Is the Liberal Party finished? Are they now a dying refuge for a generation that is entering nursing homes and fading into obscurity? The era that championed capitalism, expounded the importance of neoliberalism and the free market has passed. We just need to look at the loss of the federal coalition this year and the triumph of the Dan Andrews Labor Party in Victoria recently to see that the tide has not just turned but is retreating beyond the horizon.
Australia has seen years of Liberal governments since its colonial inception. Through a historical lens, we can view the evolution of a business/ management class that disabled the power of unions and scared the public away from socialism. It built its power through black-suited white men in boardrooms directing political discussion and economics.
Aspirational voters saw the possibility of individual wealth and bought the product. The environment was a resource to be mined and Christian values of seeing heaven as off-the-earth surrendered the climate to the boardroom. Houses became real estate for investment, not homes as a basic requirement for living.
For the past few years a curriculum change in schools has started educating Australian students in sustainability and Indigenous issues. With growing awareness they have witnessed the change in the climate, the housing crisis, and the Black Lives Matter movement. They are viewing politics in a new light. And they are voting; voting for progressive policies, voting for justice, voting for the future. So conservative politics that don’t address or contemporise and prioritise these issues will assign said politicians to be relics of the past. An extinction of political dinosaurs that the future generations will be happy to leave in the past.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
