Albo the Appeaser talks out of both sides of his mouth

Michael de Percy I 10 October 2024 I Spectator Australia

Reflecting on the?Conservative Political Action Conference 2024 ?in Brisbane last weekend, I realised something the left can never comprehend. Surrendering one’s integrity for the greater good doesn’t work. It’s like appeasement. It?never works. That’s because the ‘greater good’ is not the end result of collective action, but rather it is the result of the sum of individual actions.

Collectivism is a cop-out. When practised in liberal democracies, which are built on a tradition of individual responsibility, collectivism becomes an excuse for groupthink. Socialism requires every member to be united with the party’s agenda.

While the theoretical end result of communism is to see the state wither away and for humans to live happily ever after as communal hippies, in practice, communism never gets past the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. A number of speakers at CPAC 2024 touched on some key issues that, when taken together, frustrate those with long-held views originating from the liberal tradition.

Leftists in the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have managed to gradually take control of liberal democratic institutions to the point where unelected bureaucrats get to implement their own agendas rather than support the policies of legitimately elected governments.

Former conservative UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, referred to this as the ‘red mist of socialism [that] has descended on the West ’. In her recent book,?Ten Years to Save the West , Truss gives us ten years to sort ourselves out. One leftist reviewer referred to the book as ‘unstoppably self-serving, petulant, and politically jejune’, so it’s clearly worth reading.

This week in Parliament, the?Albanese government teamed up with the Greens ?to defeat the Coalition’s memorial statement for the attack on Israeli civilians at a music concert by the proscribed terrorist organisation, Hamas, on October 7 last year.

Labor ministers are unable to express grief and sorrow for what happened to innocent Israelis without also calling for a ceasefire and a two-state solution, even without Israel’s involvement. In my opinion, Jewish Australians have every right to?feel insulted by this government .

It must be said, however, that our adversarial system requires two strong parties to function properly. Former Labor Defence Minister Robert Ray referred to our system as the best in the world. In my opinion, without a strong Labor Party, our system would not function.

Indeed, a?former senior Labor staffer ?has provided a timely reminder that the Labor Party is more than just a few weak individuals.

NSW Labor Premier,?Chris Minns, proves this point . He has called out a ‘serial activist’ whose weekly pro-Palestinian protests have cost NSW taxpayers some $5.4 million to police the protests. Minns is proving himself to be an excellent leader and a good premier.

But it would be good to see more evidence that the great Labor Party of Curtin, Chifley, and Hawke still cares about Australia’s future. At the moment, all we are seeing is Labor siding with the extremist Greens.

To put this in perspective, even the Teals sided with the Coalition to vote against Mr Albanese ‘trying to talk out of both sides of his mouth ’.

Where does this all end? One likely answer appeared in Canada over the weekend.

Trois-Rivières is a beautiful city in Quebec. I had the pleasure of visiting Trois-Rivières some 20 years ago. The city was established in the 16th Century by the French at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and the Saint-Maurice rivers. The architecture there is stunning.

Over the weekend, the beautiful Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic church was ‘devastated by fire ’.

Regrettably, I had a similar experience at Palmyra in Syria where the Temple of Ba’al I visited in 2007 was later destroyed by the terrorist group, Isis.

But the problem for Canada comes from their Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who also tries to talk out of both sides of his mouth. In relation to alleged arson and vandalism of?more than 110 churches across Canada ?since 2001, the?Toronto Sun ?reported :

‘…it’s true that Justin Trudeau has also said that the burning and destruction of churches is “unacceptable and wrong”, but by saying it is also “understandable” the PM undermines his mild condemnation of what is going on.’

The alleged vandalism and arson of churches across Canada is widespread and has been deemed part of a Canada-wide ‘decolonisation’ process. We are experiencing the same nonsense here, but like most international trends, we seem to be a few months behind the rest of the West.

The?Toronto Star continued:

‘If there were attacks like this taking place at Mosques or other places of worship, then we know that Trudeau would have tweeted right away, issued statements, and rightly denounced the attacks as hate crimes.’

Australia is not far from following Canada down a dangerous path. Appeasement of those who celebrated the atrocities committed by terrorists on Israeli civilians on October 7 and appeasement of proscribed terrorist organisations is indeed worthy of condemnation.

Our Prime Minister is leading the appeasement process. But appeasement never works.

In my opinion, it would be helpful if Mr Albanese and his leftist colleagues went the way of that great appeaser, the notorious British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

In the meantime, we are all worse off for not having a strong Labor Party that supports the national interest, rather than the interests of those who do not wish Australia well.

Dr Michael de Percy?@FlaneurPolitiq ?is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is National Vice President of the Telecommunications Association, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other person or organisation.