Assuming that Andrew Hastie is not taken from us by the apparently imminent Rapture, he may soon come up for judgment. It is very hard to imagine him leading the Liberal Party anywhere other than over a cliff.

He seems to have a sense of despair over the Liberals’ lack of direction and current failure to project anything much in the way of ideas or values. But almost all of his moral or political ideas about reviving the party’s fortunes seem certain to make its short- and medium-term future worse: It is, apparently, a sacrifice he is prepared to make. He asks, “What’s the point of politics if you are not willing to fight for something?”

I couldn’t agree more, but it depends a good deal on what that something is. A plan to drop net zero targets: to further alienate the party from an electorate which has already marked down its pathetic performance on climate change. A plan to restore a domestic car industry in an environment where the markets are flooding with cheap Chinese electric vehicles at a price with which no local industry could compete?

The strange thing is how many of his profile-building exercises tick several boxes at once. He wants a crusade to restore the values of Western civilisation to Australian youth. It reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi; asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he said he thought it would be a good idea.

Having such a crusade, hopefully heading towards Jerusalem, will excite Australia’s ethnic populations. Relatively few of the modern arrivals come from the places where Western civilisation, whatever that is, developed. Under a Hastie government there would be very few more immigrants entering the country.

But the talk of values would also bring to mind that he comes from a coercive and preachy tradition that owes more to the American Christian right than it does to ideas that originated in Greece, Jerusalem or from the mouth of Jesus.

A jihad against the Democrats and the godless

Indeed, Hastie’s recent speeches and slogans seem to deliberately borrow from the Trump revolution, right down to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the jihad against the Democrats, now characterised as dangerous radical left terrorists. And to the outright rejection of truth, facts and modern science that Trump and his team embrace. Hardly from the Western, or even the Scottish enlightenment. Hastie, himself, has always been coy about his own beliefs and values, and, in particular, has sought to deflect questions about whether he agrees with his clergyman father’s belief in creationism. (In the course of pretending to get angry at slurs on his father, he avoids the question.)

In normal Australian politics of the past 50 years, the personal beliefs of Australian politicians have only occasionally been very important, unless one’s religion is a part of their public persona, as with, say, the Reverend Fred Nile. Politicians have differed over abortion, euthanasia and same sex marriage according to their religious beliefs. (Hastie voted against legislating same sex marriage soon after being elected).

But when politicians begin seeking attention by talking about “restoring family values”, it is quite reasonable to ask just exactly what values they are talking about, and whether they are proposing to impose their view of what these values should be as law. Likewise, when politicians demand the right to permit bigotry by religious institutions.

If Hastie were to become the standard bearer of the conservative wing of the Liberal Party, questions about coercion and his moral agenda would be at the centre of his image. The evidence suggests that he would be keen to push it even to the forefront. One might imagine that many of his more libertarian colleagues in the conservative wings and remaining moderates, if any, would be resentful if they thought they were being confined to the sort of straitjacket Hastie seems to have in mind.

Explaining the pronouns, the grievance, the tantrums and the violence

He has also explicitly adopted some of the ideas of Trump, including very recent ones after the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. Complaining of universities repudiating Western values, he said “That’s why we see the pronouns, the grievance, the tantrums, the violence … The radical left are evil and will use violence to win. Let’s stop pretending they act in good faith.”

From the context of adopting Trump’s expression, it is quite clear that by radical left he means the pussycats of a centre-right tradition who vote Democrat in the US. He was not referring to members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Hamas or the Taliban, even assuming that some of these were left of centre.

Hastie said that the answer was to be bold, courageous and to grow a movement.

“If we don’t get moving, the West will continue to decline. That extends to the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party will be in exile for a long time until we act in the interests of the Australian people.

A report in the Sydney Morning Herald added that in a separate social media post about immigration, Hastie said, “if we don’t act we can expect anger and frustration. We might even die as a political movement. So be it. What is the point of politics if you are not willing to fight for something”.

Also likely to irritate the economic purists in the Liberal Party’s conservative wings are his proposals about reinstating a domestic car industry. Like Trump, it appears, Hastie favours protectionism and tariffs rather than free markets, and government intervention rather than letting the market rule.

My point is not about whether these are good policies in principle, although I think they are not. Some of the immigration remarks involve dog-whistling. But Hastie knows that the party has been flogged by voters over climate change. To get back to power, the Coalition must win them back. He proposes to double the dose and to spit in the face of those who want to restore the party’s image.

He wants the party to take up more extremist positions, rather than to focus on the centre. Against evidence that the party is being massively rejected by the young, by women, by ethnic groups, and by most younger men, he offers nothing — not even denial — to remedy their criticisms of where the party stands. Implicitly, it’s the voters who have been at fault, perhaps for not reading their Bibles, for voting for same-sex marriage, or for failing to understand what Peter Dutton was offering.

What’s also not clear is how Hastie’s policies, beyond the motherhood ones, can be categorised as being about Christian values, or family values, or even Australianness.

Has the Trump agenda proved contagious? Is there a tablet for that?

The Trump agenda in the US, thanks in major part to the lawlessness of the Supreme Court, has succeeded in turning clocks back. On abortion. On fundamental equality and access to the system for all, not just the rich. On programs to increase access and diversity and rights for the disadvantaged.

On “moral issues”, the Supreme Court may go further. Perhaps by affirming male headship of families. Abolishing votes for women? Restoring slavery? Restricting rights to white men?

It may prove difficult to restore many things that have been taken away. Yet it is by no means clear that what has occurred has inspired Australians to want to copy what Trump and his conservative supporters have achieved. One does not see Archbishop Anthony Fisher applauding. Or the Dutch, the Britons, the French or the Germans, or voters in Asia and Africa demanding the right to follow the American example. In many of these countries, the primary consequence of the reactionary politics of the religious right in America has been to inspire religious organisations to become more active in supporting social justice.

It seems unlikely that any movement inspired by Hastie or Zed Seselja or Jim Wallace to kill same-sex marriage laws, or euthanasia laws will develop here to the point where it succeeds. A host of rights, not least for women, gays and the disabled will not — probably cannot — be taken away, even if they are pared down in the US.

In the meantime, the US is disinvesting in healthcare, particularly for the poor and the old. Public health is at serious risk from Robert F. Kennedy Jr and the obscurantist attacks on vaccination threaten the whole nation. The quality of education in the US is in serious decline because of reduced public investment. Many of Trump’s measures disadvantage the working class, supposedly key constituents from what remains of a middle class. It has been only the super-rich who have benefitted. So far, they have not returned the favour of their increased wealth by investing and creating jobs and new opportunities for marginalised citizens. Community stability has suffered from the increased licence given to homophobic, racist and misogynistic sentiments, including from people like Charlie Kirk. In the wider world, US sponsorship of massacre, starvation and dispossession in Gaza and the West Bank could hardly be less Christian in its effects.

Labor can’t be smug. They may replace the Liberals as the party of the Right

In some respects, it is making Labor smug, because it is clear that the Coalition are making themselves unelectable for some time to come. The more so, if people such as Hastie win in the short term. But Labor cannot simply throw coal and other hydrocarbons on the Liberal fire.

If the Liberals cease to be an effective force, the job of being an effective opposition will fall to the Independents and the Greens. They would need to fundamentally reorganise to take up such a task, but it is not beyond them. Indeed, in the short term, they would probably make a far more effective opposition because they are more in tune with community hopes and expectations. And, in particular, because they would be attacking Labor from the centre and the left.

That is where Albanese, ostensibly a member of the left, is most vulnerable because of his policy timidity and failure to take up the opportunities and responsibilities of serious government in the public interest. The collapse of the Liberals could result in Labor taking up the challenge of becoming the reactionary and conservative party. That would not involve much reorganisation of its policies or its principles.

Continued white-anting of Sussan Ley is the despair of colleagues seeking to make the party more marketable. It must be seen as a deliberate attempt to undermine her. It seems almost impossible that a change of leadership — still less a change in Hastie’s favour — would improve the party’s standing in the electorate, now or in the medium term. Positions taken by Tony Abbott, by Scott Morrison and Dutton took votes away from the Liberals, and any persistence with Hastie’s ideas would actually increase the damage. With the numbers of Greens, Teals and independents, even the One Nation Party, the Liberals could simply disappear.

Hastie may be optimistic about his persuasive skills, but must surely realise that he himself cannot win back votes in the wider electorate without an organisation far bigger than anything he could organise. Trumpism was not invented with a few social media bites, but over several decades of disciplined messages and polling. If Hastie succeeds in toppling Ley, he would have increased his stock of personal enemies to a point where many will be happy if all they achieve is to keep him out. Hastie is not the Messiah. Nor will he bring the Liberals out of Sinai.

Republished from The Canberra Times, 26 September 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.