Liberal Party left faction MP Cathrine Burnett-Wake, in her valedictory speech to the Victorian Parliament, described Christians in the Liberal Party as “reactionary extremists” with a “menacing agenda of hatred, repression, exclusion, division and opposition to hard-won women’s rights.”
It’s entirely possible that Ms Burnett-Wake is a little bit bitter about losing her Victorian upper house pre-selection to the daughter of a Christian pastor Renee Heath.
Maybe.
She went on to say that “cults” are using “coded language” to “splinter our society” and that Victorians need “to awaken to the threat from these groups” which are, “involved in politics, building factions with detailed and effective plans to undermine and corrupt democracy in Victoria and Australia today.”
Gee, I wonder who Ms Burnett-Wake could be talking about? The now-former MP went on to say:
“Chillingly, political events in the US have encouraged factions who now believe the time has come for their racist, nationalist, LGBTIQ-hating, pro-conversion and anti-women’s rights agendas to come to the fore. Their family values are far from mainstream Australian family values.”
It’s not difficult to see through the “coded language” here. Especially when you see that in the same speech Cathrine thanks Janet Williams and the “Knox Ranges Liberal women’s group” for helping to get her elected as a Liberal Party MP in the first place.
The Knox Ranges Liberal women’s group is a Liberal Party left faction front that is probably best remembered for last year compelling then-state opposition leader Michael O’Brien to introduce a transgender speaker and new Liberal recruit at one of their official events. Liberal party figures and office-holders such as Heidi Victoria, Noel Pink, Suzanne Soares and Kerri White have been associated with the group.
If the Knox Ranges Liberal women’s group indeed did help Cathrine get appointed to her upper house seat in December last year then I imagine they’d be bloody annoyed that dirty, nasty, religious-y Christians had managed to out-organise them so quickly.
In the same speech, Cathrine Burnett-Wake declared one of her greatest achievements during her short time in office to be her participation in the Greens-run extremism inquiry, the same inquiry that discovered that right wing extremism was a serious issue, but that there were no left-wing extremist groups in the State of Victoria.
Which would come as a shock to anyone visiting a Victorian university campus or attempting to hold a meeting in Melbourne that Marxists don’t want to be held.
If this is the calibre of people being elevated by the Victorian Liberal party today then the electoral disaster they’re due to receive in this year’s election is probably not only deserved, but needed.
