For context, for non-Australian people, the Liberal Party are Australia’s conservative party. More aligned with the right to hard right than anything that could remotely be considered liberal
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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As a non Australian, I always remember that because of the joke about everything in Australia being upside down.
More aligned with the right to hard right than anything that could remotely be considered liberal
They're pretty much textbook "classical liberals", small government, pro free market, etc.
Edit: e.g. to quote Wikipedia
Classical liberals asserted that rights are of a negative nature and therefore stipulate that other individuals and governments are to refrain from interfering with the free market, opposing social liberals who assert that individuals have positive rights, such as the right to vote, the right to an education, the right to healthcare, and the right to a minimum wage.
Except that the Liberal party hasn't stood for any of that for a long time, and they have never stood exclusively for that.
They're for big government when it comes to impinging on individual freedoms like free speech (look at how the try to restrict speech on university campuses), marriage equality, and the right of individuals to make medical decisions between themselves and their doctors (see: abortion, gender affirming care), they're hawkish (i.e., in favour of big government) in foreign affairs, and they favour a big police state rather than the approach that is both rooted in evidence and could involve less government involvement of preferring early intervention and social work.
They don't take a small government approach on the economy, even. They subsidise more conservative-oriented industries like farming and fossil fuels, and they're all about subsidising roads for cars. Meanwhile, regulate and restrict permits for small tech (while bowing to the wishes of conservative media and big tech!) and green energy.
No, the Liberal Party of Australia is a solidly right-wing conservative party with regressive social ideals and a preference for crony capitalism.
I mean, yeah, I didn't mean that as a defence of them or anything.
I'm of the opinion that classical liberalism is a conservative ideology.
Thank you. I now understand what I did not.
I can now validate the murder of all liberals as they are literally the entire history of murder and without murdering them, they will murder us all.
By all means, please prove me wrong.
More for Americans.
Europeans understand what liberalism is and not the American meaning of the word.
But by American standards, they're the equivalent of the Democrats ... mostly. We have a party, "One Nation", that's closer to Republicans and some members of the Liberal party are ideologically aligned with One Nation but members of the Liberal party because they need to win elections (similar to Albo, who's on the left-wing of labor but governs as a moderate because the far-left is an election losing position).
And a important thing for Americans to note is that in our ranked-choice voting system, a surprising number of One Nation (Republican) voters tend to rank Labor (Bernie Sanders) over the Liberals (Democrats). This is to say that not only is trying to appeal to swing voters in America a stupid idea because unlike Australia elections there are fought on turnout, but trying to do that by behaving like the Democrats has the exact opposite effect.
This is to say, if you put up a centrist for president in the (alleged) next election America then you will absolutely lose. Same if it's a slimy disingenuous corrupt Californian like Harris or Newsom.
But by American standards, they're the equivalent of the Democrats
on the economy alone… they’re definitely more like the republicans on things like minority rights, climate, etc
Actions-wise, the LNP are not that far from the Democrats on social issues. They called the same-sex marriage referendum, passed gun control laws, supported a voice to parliament (until Dutton), mostly ignored trans people. The issues they're right-leaning on are Israel (like the Democrats) and immigration (like the Democrats).
Climate change, is the one social (and economic issue) they're to the right of Democrats on that I know of.
And of course, if you take the National party on it's own then it's definitely to the right of the Democrats.
His son taught at my school for a while. Interesting bloke but not the best teacher. David being his father was just one of those interesting bits of trivia about him