Conservatives in Australia and all people who want the Liberal Party, their choice of a “conservative” party to change the policies which are bringing it down, must face facts. Their Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot do what he must to survive or to help the Liberal party survive what are horrendous polling numbers aided by internal sabotage. Quite the opposite is happening and he seems powerless to stop it.

Yes, we know (and can say) that he must strike out in positive, Abbott-like, terms differentiating him and his party from the Australian Labor Party. Leave the Paris climate agreement, subsidise/guarantee High Energy Low Emissions (HELE) coal-fired power, stop subsidising solar/wind etc. Yet he cannot carry out such policies and all the talking or browbeating in the world can’t make it happen.

He must rely on the rotten NSW State Liberal party controllers and string-pullers run by Michael Photios and his lobbyist mates (including now a large green Photios lobbying group, aided by environmental committees with Liberal Party national president Nick Greiner and other prominent left wing Liberals on them). It is in strong alliance with fellow traveller leftist Liberal Party factions from all over Australia. No, that is a brick wall holding firm against making the necessary changes to policy on climate, immigration and so on. They cut down a serving Prime Minister when they knifed Tony Abbott in 2015 and they would do it again if they needed to.

Why I never wanted Tony Abbott to come back into the leadership is the very reason Morrison is hamstrung now: he has to rely on the unreliable, lobbyist crew who brought down Abbott and who control NSW Liberals. NSW is the Morrison party base and, led by Photios, it got him into the leadership to thwart the conservative Dutton and he owes them.
This power group, led by lobbyists doing business with the government but also playing their part in selecting those Liberal Party candidates for public office who, as parliamentarians, will actually deal with the lobbyists if in government, act with ruthless effectiveness (aided by pathetic moral coward MPs bowing and scraping to Photios). Reinforced by dedicated, green energy-based lobbying vehicles to drain riches from the environmental groups which the government they control subsidise, they will always be a brick wall stopping such policies or, if those policies are brought in temporarily, will be their destroyers over time.

Perhaps this is why in the case of the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, the Photios cabal have ruthlessly exercised such control. Who else would be able to keep the new MP Felicity Wilson in power, let alone have the state premier praise publicly what seems to be a person who is difficult to take seriously. Unless openly acting with the blessing of a newer, more destructive factional force, a new MP would seem to be a dangerously de-stabilising member if daring to plot the defeat of a lifetime member of their party, especially one who actually took them to government as PM for only the fourth time since the end of WWII. Plotting to defeat all opposition no matter what effect it had on the party would be bad enough even these days (and with these faction leaders), but fostering and linking to radical, hard left groups such as Getup, an overseas-funded, George Soros-aided anti-conservative political activist and astroturf group would not get much party support, one might think. Wrongly, as it turns out.

Add to that the idea that Morrison can simply announce payment for a new HELE power station. Yes, he can, as long as he can crash through that same Photios-controlled NSW opposition. Oh, and be prepared to counter the howls of rage from those pushing the Snowy 2 farce, an uneconomic mess that was just Turnbull desperately trying to do something – anything – other than get us more cheap coal-fired power. The idea of using huge energy to pump water uphill which then will provide hydro-electric power as it rushed down again is laughable and is why it has always been laughed at when proposed. The moment the government announces money or guarantees for a new HELE station, Snowy 2 is instantly uneconomic and has to be scrapped. Of course billions already spent would be wasted, a small price to pay if it actually was scrapped.

Immigration might also be a game-changer but here, too, Morrison is hamstrung and not only by the lobbyist cabal which controls the NSW party. Because Treasury sees valuable economic “growth” coming from increasing or continual immigration, that is a disincentive for Treasury to accept change when needed for other reasons, economic or otherwise. Morrison as Treasurer held out firmly against any calls for change to the immigration rate, even when the opposition Labor Party was also hinting at it (the ALP getting feedback from its old areas, once contested by liberals under Abbott, but abandoned since Abbott was overthrown). Once the ALP sees that there is no chance of an Abbott-like recontesting of these areas (when Abbott actually took seats from them) the ALP will drop off again and neglect them anew.

In the dying days of the Gillard government between the Kevin Rudd Phantom Challenge in March 2013 (after which his supporters left government in an old-fashioned Gillard-led purge), until Rudd returned as leader in June 2013, the former government ministers were in a Twilight Zone-type state, it seemed. Richard Marles, Joel Fitzgibbon, Chris Bowen and Ed Husic, in particular, appeared time and time again on TV opinion shows, cheerful, quite matter-of-fact about the doom about to hit when the election came and seemingly quite unfazed by it all, “almost as if glad that the end had come”

Going by the now-open dissent against Morrison/ nostalgia for Turnbull (who they actually helped to overthrow Abbott), the Photios-allied forces are seemingly preparing for federal opposition, ready to control completely the rump Liberal party, which would remain after that predicted wipe out and with all the promising, potential leaders also defeated and, to them, hopefully finished. A new generation of the best of the conservative newcomers, the Angus Taylor types, Andrew Hastie etc. Publicly allied with the Malcolm Turnbull (& family) public dissing of the current government, aided and abetted by the usual suspects (ABC, Fairfax, social media), the attack on party conservatives continues openly.

The ridiculous Q&A appearance by Turnbull where his bleating about being replaced after doing a Gorton and falling on his sword was met with huge sympathy from the captive “progressive” audience and praised by his media toadies, showed the divide in Australian politics. Backed up publicly by fellow faction members (and the favoured minister Christopher Pyne), the moves were there for all to see, Staying in government is secondary – if that – to protecting the (factional) furniture.

A bit of a doomsday scenario, to be sure, but the end game is here. Alex Turnbull going public is just being the foghorn to warn of the change which is coming. Alex Turnbull made investments in the Infigen Energy company (a loss-making renewables company) and the mandated renewable energy targets brought in by his father Malcolm certainly backed up his personal views. By chance it also improved the financial fortunes of Infigen Energy. How could they possibly put the pieces back together again?

You only have to be a student of history to see what happened when Menzies created the Liberal Party out of the old United Australia Party which had come to its end by 1943, said to be fatally stricken.

“UAP branches tended to become inactive between elections, and its politicians were seen as compromised by their reliance on large donations from business and financial organisations.”(Government Politics Power & Policy, Woodward et al).

As 2018 peters out, the old United Australia Party seems to be nearing its end.

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