE ONES: BE AFRAID
Then a couple of junior Leftards opine reasonably innocuously and mildly but with rhetoric that's a fair way distant from what Andrew Giles actually gets up to in the privacy of Gavin Jennings' ministerial suite.
Their pledge to "end branch-stacking and other corrupt practices" must be from a memo that hasn't yet got to Khalil Eideh and his loyal factotum of feast Bob Mammarella, to pick just of many Socialist Left stackers.
Also amusing is their commitment to protecting rank and vile members' say in preselections. The Left are in fact leading the charge in obliterating such rights, with the likes of Anthony Albanese in it up to his red neck.
CANDIDATE CONSCRIPTION
And finally the vicious old witch sidekick of Diane Anderson, Margot Carroll, wifey of the Des quoted extensively above, opines declaring that she too is faction free.
She is none too happy with "the continuing march of aspirational people towards their goal of Parliamentary representation."
The party Carroll seeks to mould wouldn't have any such burden of winning a lections.
Her ideal candidates? She wants unambitious folk who "would enter the political scene against their will." She's quite serious about this apparently.
If these parties weren't important to the future of the country, this'd be funny. Those involved are amusing perhaps but what they are engaged in is a first class disgrace. If the ALP had a clue they'd expel every last one of them.
Their contempt for their own party and its leadership, their attempts to exclude others from participating and their systemic rorting (like pretending Diane is entitled to vote there) ought be reason enough to give them the boot.
Little wonder the state's most disastrous Premier John Cain is favourably referred to twice in the appalling document. They all should do what Cain the Complain should, join the Greens party where their conspiracy theories and lunacy would find a happier home. At least until Greg Barber MLC purged them all in a Stalin style showdown. For all of Barber's faults, he wouldn't be stupid enough to tolerate such destructive people and nor should any modern political party.
If you're a sucker for punishment, you're either a Nazi freak running the Formula One or you can click here to read the Higgins news in its purest form.
Game on.
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