Dear Jen: Here’s Why I Joined The Liberal Party (And Why It Makes Sense For Me As A Christian)

Dear Jen,

Thanks for your question to me on Facebook.

(By the way, I think a couple of people I know - one family member & one acquaintance - have interacted with you in a pretty disrespectful way in that discussion. I don’t know quite what to say about that to be honest. I’m sorry? Yet I didn’t do it. I wish they would be more civil and engage with the substance of the issue.)

“I remember you as being a person of faith, so I’m curious to understand whether you see your Christian-informed values being reflected in the values of the modern day liberal party? I ask because when I listen to and read some key liberal party members’ opinions, proposed policies and commentary it’s often lacking in the kind of compassion that I understand as being an essential component of the Christian faith. What concerns me, for example, is attitudes towards marginalised peoples such as asylum seekers and refugees.”

I’ll respond to you under a few different headings.

My Christian Faith

Yes, I’m still a Christian. Following Jesus Christ is the number one priority in my life.

Do I see my Christian-informed values being reflected in the modern day Liberal Party? Yes and no.

In joining the Liberals, I don’t endorse the past or present behaviour of other Liberals, but neither do I condemn it necessarily. It’s more that I don’t think it’s especially relevant.

Let me explain why.

My decision to join the Liberals is motivated by one objective. To do what I can, with the very limited time and attention I have available, to encourage the Liberal Party to adhere to the Liberal Party Federal Platform, which I think is really good. That’s my game plan.

I am a political conservative, which is very much informed by my faith. I think human nature is fixed; people are a mixture of good and evil; and power corrupts. It needs to be checked and decentralised. This world view comes from the Bible. I think modern left wing parties (including Australian Labor) have a de facto world view which stresses the innate goodness of humankind and has an excessively optimistic hope that positive change can be achieved by social engineering and positive law. In short, they’re utopian about society and naively optimistic about human nature, and I think that’s a massive issue.

The Liberal party platform, and Liberal politicians, are much better than the alternative on this front, I believe. I see more restraint and greater respect for freedom on the Liberal side. I think that Liberals in government more reliably leads to a negotiated peace between left and right whereas state over-reach is more common under Labor.

I think that in contemporary Australian we have excessively high expectations of the state, and this harms our society.

I want to influence things in the opposite direction, and in my judgement the best place for me to do that is via the Liberal party.

Asylum Seekers, Refugees & Marginalised People

I’m not especially informed about the Liberal party’s current policies here, and I can’t call to mind anything I’ve seen or heard on this front recently from the Liberals. Maybe you can enlighten me?

From what I can see, on the question of Australian borders, there’s a bipartisan agreement to stop people smuggling.

If you asked me how many refugees we should take in, I’d answer “as many as we can”.

When I say “as we can” I have in mind the possibility that a country can take too many refugees. If this happens, you can undermine our ability to be the sort of place refugees can flee to. See more on this under The Economy below.

I’m not well informed about how much our humanitarian refugee intake (and other aspects of refugee policy) are affected by who’s in government. I’m very open to your input here!

My thinking here has been informed by interacting with a few Iraqi and Iranian refugees Deb and I housed in 2012. One of them fled Iran after engaging in pro-democracy protests. He would have been killed if he stayed. Interestingly, he was a fan of Tony Abbott, and supported “stop the boats” after experiencing being misled and nearly killed at sea by people smugglers.

I say that because it’s the sort of thing that’s rarely heard in this area.

Compassion

I agree that acting with compassion is key to being a faithful Christian.

I’m not exactly sure where you’re coming from here, but one thing I think often happens in this area is that conservative views are misconstrued (sometimes wilfully) as being mean and uncharitable.

A conservative could be making the case for reduced welfare, for example. They could be doing so because they have in mind the severe unintended consequences of welfare dependency. Put to one side whether they are right or wrong on the issue; they are convinced the better road is “tough love” in the short term to avoid intractable long-term consequences. A person on the left might hear this and think, “they are greedy and they don’t care about people”.

I don’t doubt that there are greedy and uncaring conservatives.

What I do take issue with is a view that the road of compassion always involves offering help and assistance, as opposed to withholding it in favour of natural incentives and consequences - good and bad.

I’m not sure if I am addressing what you had in mind, so please feel free to comment further.

I guess I think compassion in action looks complicated and highly varied, depending on what’s at stake. I think helping people in the long term - in a sustainable way for the country extending the help - is really hard.

The Economy

An area where this plays out is the economy.

I believe that in recent years, for example during covid, there has been a pretty impoverished political debate about the economy.

I think that a larger, big spending state (such as we’ve had in recent years under both major parties) lacks compassion in significant measure.

The massive debts we have incurred in the aftermath of the GFC, plus the scale of stimulus measures undertaken during covid, have been harmful. Not uniformly, and not without a rationale, but the harms are certainly there.

I don’t see these harms being discussed broadly enough or taken into account.

I have in mind this sort of thing:

• runaway inflation, which kicked off in earnest prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

• escalating house prices (harming the young, who were least in harm’s way from the pandemic)

• massive devaluation of superannuation

• reckless accumulation of government debt, which will be met by taxing the next generation

I don’t intend to out words in your mouth, but what I often here is this sort of thing in regards to what I’m raising,

“It’s just money. So what if there’s economic fallout! I care about people.” (this sort of thinking is really common).

I have in mind the human cost of a badly run economy and an overly restrictive, highly regulated state:

• needlessly high unemployment and underemployment, pushing people into welfare dependency

• extreme family stress, precipitating divorces, abuse & family violence

• extremely high start up costs for small business (I can tell you from experience that the requirement for very small business like mine to collect GST is very, very burdensome. We’re lucky that my wife Deb is so naturally skilled in accounting).

• poorly designed taxation structures, like stamp duty and our current payroll tax, which put an unproductive handbrake on family formation and on business (NB: business matters because jobs matter, and jobs matter because people matter).

I referred to The Economy above when I was talking about refugees. Let me pick that up again.

In order to care for the vulnerable, we need to have a stable, productive economy that creates tax revenue for the government.

If we lean too heavily on the virtue of compassion, to the neglect of prudence, and if we take on too many lofty aspirations (like: every building should have amazing disabled access, every 85 year old should get amazing cancer treatment), then pretty soon we’ll be incapable of extending the most basic of compassionate help.

The way the NDIS is going is a case in point.

My Own Personality & Temperament

Lastly, I would be remiss to leave out that my own personality and temperament has influenced my decision.

I have always been analytical and contrarian, sometimes cynical (to my shame). My awareness of this has grown as I have gotten older.

I think these traits make one likely to find a home on the political right.

For example, when I was about 25, and consciously a Labor voter, I remember chatting to a colleague about politics. We both congratulated each other on being Labor voters. And then the conversation turned to radio. We expressed a shared appreciation for Radio National. More common ground. But then she was shocked when I said how much I liked the “Counterpoint” program.

At the time, I had no idea it was the token conservative program on Radio National. I just knew I resonated deeply with the way the hosts thought about things.

Anyway, I hope that sheds some light on where I’m coming from.