Yes, it’s fantasy and that’s the point. What on earth is extremist religion doing in our secular politics?
As we know, the Liberal Party is being torn apart by the footsoldiers of some demon lord:
NSW Liberal state director Chris Stone has been threatened with legal action by a member of his party’s state executive as grassroots members say attempts to stitch together a shadowy factional deal to bypass preselections in vital seats will “cripple our campaign effectiveness”.
The legal warning comes after months of factional brinkmanship, which has left a raft of winnable seats in NSW – vital for Scott Morrison’s re-election – still lacking an endorsed candidate.
The letter, sent by lawyers representing Matthew Camenzuli late on Tuesday night, alleges the NSW Liberal Party’s ongoing failure to carry out preselections and endorsement of candidates was the consequence of Mr Stone pursuing an agenda ulterior to the party’s best interests.
Who did this?
The two main factions blame Mr Morrison’s close ally in NSW, Alex Hawke, the secretive Immigration Minister, for holding up the selection of candidates.
…Hawke, as Morrison’s representative on the party’s executive committee, is central to negotiations underway between faction leaders to skip plebiscites and appoint candidates by decree, say those involved. (Hawke’s spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
“Hawke has been up front that elections will not give us the candidates they want,” said one participant in the negotiations. “We’re in procedural warfare. Everyone’s hands are tied.”
What kind of candidates do Morrison’s missionaries want? Over John Howard’s objections:
A rare, glowing endorsement written by Mr Howard for St Vincent’s Hospital cardiologist Michael Feneley labels him an “outstanding person” and an “ideal candidate”.
…“The Liberal Party is in need of candidates who have achieved esteem and success in the real world. Professor Feneley certainly falls into this category”.
The endorsement comes despite the Prime Minister’s backing for businesswomen and Pentecostal preacher Jemima Gleeson.
What’s this about? Recall from recent western Sydney local elections:
At the heart of it is Scott Morrison’s New South Wales consigliore, Alex Hawke.
…Since 2007, Hawke has been the member for the electorate of Mitchell, part of the outer north-western “Bible Belt” of Sydney. He is currently a member of the Morrison cabinet and minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. Like Morrison, he is of Pentecostal faith. More importantly for this story, he is the leader of the Morrison faction in NSW, the centre-right, and is Morrison’s appointed delegate on the party’s state executive.
The other two, larger factions are the right, sometimes called the hard right, which is the faction of Premier Dominic Perrottet, and the moderate or left faction, led by the treasurer and minister for Energy and Environment, Matt Kean.
Hawke is reviled by both.
As one senior right faction member says, Hawke “has used his time as Morrison’s representative on the state executive in an endeavour to advance their factional position to the detriment of both the conservatives and the moderates – to the point now where the conservatives and the moderates are in an alliance against Hawke. And that means against Morrison.”
The anti-Hawke feeling goes beyond institutional opposition. It is personal. Like his prime ministerial mentor, Hawke is hard-charging and abrasive. While the left and right have in recent years come to a sometimes-uneasy agreement in sharing the spoils of power, Hawke has a winner-takes-all approach. It has come back to bite him, his boss and the party.
Why so absolutist? Well…one is not pragmatic when applying the commandments of a netherworld diety. To wit:
Nathan Zamprogno is a teacher who was sacked by a Christian school because he is gay. He is, as he testified before a parliamentary committee hearing last week, just one example of “very many” such cases.
The story he told the committee – of the circumstances of his sacking, and the years of casual homophobia he silently endured before it happened – is not what makes him exceptional.
What makes him different is the fact he is a 30-year member of the Liberal Party who, until July last year, sat as a Liberal on the Hawkesbury City Council in New South Wales. He was dumped amid factional intrigue precipitated by Scott Morrison’s consigliore and co-religionist Alex Hawke.
…“You could only conclude that Scott Morrison is hell-bent – pardon the pun – on pushing this because his religious judgement is superseding his best pragmatic political judgement.”
…Zamprogno ran as an independent in December’s local government elections and won. He still hews to the values that made the Liberal Party a “comfortable ideological home” for three decades.
“I want governments to live within their means,” he says. “I want them to balance their budgets. I want policies that are evidence-based. I want them to be broadly consonant with Australia’s founding as an enlightenment nation.”
However, he’s concerned that the party’s religious right is taking it in a direction that is “very, very socially conservative … often ignoring, I think, the pragmatic political centre that the rest of Australia occupies”.
It is leading, he says, to a “huge outflow of previously devoted Liberal Party members … seeking greener pastures with a party that’s, you know, less morally ideological and more pragmatic on key issues”.
Like Zamprogno, I am a natural member of a liberal party. I believe in freedom, capitalism, meritocracy, markets and enlightenment values. Alas, the Liberal Party of Australia is the complete opposite: oligarchic, corrupt, prejudiced, and, increasingly, pre-enlightenment. There are four card-carrying Pentecostals and another nine uber-conservative Christians in the Morrison Cabinet. What is it, the Gregorian mission?
The AFR is so spooked it has begun investigating Morrison’s cult links:
Scott Morrison may be Australia’s second most famous Pentecostal after his mentor, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, but he is far from the norm. Those who subscribe to the youthful, feel-good, glam-rock, self-help teachings of the Pentecostal church tend not to be white, 50-something and male.
“The Filipina who cleans your house is more your average Pentecostal,” says Elle Hardy, author of a new book on the global rise of the Pentecostal church.
…Pentecostals are increasingly “concerned with the here and now”, says Hardy, and that secular society, or the elites, are taking over the world and they need to fight back.
“Reshaping America and the world so that Christ can return just so happens to look a lot like gaining power in the here and now,” writes Hardy.
…Hardy makes the point that Christian Dominionism is about seeing a religiously run America that conforms to Pentecostal values.
“It’s pretty clear that a lot on the religious right in America have given up on democracy, they know they have lost the battle, and you hear instead the line that the US is a republic, not a democracy,” Hardy says.
“It’s about conquering and victory. That’s where the seven mountains come in because if you can control the seven pillars of society, you can transform society.”
Donald Trump was a gift to the Pentecostalists. His rise, along with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, lies in no small part to the rise of Pentecostals. The movement has a penchant for populist, strong-arm leaders with a flair for entertaining the masses, on one hand, while simultaneously scorning the cultural Marxists with their post-modern notions of gay marriage, gender identity, racial and sexual equality.
A 2019 US study found that 53 per cent of Pentecostals agreed that Trump had been anointed by God.
“Long a shelter for the marginalised and the dispossessed, in an age of gross inequality, Pentecostalism is becoming synonymous with an anti-liberal worldview,” writes Hardy.
Along with a raft of other bad actors, Hardy says it comes as little surprise that the “Stop the Steal” storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 involved 7M soldiers.
As one pastor who spoke to the crowd that day put it: “We are not just in a culture war, we are in a kingdom war.” At the same time, a Pentecostal magazine put up a Facebook post that said: “There are but two parties right now, traitors and patriots.”
Too right. And the demon’s legions sure ain’t the latter.
Indeed, there is one final parallel between the cult and its political missionaries to observe:
Hillsong founder Brian Houston has stepped down as the global leader of the Pentecostal church as he prepares to defend court charges that he covered up allegations of his father’s child sexual abuse.
In a video address to the faithful on Sunday, Mr Houston, flanked by his wife Bobbie, admitted his “shock” that last year he “received unexpected news of charges against me that allege the concealing of information that may have been material to prosecute” his father Frank Houston.
A methodology of denial uploaded directly from shepard to flock:
The ex-lover of Liberal frontbencher Alan Tudge will not give evidence to a ministerial conduct inquiry in a move that is likely to allow the Prime Minister to return the Victorian MP to his portfolio.
By choosing not to participate in the process on the grounds the process is flawed and a “political fix”, it bolsters the likelihood that there will be no adverse findings against Mr Tudge.
Rachelle Miller has repeatedly claimed she was bullied and mistreated in Mr Tudge’s office while he was also conducting a sexual relationship with her. Mr Tudge strenuously denies the claims although he admits to a consensual sexual relationship with his staffer that he “deeply regrets.”
In a statement to news.com.au, Ms Miller said the Morrison Government had not listened to her concerns about the terms of reference or agreed to provide her with a full copy of any final report. As a result of her concerns regarding the process she could not participate.
Liberal Party faithful are fighting a war against an insurgency of absolutist sectarian sleazebags and it is not clear that they are winning.
For the future’s sake of the future of party, they had better:
