The Young Liberals FAILURE

The Liberal party is making itself politically extinct. Why? Find out in Part 1 of 'The Young Liberals Failure' [2 min read]

The Young Liberals are the closest thing Australia has to a youth conservative movement, describing themselves as such on their website

“Our Movement is a centre-right, mainstream political organisation”.

Despite this claim, the Liberal party, and the Young Liberals with them, have time and time again demonstrated they are uninterested in anything to do with the right or Australia’s political youth.

Case in point, the president’s message from the 75th edition of the ‘Young Liberal Review’

Written by NSW Young Liberals president Chaneg Torres, the message was published in 2020 with the optimism of a Liberal member who was yet to witness their party’s dramatic 2022 election loss, and taking a look in hindsight leaves absolutely no doubt in the readers mind - The Liberal party is on track to become politically extinct if it does not begin engaging with real conservatives.

For the purposes of this article I will only be taking a look at one, very telling sentence from the presidents message:

“Our support has never come from militant activists, fanatic ideologues or organised pressure groups. Our party has always existed for the majority of Australians who just want to have a go, start a business, be rewarded for their effort, and secure their families future.”

Translation: the Liberal Party is scared of voters who strongly believe in a political ideology. Even if that happens to be conservatism.

Chaneg is trying to play the Liberal Party’s declining popular youth support off as a virtue, presumably in comparison to young Labor, rather than acknowledging it as a growing problem.

Strangely, Chaneg does not differentiate between left and right, is Australia really suffering from an abundance of dedicated, conservative ‘activists’ and ‘ideologues’? I would argue many of our nations problems would be solved were such a statement true. 

There is plenty of evidence the Liberal party would actually benefit from the support of ideologues, activists and pressure groups, below the National Observer has listed just three:

‘Militant’ Activists
Every election season the Liberal party calls upon hundreds of activists to campaign in their favour. So how would the Liberal party attracting dedicated conservative activists would disadvantage them? Well if these activists are interested in principles that extend beyond support for the party there seems to be no interest in accepting them. Case in point the ‘freedom’ movement, this was a movement that very easily could have been capitalised on by the Liberal party but were instead pushed away to various minor parties. In what way did pushing away this activist voting block help the Liberal party?

‘Fanatic’ Idealogues
Although they are by no means right wing ideologues, Isaac Butterfield and Sydney Watson are examples of Australian youtubers who have amassed a large following by espousing moderate-right social commentary. Both ridicule left-wing excess and with a majority of their subscribers presumably Australian have proven there is a fertile ground for conservative thought in generation z. Jordan Shanks is another great counter-example who has undeniably contributed to Labors’ youth following. It is ludicrous the Liberal party would push away this generation of Australian conservative ‘idealogues’

Organised ‘pressure’ groups
In terms of conservative ‘pressure groups’, the Australian Christian Lobby, headed by Christian-conservative legend Martyn Isles ran a highly successful ‘pressure campaign’, so to speak, in South Australia. He rallied popular support around pro-life issues and most likely played a part in defeating the pro-choice SA Liberal party during the 2022 State election. Imagine this ‘pressure group’ was able to back the Liberal party rather than having to combat it.

After these few examples, I would like to ask Chaneg,
If the Liberal party does not intend to bring in its next generation of voters, members and politicians from any of the groups listed above, how can the Liberal party not expect extinction?

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