More Lliberal than thou (II).

ALL POLITICAL STAFFERS are prone to fantasy. Most just see themselves in their bosses' shoes. I like to think I'm walking down that beach with Robert Kennedy and Freckles the dog, helping him carry the weight of the world on his shoulders just days from the fateful California primary. That's OK. It's a pretty generic daydream for a small-1 liberal of a romantic disposition.

Greg Barns, though, is a weird one. Barns seems to think he's Milovan Djilas--betrayed and persecuted by the Howard revolution as much as Djilas was betrayed by the new regime and the new class he helped create. But Djilas' revolution was never that pure--there was plenty of blood, as well as betrayal, involved. And is the Liberal Party--or has it ever been--particularly virtuous?

Barns' book, What's Wrong with the Liberal Party?, is entertaining polemic. Barns makes some important points on the weakness--if not uselessness--of the state Liberal parties. He is good on state government in general. His comments on the paucity of policy debate in the federal parliamentary party are sad but true--the ginger groups, if there are any, are about self-advancement and have as much spice as the sauce that comes with Chicken McNuggets. And he is quite right about the ruthless dominance John Howard exercises over his party--and the question marks over a Costello succession.

One just can't help feeling, however, that the entire base he has predicated his argument on is flawed. What's Wrong with the Liberal Party? suggests that John Howard has co-ordinated a carefully calculated conspiracy to turn a centre party into a tool of the ugly right.

Barns refers to Gerard Henderson's Menzies' Child as his "primary source of material" on the Liberals. Fair enough. It's not a bad book. It's also a good starting point for a metaphor.

It is odd--odd in the extreme--that Barns, the icon-oclast, the heretic, uncritically accepts the myths surrounding the birth of the Liberal Party propagated by the elders of the tribe.

Barns, the republican leader, surely will never forget the contribution to the ConCon by his colleague, the late, irascible Paddy O'Brien. Barns must have seen and learned much during his time at university, working his way up through Liberal politics in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, as chief of staff to the federal Finance Minister as the Howard government sought to fill the "Beazley black hole", as a candidate and as one banished from the party for his stance on refugees. It's strange, then, that Barns seems unaware of O'Brien's description from almost twenty years ago of the Liberals as an agglomeration of "factions, feuds and fancies". He should know, after all, that the Liberals did not stem from any immaculate conception.