Anti-working class vote of the elite fuels teal victory

Kooyong independent Monique Ryan. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

In the mountain of commentary about the billionaire-backed “tealslide”, nobody has picked up a glaring fact: the animosity of the most affluent electorates towards the Liberals is not because of climate change or women’s equality.

Those are the excuses that make them feel good about their vote. Underneath, it is because the Liberals have started to speak more about the daily lives of the working class than the pet causes of socially smug doctors’ wives.

Since the days of John Howard’s battlers and Labor’s lurch to the loony left, we have been witnessing a slow swap in the traditional ground occupied by the two major parties, akin to the reformation in the US of the Democrats from the preferred choice of southern slave owners into holier-than-thou, Hollywood-approved luvvies. Wealthy phonies despise this shift.

Liberals being unseated by teals, and to a lesser extent Greens, reveals a sector of exceedingly well-off Australians who cannot stand to be confronted with the daily lives of people who are not like them. They do not want “their” party to heed the views of those beneath them. You know, those grubby little people who have to worry about things such as making ends meet for bills, food and daily survival.

Despite their fake sincerity and motherhood statements about wanting a better world for all, the cashed-up elites care more about pandering to their own luxury concerns and neuroses than dealing with regular old blue-collar issues that affect people they strenuously avoid having to have anything to do with. This is no different to the days when the born-to-rule class sat in grandeur, looked down their noses at the peasants and could give them a swift cuff around the ears without fear of retribution. That is the society the platinum progressives want to recapture, with themselves safely ensconced at the top of the social order where they believe they belong.

Couple this with the so-called women’s vote, and this points to a real likelihood that the inner-suburbs affluent vote – which apparently is meant to make our country into a kinder, more caring place – is being driven by upper-middle-class women. These blue-blood types desperately want reassurance that they are still the most important people in the world. They secretly yearn for the Liberals to cosset them the way their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed, but instead get social work degrees so they can tell their friends how they’re helping the less fortunate. Then they vote for anybody who allows them to shift their attention away from the people who may make them realise what being less fortunate really means.

What we are seeing in Australia’s most Scrooge McDuckian suburbs is a dirty, relentless class war, hidden under the guise of progressive politics and greater equality. The silence of platinum progressives when struggling businesses in Sydney’s poorest suburbs were going under and families suffering during Covid restrictions is a case in point. It is the ultimate piece of hypocrisy to pretend to care about progress and equality while doing everything possible to hurt the poor and demolish the social structures, relationships and institutions that the commoners still care about.

If the Liberals had a clue, they would realise what the platinum progressives are really after and let the teals, Greens and Labor eat each other over the inner-city vote. That fight is only going to hurt Labor elsewhere – as we are starting to see. The Liberals could continue down the path of becoming the new party of the ordinary people and revamp what were once core Labor values of protecting the working class and defending their rights – but without becoming lunatic socialists or captive to the increasingly irrelevant unions.

They would recognise there are many Australians who still care about things such as being able to say what you like without fear of somebody being offended. They would understand that the wellbeing of the working class goes hand-in-hand with the spread of liberty and would unwind the increasingly authoritarian policies that have undermined centuries of hard-won social freedoms. They would support candidates who genuinely hold these values.

They would shake off the obsession with victimhood politics, and instead champion the value of hard work and genuine merit rather than promotion based on identity. They would leave fringe progressive causes behind, rather than trying to pander to them, and would focus squarely on the things that directly affect everyday Australians’ quality of life.

Most important, they would ignore screeching demands to let sulky upper-class women dictate policy and understand those women will be satisfied only with a party that places them at the top of the pecking order – never one that governs for the unwashed masses. Then, and only then, might they take seats from Labor and find their way back to power.

Lillian Andrews holds a bachelor of laws and has a strong interest in political philosophies, political strategy and social movements. She has never been a member of a political party.