“The Liberal Party’s arc of relevance has peaked and is steadily falling. Looking at the massive social shift, for personal and economic growth, onto Relationship, the Liberal Party must change its philosophical reason for being. If it doesn’t, as the groundswell keeps moving forward the Liberal Party’s current trajectory could well see it dead in fifteen years.” Robert Bosler

Artist and Webdiarist Robert Bosler reckons the Libs are gone and we’re about to do the vision thing. His previous work on the Zeitgeist includes An artist’s blueprint for a Latham win and Death of the Liberal’s liberalism?

 

Through the length of just these words we are going on a journey. It�s a journey that will peel back the madding rush of everyday life and we’ll be able to see into the deep groundswell of thought and feeling that is moving our nation forward.

As you do so, you’ll be aware that you’ll be looking into the minds and hearts of Australians moving surely in a clear direction. You will see some people are well aware of where they are going, while others may be less aware, but walking that way nonetheless, looking more at what is beside them than what lays ahead.

This is the world of vision. It�s also the world of the strategists who seek to dive in and return with a treasure of insight which will set the bearing on the compass of their political party towards where the groundswell of people are moving.

We�re going into those depths now. But before we do, a word of warning. It is often scary. Please take that seriously. It can be very, very frightening. We will discover things that we never before knew; and the fear we feel will come from discovering that what we find in there had been living there a long time, and that it is not going to go away.

It can also be thrilling, ecstatically. How much fear you have will depend on how much you resist what you see. Let�s go in and look.

Unlike diving into the depths of the ocean, or into the universe of outer space where we have to put things on, like protective suits, to go into the depths of the hidden inner world of the nation�s heart and mind we have to take our protective suits off.

We have to remove our prejudices and our pressing need to do whatever is pressing on us to do. We have to strip away our daily concerns, take it all off, and sit there, free. Peaceful. We feel the quiet descend on us. We become aware of our breathing. Breathing in. Breathing out.

There. Down we go. Into the depths. We are on our way in.

The first thing we see is that it�s big. For twenty million people it�s bound to be…but isn’t it strange, we don’t see twenty million people. We don’t see any people at all. We see a kind of an organism, where the oceans of peoples� hearts and the universe of their minds sort of melds together, moving gently, warm, just seeming to move over itself. All sharpness and hardness went long ago. We are inside the warm soft pulsing body that is our nation�s heart and mind. It seems to just want to experience itself. That�s all it seems to want to do, to feel itself, explore itself, enjoying itself, slowly and timelessly. It seems to delight in its very own existence, as though that delight is reason enough for its being.

It�s sensational! Are you smiling a little? That�s it, right there. That is the heart and mind, the soul, of our nation.

It is precious, isn’t it. Precious and delightful, almost breathtaking.

There�s no rush. We can take time to enjoy this, if you�re seeing it for the first time. Amazing. See how it loves to move through itself. Discovering itself, delighting itself. This is the silent, deep inner depth, of who we all are.

When you are ready, let�s go back in time.

How, do you ask? Easy. We just stay right here. This deep in here we can watch the groundswell of our national heart and mind move over the top of us, from decade to decade. All we have to do is to put our heads up.

Up we go. Let�s go back up towards the surface now. There. What you see now is Australia, and the year is 1944. The country is at war. See all the people. Look at what they are wearing. It�s grey, it�s all grey. There�s no colour. They�re all doing what they�re doing but they seem like they are all boxed in. They�re all sort of trapped within themselves.

And there now we see the great leader of the time, Mr Menzies.

He�s talking to the people. What�s he saying? He�s saying he wants to give everyone there �more personal choice, more personal freedom�. He does indeed look like a man of greatness; courageous. He has a gentle authority. Well, these people here in 1944 certainly need more personal choice, and more personal freedom, that�s for sure. It looks like every man has set jobs to do, as the breadwinner. That�s all. It looks like every woman has to have a baby and clean the house. That’s all. This is no joke; it�s not much better than that for man or woman. That�s not life as we know, from where we come; but there it is, all grey and boxed in, in 1944.

Let�s consider Mr Menzies� task for a moment. The Australian people we see here are vastly different from us. Mr Menzies has a seriously big ask here. �To provide people with more individual choice and freedom.� Can he do it?

Inspirationally, he establishes in this year a political party for that very purpose, and it�s called the Liberal Party of Australia.

Let�s leave Mr Menzies and those boxed in war time Australians. Let�s leave 1944.

Let�s go back in.

Breathing in. Breathing out.

Silently, deeply. Down we go. Down into the depths of the national heart and mind. Gently. Pulsing. Enormous. Delightful. Warmly and lovingly discovering itself. You’ve been here before, and once here, it never really leaves you.

Let�s stay here and just watch what is going on up above. And looking up, we watch the groundswell of the national heart and mind wash over us.

Soon we see the war has finished. Finished!

Perhaps we’ll leave the Australians of that time to rejoice, as they all come back together again; it will take them a few years to try to sort through what life is without a world heavy in battle.

Look up. Bummer. The 1950’s and it�s still grey. The men and women of Australia are still all trapped and caught up in the roles life has set for them. It�s like they are living life on traintracks. It�s a stilted existence, this. What is it gonna take for them to be free?

It would take an explosion. And the western world got it, and how! There we see it, as time moved forward into the sixties. Huge. Boundaries break and boxed in lives burst, exploded. Colour!

The seventies, we see, everything is trying to settle again, falling back into a new world order. Like exploded embers coming back to earth. But the social ground had burst from under the people, so there in the seventies we see the difficulty people are having, trying to put their new world back into place, bit by bit. Because they have been released from their boxes and thrown away the traintracks, people there now have these fabulous new ideas about how their new world can be – but without any real solid ground under them yet it�s hard for them to make those ideas last. Let�s leave them time to let it all fall into place, and let the new social ground form.

Breathing in. Breathing out.

Now, it is getting interesting. There we see the eighties. This is different, big time. The ground beneath the people there has become solid, very solid. Ideas from each and every individual can take root and they can grow. And look at the colour! Look at the vibrancy and richness of life. There�s a woman excelling in a professional career, heading up a boardroom. There�s a man staying home looking after his children. The people are, individually, free. If only Mr Menzies could see this. These people have individual choice. Look, they can do what they want, be what they want. Look at the power it is giving the people.

It�s like a hunger for them. Well, let them eat. They’ve been starved of individual expression and starved of individual freedom of choice, so let them gorge themselves. This is real freedom; this is real choice. It�s on solid ground, and the sky is the limit.

What more could we want? And what a relevant question. This is the me-want time of Yes! Money? Not a problem, watch them go for it.

The crying need for the fully free individual, the time of individual choice, has arrived. Achieved. Done. On solid ground. And aren’t they hungry, and isn’t that all they want. Look at them, satisfying their hunger. Gorging. Mr Menzies, and your Liberal Party, what you set out to achieve is now here, in abundance. Whatever any individual wants to do, here in the eighties, that individual has solid ground beneath them and they can set out freely to do it. They are hungry; we’ll let those individuals feast on their freedom and their limitless choice.

Before we leave the eighties, a quick look at this question between two of the people from that time. What happens if one said to the other �I want to create a political party who�s philosophy is all about individual freedom and choice�?

By us going on this journey, we now know the response would be: �There is no need to have a political party with that philosophy. We are doing that already. It�s been done. Our society has achieved that already. There�s no need to try to do it for our country, it�s already happened.�

�You mean it�s not a good idea?�

�I mean there�s no need for it any more. You don’t need to build a political party to do something that has already been done. The party would be irrelevant. No one would notice it. It would be like building a big political party whose whole purpose is to give us the ability to breathe, or nod or wink. We already have it. Freedom and choice is part of us now.�

Breathing in. Breathing out.

What we’ve just heard takes a moment to sink in. We know in 2004 the Liberal Party still exists, but we’ve just heard how even there in the eighties Australia doesn’t need it any more. And that�s big news.

That�s the frightening part, right there, that we talked about at the start.

Before we left we were prepared for what we might find. And find it we have.

It may take a while for it to be absorbed, but there you have it. The Liberal Party is now philosophically irrelevant.

All that is required is the maintenance of the choices and freedom Australians have, and to ensure the choices and freedom of parts of the nation as those parts evolve and arise, and that can all be done by any capable political party.

The Liberal Party was built in 1944 upon a philosophical premise: to satisfy the hunger from the groundswell of Australians, calling out from the depths for a better life. That life has been achieved.

The Liberal Party of today has been slowly rendered philosophically irrelevant. And it has been that way for some time. Only now could we say so. The groundswell has passed over us sufficiently, so that here now in 2004, we can see clearly where that groundswell has been, and what it needed as it moved along.

We have now a political party that exists in name alone, in party structure and membership, and in political acts alone. It is, at its core, no longer relevant.

This is not word play here. We went on a journey of discovery, and we have brought back a truth that is hard in this day and age to swallow.

To make more sense of this, we need to look at what has happened between the eighties and now.

We saw that freedom and choice had arrived, secure, in the eighties. That it is secure is important. We needed the time of the eighties to see that the peoples� freedom and choice was standing on solid ground.

We knew it had arrived when we saw on our TV creens the news item telling us that a black woman had been made a judge. That signaled the full arrival of the individual of freedom and choice, standing on solid societal ground. That a woman could choose and build a professional career like that was sign enough. That it would be a black woman who could now sit in judgement over whites and decide impartially upon their fate, when for centuries earlier her sisterfolk was bound in the shackles of slavery, signaled the end of the ball game for the liberal vision. The world over: liberal fulfillment had been sought for so long, the evidence was clear that now it had come.

Eat too much, and you don’t need to eat any more. So it was in the eighties, with people gorging on their individual choice and freedom. And filled people were. The groundswell was ready to move on. And was it all positive? What was the cost?

The cost of the feasting on our individuality was what we did to our natural environment. Blindly in our personal hunger we massacred it.

Amongst the din of the feast we heard other noises during the eighties. We heard it in the distance, and we heard it from those who had been quietly studying the environment for years. We heard alarm bells. We heard for the first time in our history the very, very serious threat detailing the end of our species if we kept blindly gorging on satisfying just ourselves.

There was a social cost, too. Some individuals just couldn’t grow, couldn’t prosper, couldn’t feast on what was provided for them by this individual freedom and choice. Wondering how to give them more and more individual freedom and choice was never going to help these people: they need help in other ways. Besides, they knew they had available all the freedom and choice they could ever want, and knowing it was available made it even more painful for them that they couldn’t prosper in it.

How do we help them?

And those who no longer wanted to feast, and are comfortable with what they obtained, what do they want now? To where was the groundswell moving?

Here we come to the treasure that the strategists want to find. We’ve had the frightening thing given us from this journey, now let�s get the gem.

To get it, let�s go back to those two people talking. What were they doing? They were relating. Each had individual freedom. Each had individual choice. But, individually, that is all they were: individuals.

Together, they had a relationship.

The relationship allowed them to grow. One individual shared with another. One helped another. Together they shared in the issue. There was growth. Only then, from relationship growth, could they move forward.

Yes. We needed to achieve individual freedom and choice. We did. Yes, we need to maintain these. We will. But the individuals� growth and the prosperity of enterprise came from the relationship.

Just as we heard in the two people having the conversation, through that brief relationship, where one person, who needed something, got it, so too does that fulfilment come when there are three people, four, a hundred, a nation.

Relationship. The true essential power of our growth as a nation is built on Relationship.

We know we have our freedom and our choices. We now want quality Relationship. We want it personally. We are learning about it all; our television shows and bookshelves are filled with help about relationship. Society today is awash with the need for it. We want it internationally. We want it between institutions. We want it everywhere. Even hardline business wants it. The modern business world is philosophically built on it, and calls it in today�s world: interdependence. We are striving for quality relationship, through every area of life. Since the passing of the eighties, and here today, we are hungry for it.

The political gem that we have brought back with us on our journey of discovery is that now, in today�s times, the groundswell is hungry for quality Relationship. We know that through quality relationship we will all grow. We know now that is how we will all be secure and prosper.

Let�s get another gem. This treasure is less obvious in our daily life. But it�s there. And that is our nation�s relationship with the environment. We’ve not yet become serious about what we are doing to the environment. We know that. We’d put it off, but its time has come. We all know it. Like cleaning out the rubbish in the back yard to make it fresh and healthy again, we put the job off, but when we finally embrace what has to be done and we get it done, we feel… what…..we feel liberated!

How it is that liberation comes in often obscure and simple ways.

Care and management of our living with the environment is not yet a sexy subject. We have to embrace whatever is required. Verily we now know, our survival as a species relies on what we do with our environment.

There it is, today�s hunger, the new bursting need of the Australian society. Quality Relationship between the individual and the individual, and quality relationship between the individual and the environment.

What happens if we fail to satisfy this new hunger? What happens if we deliberately ignore it?

Unfortunately, that is happening now.

Where once the Liberal Party we saw had enormous relevance in what we needed as a nation, today because it is philosophically irrelevant, it has in ways become a danger. The danger now in the Liberal Party belief is that, by focusing on the Individual, Relationship stands to have no bearing whatsoever on what the party chooses to do, let alone any attempt at quality of it.

It either has to change its philosophical core – its reason for being – or the danger will persist.

Keeping the liberal philosophy in today’s times gives the Liberal Party the right to cut up portions of individuals, and put them in separate piles. If you are focused on the individual as you cut up the groups you won’t feel a thing about what is holding them together, or what could be nurtured to hold them together. Whatever holds them together to the Liberal Party is not relevant. The liberal focus is on the individual. The focus is not on the relationship. The focus is not on the glue that holds us all together.

Cut the relationship, and each individual withers and dies. Cut the ties that bind us together, cut the bond, cut our brotherhood and our sisterhood, and we suffer. We do not prosper, we do not grow.

Cutting social ties without philosophical responsibility or pain then becomes just a political ploy – it serves no value to anyone except the Liberal Party itself. This is what we hear described as wedge politics, and it is a ploy used by the Liberal Party as we know to hold on to power.

Let�s be clear about what a danger it has become, and let�s be sure we understand what is happening. Let�s be sensible and responsible in how we deal with this danger. We have heard the use of the ploy of wedge politics being described as �clever politics�. Now we know the danger of this political ploy, it is clearly irresponsible to regard it as clever.

Here is the harsh reality of what is really happening: would you stand for Mr Howard cutting up the bonds and separating your family so that he could stay elected? Would you do it? Why then do we let him do it to our Australian family?

Is it clever?

That’s why today Australian people are crying out daily in the public media forums and in their private moments of discussion about the sad principle-less act of wedge politics. It hurts the fabric of our nation�s precious hearts and minds. It tears it apart. It tears us apart. On the surface in our daily lives the living effect is we cannot walk through life together. We cannot work together. We cannot laugh together. We cannot play together. We cannot be Australians together. We cannot build our future together.

By focusing on the individual, as a philosophy for a political party in today�s times, that party is given the free right to cut the nation up like cutting up arms and legs and fingers and toes of our bodies, and not feel a thing. The Liberal Party of Australia is the only political party in Australia with that particular focus, and the only one with that free capability.

Sadly, if it continues, that is what is threatening to become of the great Liberal Party tradition: a cold hearted butcher to the withering slab of the Australian body, and the public get sausages for policy from the sweepings off the floor.

Let’s remember the seemingly ancient but courageous man of principle, Mr Menzies, and ask: is this what Mr Menzies had in mind for treatment of the Australian people?

We have seen the awesome courage and vision the principled Mr Menzies set his working life about. Why the world of difference between Mr Menzies and Mr Howard?

Today, with the Liberal Party philosophically rooted in 1944, like an anchor to a time no longer relevant, and because Mr Howard has clung to it all his working life, as the wheel of time moved forward past its relevance it looks sadly like he has been sucked hollow. Without a principle of relevance to nurture him and hold him to a central belief, and using political ploys, not principle, to maintain power, Mr Howard has in a political sense become a hollowed out monotone political shell.

This does not mean he cannot make policy. Or stand adamantly to deliver it. Far from it, of course. But the issue confronting the Australian people in modern times is that, without philosophical relevance, he can put on an adamant face here, a face there, without any core substance, and representing therefore nothing of relevance, he can pick and choose policy for policy sake, simply to hold on to power.

We saw this lack of philosophical core signaled clearly, very early in power, when Mr Howard enthused about “core and non-core promises”. We all know a promise is a promise, and what he said was ridiculous, and, sadly, inherently dangerous. Mr Howard himself was voicing his own inability to be of any core truth about what he stood for.

The other area where the danger remains with the Liberal Party ruling philosophy is that our precious environment doesn’t have to register in what they choose to do. Our human relationship with the environment is not philosophically written into the way the Liberals govern. In the early days when the liberal philosophy was needed to promote individual choice and freedom, there was not the need to deal with the damage this individual growth would do to the environment. The dangers today in ignoring the alarm bells about how we’ve treated the environment are so serious it could lead to the extinction of the human being, if the heartbreaking daily extinction of other species is not enough already!

To have a token entry about the environment in your political platform is not sufficient; and the small token mention of it in the Liberal Party�s current political platform signals today the danger of a philosophy of long lost relevance.

Sadly, for many of us, we were looking forward to learning how we could better manage our living in harmony with our environment, but our teachers were torn from our coming together when Mr Howard came to power. Many of us knew we had right here, on the oldest soil in the world, with the oldest culture in the world, what any truly clever country would have cherished: the Australian Aborigine.

What richness we have, right here, waiting patiently, with whom we can one day sit, at their feet, and learn philosophical means for our salvation from the destruction we ourselves wrought on our natural world.

The Australian Aboriginal people have lived in harmony with the environment some say for 40 thousand years, some say 120 thousand years, but either way it blitzes our brief and destructive reign and from them, right here, we can learn the philosophical approach aboriginals have to that longevity. The world�s teachers are right here. Our world�s beautiful precious gift, our own brothers and sisters. Waiting patiently.

No wonder our Aboriginal brother and sister is hurting, with so much precious knowledge to give, and a government not wanting us to hear. What burden of riches they carry, and we see only their suffering under its weight.

And in return, what would our precious Aboriginal culture get from us? They get the respect their ancient culture deserves. And with that sense of self respect, they find their own way into their own fulfilment; all they have ever as a culture wanted from us after what we have done.

It’s all about relationship.

It must have been very daunting for Mr Menzies, way back in the boxed up grey war world of Australia in 1944, to find the hungry treasure that people of the day were looking for, and to believe in that treasure, and to make that treasure become reality. People of the day then, let�s remember, would have been frightened of that change.

And so it is the same today. People are naturally frightened of change. That�s what our journey into vision has been all about. Stepping back from the madding rush and discovering what the groundswell of the nation is hungry for, and how it changes, even though some may not know that they themselves are hungry for it until they see others feasting and can view the fare. The latter is often the most in need. And some, frightened, resist, and loudly we will hear them. But hungry we all are.

As we knew at the beginning of this journey together, how much fear you have depends on how much you resist what you see.

And so to the Liberal Party. Its arc of relevance has peaked and is steadily falling. The wheels of time turn. Looking at the massive social shift, for personal and economic growth, onto Relationship, the Liberal Party must change its philosophical reason for being. If it doesn’t, as the groundswell keeps moving forward, the Liberal Party’s current trajectory could well see it dead in fifteen years.

But sooner than that Mr Howard will go; what then? Mr Costello appears as the only person in the party showing sensitivity to the social needs of today, through ever so scant mentions at that. Sadly, his talent is rendered flippant and powerless because of the irrelevance of what his party stands on. In political terms he appears somewhat forlornly as the lost soul of modern politics. The public are not seeking his lead, though they enjoy from him as an aside their tiny glimpse of government colour.

Who then? Mr Abbott? Mr Nelson? Ms Patterson? Ms Vanstone? Mr Ruddock? Do these people reflect even a hint of what the public are hungry for? Does anyone want to seek from them our social future? And from any of them, do we hear even a word about the environment?

The real pain will lie with the Liberal Party backbenchers, who have not had the attention these ministers have had. Would the Liberal Party backbenchers have realised the irrelevance their party belief would become? Good folk no doubt, how would they have been able to see the movement of the groundswell when they first invested in their Liberal Party careers? What fear would they have for their own political time ahead? Will they want to continue to invest their lives in something continually moving away from them?

Though it is hard to swallow, unchanged, the collapse of the party is a very real possibility. It cannot survive on name alone. It cannot survive on what has been sadly and wrongly called �clever politics� alone.

For relevance in today�s Australia any political party must now we see have a Relationship strength in their philosophical purpose. The real excitement surely must exist within the young at heart, who can look upon all this and create their own vision of what a political party of today would be. There would be confidence in doing so, as their vision would last until if ever Australians satisfied their need for relationship and all the gifts that relating with their varied fellow man and woman and environment can bring.

Why have a philosophy at all? Because if it is a good and relevant philosophy we can hold them to it. And because a philosophy shows us the party�s belief – what each of them are all about – and we can see, and feel, if it reflects our current needs.

The Liberal Party: what is to happen to it? The party�s urgent clinging ploy maker, Mr Howard, will go, sooner or later, one way or another. Who�s left? What then?

We’ll leave the last word to Mr Howard himself, in his own voice – the word he uses to describe his fear of the political fate of his beloved Liberal Party.

�Oblivion.�