Why The Electorate Is Turned Off The Major Parties

By David Truman

For years we have been seeing growing alienation of many people from the mainstream political parties.  Why?  Because the politicians ARE NOT LISTENING to ordinary people.  They keep foisting on us decisions and policies we never voted for, and which we don’t support.

Very many issues are giving rise to widespread gripes at the moment.  Here are a few of them.

International free trade and investment agreements which trade away our national interests too freely; and subjection to various UN conventions which damage national sovereignty – on refugees, human rights, and Agenda 21, pushed as “sustainable development”.

Seemingly unstoppable immigration, including of people who do not share Western values or owe their prime allegiance to a foreign country; and multiculturalism and the unending gravy train of corrupt grants.

Climate change policies which are pushing up the price of electricity and gas, destroying agriculture for alleged “pollution”, and uglifying the countryside with huge bird-dicing wind turbines and solar cells.

Indulging the “Aboriginal industry” in Australia and the Maori mafia in New Zealand with a combination of tokenistic virtue-signalling and moves toward co-government – adding black tape to red tape and green tape.

Inflationary foreign purchase of Australian housing stock, and buyup by foreigners of large swathes of agricultural land.

Failure of government to do anything about the Coles/Woolworths supermarket duopoly’s unfair treatment of small business suppliers – not just dairy farmers but many others.

Social engineering – including constant leftist propaganda from the ABC, focus on gender and identity politics, and constant attacks by militant atheists and secularists against Christianity but sycophantic silence about Islam.

In Australia, Liberal/National were running the show for the nine years to 2022, and now it’s the ALP. But it doesn’t seem to matter much who is in power, because the elites pursue essentially the same policies most of the time.  They both believe in globalization and free markets, however corrupt these are in practice.   And the World Economic Forum has its acolytes in both camps, both here and in New Zealand.   “Davos man” does not have your interests at heart!

Both parties support multiculturalism (not the same as multiethnicity) which denies primacy of the majority culture.

But beyond that, the elites on both sides of politics certainly want to do what’s in THEIR interests.  They change the electoral laws to suit the majors, against the minor parties.

The elites show little concern about long-term implications of their decisions.  On the other hand, many people now alienated from the political class really do worry about what sort of country we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.

The elites keep telling us “We Know What’s Best For You”, even when Blind Freddy can see that very many people – voters for both sides – strongly reject important slabs of what they are doing.

The mainstream parties are also far less genuinely representative than ever they were.  Total party membership of both Labor and Liberal is now very small.  During the 2022 election campaign, the United Australia Party’s membership surpassed 80,000 – at which point it had more members than either Liberal or Labor.   

Both parties contain too many career politicians who’ve never held a real job or in some cases even any life experience.  Wyatt Roy, for example – elected in 2013 to the House of Representatives at the wet-under-the-ears age of 19.  Apparatchiks and factions make deals, they railroad dissenters out of the party, and they deny the electorate real choice in candidates.  Look at the ALP’s decision in 2022 to parachute the obnoxious loudmouth Kristina Keneally from privileged Scotland Island into Fowler in far western Sydney!  Commendably the electorate in Fowler rejected her.

But the elites keep feeding the electorate the delusion that while the parties govern, the people actually set the course of the ship of state, by going through the motion of voting in general elections.  Not true!  The elites determine everything, including the destination.  Elections have become a sham.

The referendum held in Queensland on Saturday 19 March 2016 was a cooked-up deal between the elites to give longer (four-year) and fixed terms for the Legislative Assembly.  This is clearly in THEIR interests, but it lessens the ability of voters to hold a bad government to account, especially when there’s no state upper house and no provision for an early election in the event of reprehensible circumstances or implosion of the government.  It’s a classic con, like the “red carpet event” staged by the anteater in this graphic.

There are (just) a few elected MPs, especially but not entirely on the conservative side, who clearly do “get it”.  Like LNP/Liberal Senators Gerard Rennick and Matt Canavan (Queensland), Alex Antic (South Australia), Senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson (One Nation, Queensland), and the new Senator Ralph Babet (UAP Victoria).

Freedom and Heritage strongly urges voters to VOTE FIRST FOR DECENT MINOR PARTIES WHO “GET IT” on key issues and who do listen to the electorate.  These parties should come ahead of the National and Liberal Parties, then the ALP, with the Greens stone motherless last.

But what we really need is the additional ability of voters to bypass the elected politicians through Direct Democracy – where a specified quantum of voters can demand a referendum on an issue, over the head of the elites ensconced in Parliament.  Switzerland has a fine example of this.