They banned firearms, introduced the GST and made same-sex marriage legal. They've now introduced the largest welfare package in Australian history.
In comparison to most governments in the world, they're probably considered center-left at worst.
Technically probably correct, but it seems like the wrong comparison?
Compare them to the G20 or OECD or similar.
The Australian Liberal Party are pretty practical, they keep their nutters out of power, they didn't put forward a comedy prime minister, and they have a sense of duty towards the country.
But, they're definitely a conservative party. The Treasurer cited Reagan and Thatcher as his inspirations this week.
I think part of the confusion is that some wrongly judge the Australian Liberal Party by American political standards. Conservative parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, often make decisions which would be considered "liberal" in an American context, but are actually centrist (or sometimes even right-wing) in the context of their own countries. A good example is the Medicare levy surcharge was introduced by the Howard government, to penalise middle and high income earners that don't take out private health insurance; in the Australian context that was a conservative decision (it was designed to prop up private health insurers, and many on the Australian left viewed it as a threat to the public health system and a form of corporate welfare), yet when the US adopted more or less the same policy (an insurance mandate) as part of Obamacare, that was a liberal one.
The other issue is the ambiguity between "classical liberalism" vs "social liberalism"/"left liberalism"/"modern liberalism". The term "Liberal" in the name of the Australian Liberal Party is a reference to the former not the later. Classical liberalism has a huge amount of overlap with many versions of conservatism.
And even "conservatism" comes in many different forms, and different forms of conservatism can lead to very different policies. In the US, some conservatives argue for an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East; others argue that the US should stay out of other countries' business. Both viewpoints are conservative, just the product of different versions of conservatism (neoconservative vs palaeoconservative). Similarly, while mainstream US conservatism combines "economic conservatism" (low and flat taxation, small and balanced government budget, low regulation, free trade, etc) with social conservatism, a significant minority of American social conservatives oppose economic conservatism (e.g. distributism, Catholic social teaching, Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative magazine, etc)
This is definitely true for fiscal issues or social welfare, and I think the example you provided is quite appropriate here, but compared to many places (particularly in the part of Europe where I live) I think the reverse is true about the US for social issues.
Similarly, despite abortion being such a political hot potato in the US, Roe v Wade ensures that US abortion laws are on the whole more liberal than those of a number of European countries.
On the other hand, if you look at an issue like the death penalty, the US retains it federally and in a majority of states, while every European country has officially abolished it except for Belarus. Even in Russia, whose government often takes quite conservative stances on social issues such as LGBT rights, it is officially abolished (although you could argue that the frequency of extrajudicial killings in Russia means that true abolition has not yet been achieved in practice.) And, death penalty aside, the US approach to criminal law is far more punitive than that of many European countries, and US policing also tends to be a bit of an outlier in terms of aggressiveness and brutality.
I think on social issues it really depends on which particular social issues you are most concerned with.
Switzerland is traditionally more slow-moving in terms of laws because of its insistence of making sure legislative changes are accepted by the population at large (with its initiatives and referenda), whereas in the US and many other countries, interested parties anywhere on the political spectrum can often quickly decide an issue if they happen to be in power.
This doesn't mean that the general attitudes of the population towards LGBTQ in Switzerland are or ever were worse than in the US. I have a feeling, that in general, attitudes tend to be very diverse in the US, with some areas / circles being totally in support and others in very strong opposition, whereas Switzerland tends to be a bit more homogeneous. Switzerland certainly doesn't have such a strong undercurrent of evangelical voters for which things like LGBTQ and traditional marriage (or also abortion etc.) are such a major driving factor (sure, those people exist, but they tend to exist more at the fringes). I also don't recall any debates about bakers not wanting to bake cakes for gay couples or any of that sort of nonsense.
That's not to claim that there is no homophobia in Switzerland, there certainly is. But I can't really believe that it's worse than the US.
> Switzerland is traditionally more slow-moving in terms of laws because of its insistence of making sure legislative changes are accepted by the population at large (with its initiatives and referenda), whereas in the US and many other countries, interested parties anywhere on the political spectrum can often quickly decide an issue if they happen to be in power.
Ireland approved same-sex marriage in a national referendum in 2015. (A referendum was necessary because the opposite-sex definition of marriage was enshrined in the Irish constitution.) Five years later, Switzerland still hasn't had a national referendum on the topic. So I'm not sure if Switzerland's slowness on this issue has anything to do with its political emphasis on referendums.
And in the case of the US, it wasn't achieved nationally through legislative changes, but rather through a decision of the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court has a long history of being far more willing to get involved in heated social and political debates than equivalent courts in many other countries, whose constitutional court instead tries to dodge them and leave them up to the democratic process.
> This doesn't mean that the general attitudes of the population towards LGBTQ in Switzerland are or ever were worse than in the US
I don't know enough about the culture of Switzerland to disagree, so I will accept your point. But, it still represents an area in which the US legal system is to the left of Switzerland's, even if substantial pockets of US culture may be to the right of Switzerland on the same issue. Law, politics and culture are deeply interconnected, yet distinct.
Where does Switzerland stand on immigration and cultural diversity issues? I don't have your personal experience of the topic (and I'd love to hear you elaborate in more detail about that), but here are a few facts I know about:
* About a quarter of the Swiss population is foreign-born. That is very high by the standards of the Western world (the US is only around 13%), few Western countries would exceed that (Australia and New Zealand are the only ones I know of). So in that sense, Switzerland does have an openness to immigration which exceeds that of any other European country.
* Switzerland's rules around naturalisation are very tough. A lot tougher than most European countries, or most Western countries.
* In 2009 Switzerland amended its constitution (by popular vote) to ban new minarets on mosques. I think that's quite outrageous discrimination against a religious minority. In a country like the UK (for example), they'd probably never allow a referendum on such an offensive proposal. I think it violates the European Convention on Human Rights, as religious discrimination. But, the European Court of Human Rights declared a case against it inadmissible on the grounds that the complainant didn't have any personal plans to build a minaret. (If a Swiss mosque was to file a case, they'd at least get past that initial admissibility hurdle, but I'm not aware that they have.)
So overall I'd say Switzerland's record on immigration and cultural diversity is a mixed bag. There are some positive elements (the high percentage of foreign-born population) and some negatives (difficult naturalisation and Islamophobic constitutional amendments).
But before you try to say the US's record on these topics is better, just remember who is in the White House right now and what he has had to say on the topic of immigration and cultural diversity.
So it isn't entirely clear to me who actually comes out in front in a comparison of Switzerland and US on this topic. And, consider also there are 40+ other countries in Europe, some of which arguably do better (in some areas) than Switzerland does on these issues, others have their own serious problems in those areas.
But, having lived in Switzerland for most of my life, I unfortunately feel that there is a very strong undercurrent of xenophobia, to the point that parts of it are even accepted among more left-wing circles.
That ended in the 19th century, however, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, those religious tensions are not what they used to be. (That's not something unique to Switzerland; most European countries, religious tensions people used to kill each other over, nobody cares about any more. Here in Australia, my grandfather told me how as a Catholic in the 1940s, he couldn't get certain jobs because some employers refused to hire Catholics, and the law let them get away with that. But, I've never heard in contemporary Australia of someone refusing to hire a Catholic, indeed nowadays it would be illegal for a secular employer to do so.)
Certainly you are right, that however bad Catholic-Protestant tension may have been in Swiss history, it still was nothing compared to the treatment of African-Americans.
They were dragged kicking and screaming across the line for same-sex marriage.
The GST reduced the tax payable on luxury items, so in essence was a more regressive sales tax.
The party was founded as a party of social liberals (with conservative economics), but for the last 3 decades has been eaten from the inside by a socially conservative wing resulting in a misnomer. The conservatives could have their own party, but the Liberal name and the remaining perception of liberalism attracts votes, as shown by the "Australian Conservatives" party which broke away from the Liberals and couldn't attract enough votes to survive.
You see the after-effects in e.g. Norway, where the liberal party is literally named "Venstre" ("Left")
It's just that most places the liberals have been firmly out-flanked on the left since.
How is being the only major party with MPs voting against same-sex marriage despite the public plebisciting for it "left-wing"?
I'll give you the other two though, but on the welfare package that Labor introduced following the GFC they (and of course News Corp) would not shut up about how terrible a thing it was, despite Australia being the only country to come out of the crisis mostly unscathed.
On the plebiscite/postal survey though: the government in Australia isn't bound by the results of it. It's just a survey. The fact that the Liberal Party put the result into law[0] within 48 hours is their own doing, submitted by an LGBT member of the party no less.
A conservative party would fundamentally not do this.
You can scroll down in the linked Wikipedia article to see how everyone voted. You won't exactly see significant, genuine opposition. There was arguably more opposition from the left-leaning alternative, the Australian Labor Party, that had the most people abstain in the senate.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition...
It was clear the economic right faction of the Liberals wanted a mandate from the people so that they could push past the socially conservative faction.
They were being blocked for months by the left - because it benefited the greens and labor politically to position the Liberals as anti-LGBT.
All the Liberals would have needed to say is “conscience vote” and it would have been done. That aside, if passing basic civil rights would threaten the stability of the party, then that’s kind of a shitty party.
Yes, the left did block enshrining basic civil rights in order to play politics.
> All the Liberals would have needed to say is
The Libs don’t care about gay rights and they still got the job done.
And you do know that there was real damage done through the process? Gay people got messages of hate and exclusion as it provided excellent fodder for the grubs to come out of the woodwork to spike vile hatred. There was real damage done during the process when all Turnbull had to do was a snap of the finger and it’d not get put through the process that it did.
Also love the part where you seem to be completely ignorant of Howard legislating to make gay marriage unambiguously forbidden. In 2004.
Of course they were playing politics - why would you sacrifice party unity when you can shame your political opponents on the left and still get the outcome you want?
You don’t seem to understand that your allies playing politics with something you really care about is completely different from your opponents playing politics with the same topic.
> Also love the part where you seem to be completely ignorant of Howard legislating to make gay marriage unambiguously forbidden. In 2004.
How does that help your case at all?
> A conservative party would fundamentally not do this.
Experiences in Canada, Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand (of particular relevance to Australia), Sweden, the UK where conservatives in power had at least some if not most of their representatives vote LGBT marriage in is evidence to the contrary. Or is it that they aren't really "conservative" either by some arbitrary yardstick?
And to say that they allowed its members to vote how they actually always wanted to vote (now there's a democratic deficit) within '48 hours' after delaying it for months and toddling around with a voluntary postal survey for BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS for months and months after years of intransigence is highly disingenuous.