As a personal aside, a great couple invited me out for lunch today. One of them asked me what my thoughts were on the two main political parties. I jokingly replied, ‘Well if you had not so rudely dragged me away from home, I would have finished an article I started on this very matter!’ Well, the lunch was great, and following it, I did finish my piece.
For many years now I have bewailed the fact that so many politicians who are supposed to be on our side simply let us down time and time again. When push comes to shove, they seem to abandon all their supposed conservative and Christian principles and just go along with everyone else.
I have encountered this for many decades now, and after a while one begins to suspect that things might need to radically change. We keep losing the big battles of the day – whether over marriage, the life issues, and so on – because we end up with members of “conservative” parties simply going along with those on the left.
One recent set of social media posts helps to spell this out in more detail. Some days ago I posted this:
I have seen it so often in my 35 years here: ‘Conservatives’ and ‘Christians’ get elected (yea!), but at crucial votes they abstain or vote the wrong way (boo!). They will say they need to be careful, in order to remain in office. But if you are not going to stand up when we need you to stand up, then there is no reason for you to be in office! The latest example of this was all the LNP “good guys” who sided with Crisafulli in his diabolical ban on even discussing abortion.
A few days later my friend Stephen Chavura shared that post of mine, and the next day he followed it up with these words:
Amanda Stoker built her parliamentary career appealing to the conservative and Christian votes. And yet during the Covid insanity and cruelty she was largely silent. Now she’s voted Yes to the QLD Liberals’ evil stop on raising the issue of abortion in parliament. Some excuse her because she was bound to vote yes by virtue of being a cabinet minister. Some – perhaps Stoker herself – will say she’s being smart and playing the “long game”. But the long game for conservatives is almost invariably merely saying the right things to Sky News and Christian conferences while buckling when the pressure goes up. If Stoker had, kamikaze-like, stood against this bill, her stand would have had a greater impact than anything else she’s done or is likely to do in her whole parliamentary career. Alas, she went along with a multitude to do evil. Her political legacy now? Not much, it seems. Am I being too harsh? I hate to say it, but I really don’t see too many up-and-coming Liberals who I’m confident would do anything different: get outraged on Sky, buckle when under pressure, keep head down for a while, rinse and repeat. Hope I’m proven wrong by the new generation of up-and-comers. Gosh, if only we had more Moira Deemings, things would be so much different. She spoke bold truth. She didn’t buckle. She risked it all. She trusted God. She’ll go down a legend, not merely a professional politician.
One social media friend who I respect responded to both of us. Given that he was happy to go public there, I trust he does not mind if I share his thoughts here. These were his words:
Politics is a brutal arena, & is all about compromises. You can do very little from opposition, even less so in a unicameral parliament like QLD’s.
When Labor threw abortion into the campaign, it was a deliberate dirty tactic to steal votes from the LNP. With no time to prepare & deliver a decent response that could explain the issues & ideas properly to the public, the LNP’s only option was to declare that they would not change anything this term. Even doing that didn’t stop the LNP losing votes & seats with people scared about losing their “abortion rights”.
Having won the election, the LNP – having learned tough lessons from the 2012-15 time in office, & the extremely difficult task of winning back enough trust from the public – set about “doing what we said we would do, & not doing what we said we wouldn’t do”.
This is not a gag order, nor a dictatorial directive from the Premier. It was a party room decision from people who knew that if the public decided that the LNP could not be trusted to keep their word on election promises, they would be voted out next time & be in the political wilderness for even longer than before. And that would give Labor so much more power to do so much worse.
Yes it’s very disappointing that this decision was – & had to be – made, but I strongly believe that the alternative would be far far worse.
Labor have held government in Qld since 1989, apart from 2 single term stints, & it is vital that the LNP do nothing that would set things up for that to keep repeating. This term is about proving that you can trust the Qld LNP, & that they can actually do good things.
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As a side note, apparently it is already illegal to simply leave a baby to die after an abortion – whether it is viable or not. Pressure your Federal MP or Senator to get AHPRA to investigate & act on this.
Stephen Chavura replied as follows:
Yeah, I see your point, but sadly the result of “Labor will be worse” is to vote in Liberal governments that head in the same direction, albeit more slowly. Can you imagine if Moira Deeming, to keep VIC liberals from bad PR, decided to back down in hope that the Libs might win the next VIC election, because “Labor will be worse”? We need a paradigm shift.
And this was my reply to this friend:
Thanks for your thoughts, but we differ here. Yes, politics is often about compromise, but some issues one does not readily compromise on, at least if one claims to be a real deal Christian and conservative. Baby killing is one of them. You say: “With no time to prepare & deliver a decent response that could explain the issues & ideas properly to the public, the LNP’s only option was to declare that they would not change anything this term.”
Um, the LNP should not have needed to prepare a response on this issue. If they were at all committed to the sanctity of life, and not just maintaining political power, they should already have a long-standing, clearly stated, and publicly available policy on this, saying unequivocally that they are a pro-life party and that this is a line that they will not cross.
But of course that is NOT their position. In other words, they are just about as morally bankrupt on this matter as are Labor and the Greens. Which is why more and more concerned Christians and conservatives are turning away from the big parties, and turning to smaller parties that put principle and conviction ahead of convenience and merely ‘staying in office’.
My friend then offered these responses:
Thank you Bill. I always appreciate your thoughts. Whilst I would love abortion to be completely gone, & for every human life to be valued, I’ve been involved in the political world long enough to know what works, what doesn’t, what takes time, etc.
And I can totally understand the need to take things slowly.
Otherwise Labor would win next election & make abortion laws even worse, & there wouldn’t be a chance to change them for at least another 15 years.
It really isn’t as simple as some people would like, or are claiming.
It’s also why I really don’t like the tone of many of the accusations that have levelled against, not only the MPs, but also against people like me.
I think it’s not very fair to condemn/insult/accuse these people without talking to them to understand what they’re thinking.
There’s what we want, & there’s what we can get.
And this:
Also those minor parties that “put principle ahead of ‘staying in office’” don’t actually get into office, and certainly not with enough numbers to make a difference.
It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s not comfortable. It’s not straightforward.
So I answered him as follows:
Thanks again. Not to belabour all this, but… I too have been heavily into the political scene for many decades now, at least indirectly, and I have known most of the main players here on our side. I used to share views such as yours: ‘We need to play the game, we need to keep working in the two-party system, we need to go slow and gentle, we need to bide our time, we need to stay in office and hope that one year, one decade, we can get a few runs on the board, etc.’
If folks still want to run with that, they can feel free to do so. But I am now much less satisfied with that way of thinking, and of doing things, especially on so many of the key moral and cultural issues. We can talk pro-life talk all we like, but when nothing changes decade after decade, then what has been the point? How many more babies will be killed while we keep going down this road?
Yes I know, there are still some key differences between Liberal and Labor, between Republican and Democrat, on things like economic policy. But on some of the most vital issues of the day we increasingly find very little difference at all. Yes, I want a strong economy and so on, but if that means we forever ignore or minimise things like life, family and faith issues – so that we can cling to power – then I for one am not that willing to run with either main party.
Sadly, far too many ‘conservative’ politicians will never rock the boat for what really matters. They will enjoy the perks of office now, and a great pension for life thereafter. But too often they are indistinguishable from Labor politicians when push comes to shove.
One of the reasons Trump has been so effective is that he is NOT a politician – he is an outsider who knows how deeply ingrained corruption and rot are in both main parties. Major swamp cleaning is the need of the hour – not just in the US, but down under as well. Stephen Chavura is right – a whole new paradigm is needed, not the tired old “business as usual” where babies continue to die daily and nothing changes. But thanks for your thoughts. We will have to agree to differ here. Blessings.
The bottom line is we all need wisdom and discernment here. Not all Christians think the same on these matters. Some Christians feel called to work within the two-party system. Some others are finding that to be pretty much of a dead-end and are working as independents or joining smaller pro-family and pro-life parties.
Yes, their chances can then be lessened in getting into and staying in office. But sometimes that seems like the best option available. We all must pray as to how we serve Christ in the political and social arenas. Responses will differ. As I mentioned above, my views on this have been shifting somewhat over the years.
The longer I am around the more jaded I can become as to just how effective allegiance to the two-party system really is. At the very least, pray for those who remain there, but pray as well for those who have decided to achieve good political outcomes in other ways.
