The morning after the democracy sausage sizzle

May 4^th looms big in my consciousness. On that day in 1919 the student protests in Tiananmen, sparked the day before by revelations from the Paris Peace Conference at which our own Billy Hughes played a pivotal part, led to the founding in 1922 of the Communist Party of China.

In 1919the struggling 8-y-o Republic was barely functional or solvent. Warlords roamed; its treasury closely watched over by the big four foreign banks; its customs service, postal service, railways, salt, and more, under the firm guiding hands of foreign powers.

We are a world away from that scenario. Yet I hope that our May 4^th will give birth to a new democracy in Australia.

By all accounts the Liberal Party is beyond redemption. Its party organisations are determinedly dysfunctional in most States and its Parliamentary inhabitants are incapable of upholding the "liberal" dream, once sublimely expressed by John Gorton in his maiden speech.

In my simple observation, John Howard started edging out the "wets" in his caucus, starting with Ian MacPhee. Thus began the withering of structural members who upheld the integrity of the liberal enterprise. Howard also gave wings to the culture war started by Geoffrey Blainey in 1984. And telling lies became okay, almost institutionalised, when he appointed Peter Reith, who had lied about children overboard but did not stand in the ensuing 2001 Federal Elections, to a tax-free $250,000 a year job in London soon after the Tampa election victory. Later Scott Morrison completed the hollowing out of the liberal remains of the Party: the resignation of Birmo, the public face of the last tortured liberal soul; and Morrison's frolicking with the extreme Christian right, seen when he doubled down on picking Catherine Deves to win back Tony Abbott's seat.

We are a lucky country. Rich wide plains for sheep and wheat, gold, coal for centuries to come, and now critical minerals to seduce our big brother in his mission to make his country estate great again, via Greenland warlordism if need be.

Will our luck dwindle to a trickle? For many, it already has.

Like the Qing dynasty in late 19^th century, our governance has been weak, and beset by warlords within and without the reigning Party.

At the end of Howard's reign, his national sovereign fund was much smaller than Singapore's, a young nation with no natural resources, not even water. Howard had presided over the mineral boom which could have given us a national sovereign fund akin to Norway's, the world's largest, based on its north-sea oil and gas royalties. Instead, to win elections, Howard gave us tax cuts, that got us gorging on MacMansions, floor-to-ceiling marbled bathroom renovations, etc, etc. His capital gains tax discount, a nod to housing gamers, marked the beginnings of our housing crisis. Had he followed the Norwegian governments, we might have had plenty in our national sovereign fund to build enough social housing to nip the housing crisis in the bud, as was done in Singapore.

But winning elections is everything.

No matter what: the Vietnam war in 1966; Children Overboard in 2001; Mediscare 2016; the "death-tax" scare 2019; AUKUS he-man in 2022; and "kicking-down" working mothers (work from home), public servants (sack 41,000), and Blacks (not standing in front of their flag) in 2025.

The political campaign has become the playground for self-serving and hollow leaders often with snake oil in their saddle bags.