Half the Canberra Liberals voted in favour of expanding abortion, but that didn’t stop the issue becoming a club against the party. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
It didn’t take long for the post-mortems on the Canberra Liberals’ defeat to pinpoint the problem: too conservative. Too far to the right? If only they were slightly to the right.
During the ABC’s election night coverage, the too-far-right question was posed to the recently retired Liberals MLA Nicole Lawder before the body was even cold.
Lawder blamed “a couple of very powerful players in the party [who] have pushed the Liberals too far to the right”.
“I think there are some people that are so ideologically driven that [they] would prefer to sabotage the pathway to winning,” she said.
Moments later, coverage shifted to Greens leader Shane Rattenbury.
At the time, it looked likely the Greens’ six MLAs would be reduced to a lonely two – quite a step down for a party some dumb-dumbs thought might take the reins this election.
No one was asking Rattenbury if his party’s stance was too radical for famously progressive Canberrans. If they had, it would be easy to guess the answer. The Greens don’t regret and they don’t reverse.
“The Greens have long been the change makers here in the ACT. Our seat numbers may change, but our determination is constant,” he told a hooting and hollering crowd.
“The numbers matter in the Assembly, but it’s the results that matter the most, and tonight, the Greens have retained the balance of power in the ACT.”
In other words, the party was prepared to sacrifice some members ‘for the greater good’.
Left-wing parties around the world are no longer asked to compromise or sacrifice their beliefs, only conservatives are in the face of defeat. In the past four years, the Canberra Liberals have turned it into an art form.
By any measure, this has been a far-left Assembly pushing radical policy.
Without relitigating the issues (because life is too short), voluntary assisted dying and abortion were all on the agenda last term.
In the case of abortion, the ACT moved to make them free and later moved to allow nurses to prescribe abortion medication. The first was in response to the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June 2022.
The ACT Government used this as the predicate for free abortions less than a month later, seeking to wedge the Liberals with toxic US politics. It was a breathtakingly cynical excuse to move the ball forward on a highly contentious issue that has long been a policy objective and sacred cow of Labor and settled in the ACT.
You might expect a conservative party to rally around this issue. To say, hold on, this is a bridge too far. But no.
The Liberals, as is tradition, gave their members a conscience vote and that was about it for the Libs.
Half the party voted in favour of the abortion bill, including Leader Elizabeth Lee, Deputy Leader Leanne Castley, Mark Parton and Nicole Lawder.
But it wasn’t enough for Labor, which used the issue to whack the Libs to such an extent that Elections ACT forced Labor to retract an inaccurate advertisement targetting Leanne Castley during the election. They did so with one day to go on the election when the ad had been posted for a month – in other words, the damage was done.
The horse has bolted: The offending ad from ACT Labor was up for a month before it was ordered to be withdrawn one day before the election by Elections ACT. Image: ACT Labor Facebook.
So even when a nominally conservative party takes a stance in favour of a policy that the party membership might disagree with, the Liberals cop a whacking.
The Liberals didn’t take abortion to the election – although Labor certainly did.
The Liberals didn’t take voluntary assisted dying to the election – although Labor certainly did.
The election came down to tax rates (barely) and building stuff we can’t afford.
The Liberals’ disagreement with Labor in the 2024 election was really about where the money we don’t have will be spent (on fast-tracking a hospital and a flash new stadium), not stemming a budget bleeding red ink that will almost certainly result in another credit rating downgrade when we try to put more light rail on a maxed-out credit card.
In the last term, the Liberals were neither socially conservative nor fiscally conservative. For Labor, that’s a win-win.
Actually, a win-win-win because they could still accuse the Liberals of being what they aren’t: too conservative or too right wing.
Where left-wing parties have been brilliant is defining ‘right’ as ‘far right’ and, therefore, evil. When you’re defined by your opponents, you’re stuffed.
Rattenbury seems to have realised this.
Reflecting on the just-expired parliamentary agreement, he lamented that the Greens’ successes could be invisible, but the party was publicly linked to the disappointments.
“Rachel Stephen-Smith had a crack at us on the panel the other night about how we took a slogan into the 2020 election about wanting to build a better normal,” Rattenbury told Region.
“She said part of the reason for the Greens’ underperformance is they haven’t delivered that this term to which, if I’d had a chance, my reply to the panel would have been, that’s because the Labor Party hasn’t allowed us to.”
If the Greens can’t succeed when they dance to Labor’s tune and they’re in government together, what sense does it make for the Canberra Liberals to fall into the same trap?
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