The power of first principles

Meeting of the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944.

Rather than shift left or right, the Liberal Party needs to draw from the values and principles that inspired its birth as it looks to rebuild post-election. By David Furse-Roberts.

With the Morrison government voted out of office, Australians will be wondering what’s next for the Liberal Party that has held Federal government for 51 of the 77 years since World War II.

To look ahead to the future, we often have to look to the past and re-familiarise ourselves with the values that have made us who we are. This will be true for the Liberal Party as it mulls over its recent loss at the polls.

Though the 2022 Federal election result was bruising for the Liberal Party, Scott Morrison can hold his head high for not only the grace with which he accepted defeat but also for his achievements as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister.

As the first prime minister to serve a full term since John Howard, he ended the revolving door of leadership that had plagued both sides of politics for a decade. Leading Australia through its most challenging years since Robert Menzies and John Curtin faced the crisis of World War II, Morrison and his government rose to the challenge of addressing the pandemic with an approach calculated to save thousands of Australian lives. With his talented and diligent Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, Morrison also presided over a miraculous, post-pandemic economic recovery with unemployment falling to a 50-year low of 3.9%.

Nevertheless, the Australian people made their decision at the ballot box and elected a new government. For any political party consigned to opposition, it typically has to do two things. First, to reconnect with its support base, and second, to return to the first principles that justified its very existence.

For the Liberal Party, its immediate task for its MPs will be to engage more closely with the electorates they represent, whatever the demographic. That is, to speak with ordinary people on the ground and listen carefully to their concerns, values and aspirations and to then represent these in parliament. Politicians of all parties can all too often be bound by the dictates of the ‘party machine’ or be captive to the voices of the mass media and powerful interest groups. To re-engage, meeting with everyday constituents on the streets and in the local pubs, clubs, schools, places of worship, shops and small businesses will be crucial to regaining the public’s trust and confidence.

It is not enough, however, for a political party as established as the Liberals to be just blown about by every wind of public opinion, but to be anchored in the values and ideals that inspired its birth. When Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party of Australia, its 1954 We Believe platform explicitly affirmed the Judeo-Christian precepts of human dignity and freedom, racial and religious tolerance, class harmony, subsidiarity, the family, private property, social and industrial justice as fundamental to both the character of civil society and the survival of freedom.

Speaking on the nature of democracy in 1942, Menzies himself affirmed that ‘democracy is based upon the Christian conception that there is in every human soul  a spark of the divine; that, with all their inequalities of mind and body, the souls of men stand equal in the sight of God’.

To be sure, the Liberal Party he founded in 1944 was to govern for all Australians in the broad national interest. As such, it has always been a non-sectarian party open to people of all faiths and none. The Liberal Party was not founded as a ‘Christians-only club’ and must never be so in a secular polity such as Australia. That said, the party embodied broadly Christian ideals from its belief in neighbourliness, selfless individualism and thrift to its vision for a civilised capitalism and humanitarian foreign policy. 

In practical terms, the Party has always been at its best and greatest when its policies have channelled these ideals. From Menzies’ humane reforms to aged care and child endowment for families, to the welcoming of Indo-Chinese refugees under Malcolm Fraser and John Howard’s support for faith-based charities and schools, these initiatives have made Australia a better country. Liberal governments, of course, have been far from perfect but would be infinitely poorer without this spiritual wellspring. 

Going forward, the best pathway for the Liberal Party is not necessarily to shift ‘right’ or ‘left’, but to return to its foundational principles if it is to be its best self. Contemporary Australian society may be much more secular and religiously diverse than in the 1940s, but the Christian-inspired precepts of Australian Liberalism still have much to offer for the common good of all Australians irrespective of creed or faith.

By being true to the foundations of their Party,  Liberals have the potential to enrich Australian life with policy initiatives that unleash the amazing potential of very boy and girl, lift up our poor and help keep families together, welcome newcomers, give generously to our overseas neighbours, and treat Australians not as warring tribes but as members of one another. All this can be pursued in conjunction with the pragmatic priorities of managing the national economy and responding to climate change.

Importantly, with the defeat of religious discrimination legislation in the last parliament, Liberals also have a fresh opportunity to afford people of faith the necessary freedoms to flourish without the dead hand of censorship and cancel culture. In 1961, Menzies told an audience of new citizens that ‘whatever religion they may profess’, they had come to a country where people were ‘free to pray as we want to pray, to speak as we want to speak, and to assemble as we want to assemble’. For Australians in 2022 and beyond, Liberals must guarantee these same freedoms.

Though drawing upon the Judeo-Christian roots of the Party, this agenda will not be about foisting Christianity on the nation at large, but about serving the common good and satisfying universal human needs for freedom, dignity, family, community and belonging.  

If conservatives and moderates alike can be true to the Liberal Party’s first principles, they will invariably benefit and enrich the lives of all Australians, whatever their religious beliefs, creed or personal background.

David Furse-Roberts is the author of God and Menzies: The Faith that Shaped a Prime Minister and his Nation, which is available to buy here.