Liberal nastiness

When I became eligible to vote, Howard had been Prime Minister for nearly three years. While at Adelaide University between 2000 and 2005, I swung from a rather apolitical middle-class populist-conservative type to a relatively radical “Howard hater” for whom the ALP was too “right-wing”.

I didn’t stop being middle-class, and in hindsight I did not abandon some rather fundamentally social-liberal ideals of equality and fairness. But among the factors that prevented me from becoming a Young Liberal - I voted once for Chris Gallus, and even held in my hands a Liberal Party membership form - was the general character of the Young Liberals themselves.

With one or two exceptions, these guys - and they were mostly guys - were bafflingly right-wing. With one or two exceptions, they were “boat shoe” types - their fathers were important people, they came from such mysterious places as Prince Alfred College and Pulteney Grammar, and they all wore the same collared, button-up shirt.

But more than that - much more than that - was what I can only describe as their political “nastiness”. It’s not just that these people were homophobic, xenophobic and more than a little sexist; it’s that they seemed proud to be these things.

Gay people were “selfish hypocrites”, one young man told me, because they were “demanding rights which were not theirs and never have been. Gays are bigots and hypocrites: if straight people don’t agree with them they all label them as homophobic”. “I don’t need to read about men choosing to be gay,” said another. “That’s their choice to do something they weren’t created for. Why should I defend such a blindingly stupid choice?”

Asylum seekers, too, were “selfish” and “undeserving of our charity”, because they “jumped the queue that most people are happy to wait in, by using their relative wealth to bypass the proper system”.

Another young man, a law student, told me that “I can say that the views of the majority within [the Liberal Party] are not those of classical liberalism or whatever it was that Menzies desired. Of course there are some who think like this, but there are many more conservatives - people with ‘prejudices’ like me. I don’t so much question why I believe something,” he went on. “That is probably in your eyes a major shortfall; however I only have to justify my views to myself and to God.”

Yet another told me that “I have never pretended to be a down-the-line liberal. I am a conservative. We do not pigeon-hole ourselves by the writings of someone else, but rather believe in something based on our own morals and principles. I find this method is far more justifiable, as we are not sheep in someone else’s flock.”

And another: “I will continue to read military history and literature on command and leadership, because it’s the soldier who brings us freedom and protects us from tyrants.”

Imagine my shock when I involved myself in student politics and learned that the South Australian Young Liberals were, by contrast, mild. Readers may have seen the footage broadcast in June 2006 on Lateline, of Young Liberals at a National Union of Students conference chanting “we’re racist, we’re sexist, we’re ho-mo-phobic” and singing God Save the Queen over the top of an Aboriginal elder welcoming the students to country.

The previous year, the Monthly carried Chloe Hooper’s exposé of the Young Liberal federal conference in Hobart - the one where she found lots of budding “conservatives” competing for right-wing kudos by slagging off about gays, “illegal immigrants”, women having abortions, and Malcolm Fraser.

The new Liberal member for Mitchell (in Sydney’s north-west), 30-year-old Alex Hawke, was at that conference, then in his capacity as president of the New South Wales Young Libs. Hawke was apparently banned by his party from giving interviews before the recent election. We don’t know why, but educated guesses abound.