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Malcolm Turnbulls speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party conservative in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies statement that they:

took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldnt necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the partys electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbotts earlier phrase that the sensible centre is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the small-l liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howards conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern Menzian position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies forgotten people. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern sensible centre position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the forgotten people partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. Meanwhile, the rich were able to protect themselves.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. Rather, our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in social equality was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this years budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address todays scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms left and right had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that left and right are moving conceptually, because the centre has shifted too.

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Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre but is the centre where it used to be? - The Conversation AU

Premier Christy Clark has announced the B.C. Liberals key staffers as the party transitions to its new role as opposition, the same day that Premier-designate John Horgan named six women who will help fill out his leadership team.

The Liberal appointments include seasoned staffers and communications professionals.

These appointments will support our strong and experienced team of 43 MLAs in the legislature. Together, I believe we will form an extremely effective opposition to hold the NDP-Green alliance to account on behalf of British Columbians, an email signed by Clark, which was sent to Liberal staff and caucus this morning, said.

Clark has appointed Nick Koolsbergen as chief of staff. Koolsbergen most recently served as executive director of communications and research for the Liberal caucus and previously served as director of issues management in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Jessica Woolford will serve as deputy chief of staff under Koolsbergen. Woolford most recently worked as executive director of corporate priorities at government communications and public engagement. She previously served as chief of staff to Minister Todd Stone and as an adviser to Ministers Mary Polak and Shirley Bond.

Clarks press secretary, Stephen Smart, will move into the role of executive director of communications and issues management for the Liberal caucus. Smart previously worked as a CBC reporter and has 18 years of media experience.

Primrose Carson will serve as executive director of operations and MLA support for the caucus.

Now that our leadership team is in place, in the coming days we will move forward with interviews of those staff who have expressed an interest in continuing to serve British Columbians through the B.C. Liberal Caucus, the email said.

Premier-designate John Horgan also announced today more names in the NDP leadership team lineup.

The six women, many of whom played key roles in Horgans election campaign, will serve in roles ranging from press secretary to the head of a new office dedicated to delivering on the NDP-Green alliance agreement.

After 16 years, we have a lot of work to do to address the problems caused by B.C. Liberal choices. Im confident that the leadership team were building has the energy, drive and commitment to deliver the change we promised British Columbians, Carole James, Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA and transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Donna Sanford, senior policy analyst at the climate action secretariat, will move into the role of executive director of the confidence and supply agreement secretariat. The new office will be responsible for delivering on the agreement between the NDP and Green parties, which sets out key priorities like campaign-finance laws and electoral reform.

Sage Aaron will serve as director of communications in the Premiers Office, a promotion from the same role at union MoveUP.

Kate Van Meer-Mass becomes director of operations in the Premiers Office, which will involve tour planning, scheduling and other leadership responsibilities.

Jen Holmwood assumes the role of deputy director of communications in the Premiers Office; Sheena McConnell will serve as Horgans press secretary and Marie Della Mattia will work as special adviser to Horgan. All three held similar roles for Horgan as leader of the opposition.

asmart@timescolonist.com

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NDP, Liberals announce key staff positions - Times Colonist

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to boost U.S. apprenticeship programs. These training programs convey skills to individuals for specific vocations.

Currently, 505,000 people have apprenticeships through 2,100 programs registered with the government. President Trump has committed to creating 5 million apprenticeships over the next five years.

I get nervous whenever I hear about any government initiative that claims to provide what our economy needs. The last thing we need is a new army of government bureaucrats pretending they are going to forecast what kind of jobs we need and then subsidizing businesses and unions to set up training programs.

But Trumps plan doesnt appear to do that. It establishes a wide berth for firms, or unions, or trade associations to decide on their own what they need to do, meaning those who are actually doing the work and the hiring.

Current data from the labor market screams out that we can do a better job building a workforce fitting what businesses need.

The U.S. Labor Department reported 6 million job openings in April and 5 million hires. So a million jobs are still open.

In April, there were 6.9 million unemployed. Sure, you say, they dont have the skills for those million jobs. But isnt that the point? Isnt this the work we need to do get those who cant find work trained and motivated?

And if we care about our nations future, weve got to look at the deeper social problems leading to pockets of chronic unemployment.

There are 1.7 million long-term unemployed. We have a growing population, disproportionately prime-age men, who have just dropped out of the labor force.

The black unemployment rate has been double the national average for the last half-century and that is roughly where it is today. Black youth ages 16 to 19 have an unemployment rate of 27.3 percent.

So, if I am nervous about government bureaucrats planning out apprenticeship programs, what can government do?

Trump is proposing the federal government put up $200 million to help firms make these apprenticeships happen. Good, but we cant rely on new government spending to be the answer.

The answer is removing barriers. Here are two ways.

For one, consider vocational schools and training as part of education choice.

Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced a bill, the Enhancing Educational Opportunities for All Students Act, in the last Congress that would permit use of funds that the federal government gives to school districts to help low-income children and use it to enable them to be able to attend the school of their choice.

Why should that $14 billion be locked in the public school system? Give a poor child a voucher, or the equivalent, that can be used to go to a vocational school. Businesses could joint venture and help finance and build the programs to train these kids.

So lets dust off and pass the Enhancing Educational Opportunities bill. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the right person in the right place to help make this happen.

Second, let businesses use the funds they spend on training to count toward salary for purposes of the minimum wage. This would allow a firm to hire a young person and pay below minimum wage but also provide training, the value of which would hike the wage above the minimum. This is a way around the damage that the minimum wage causes and provide a platform for unskilled youth to get trained.

If we use government to make the marketplace more free and flexible, apprenticeships can help build a 21st-century American labor force.

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Apprenticeships can win out over bureaucrats, liberals - MyAJC.com - MyAJC

Two groups of people who had been less than enthused about Trump as our president had two very different reactions to his July 6 speech in Poland.

One group was conservative columnists who had long disliked Trump. Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Rich Lowry were relieved at his pledge of backing for NATO; thrilled by his praise of the Poles and their courage; encouraged by his harsh words for Russia and its treatment of Poland, pleased by his defense of the West as a cultural and political unit.

It was good news to them that he should stand for values of enormous importance that were well worth defending by force. Trump's Warsaw speech, in short, meant he was becoming more like a standard Republican president of the Reagan-Bush eras big on values, defense, and the Western alliance.

The other group was liberal critics of Trump. For them, this speech embodied the problems with his presidency. In the 1980s, most Democrats had believed less in the West than in moral equivalence; they showed no interest in Poland or courage in general. Today, as then, they think Republicans lack nuance, finesse, and in most cases intellect and that probably every third word they utter is a dog-whistle code word for race.

"The West is a racial and religious term," wrote Peter Beinart in The Atlantic, saying that "to be considered Western" a country must be white and be Christian and that what links the American and Polish people and government is not democracy (nor their historical conflict with Russia) but their hostility toward Muslims and immigrants. Trump, they maintain, sees himself less as an American president than as the head of white Christian tribe.

To us therefore falls the task of telling the Beinarts and others that the state of Israel Jewish and just barely in Asia is considered "Western" in provenance (and deeply beloved by the right in this country). America is quickly becoming a mixed-race and a cross-ethnic culture. It has already had a black (or a biracial) president and will no doubt have several more.

Let us remind them too that the Democrats' field last year was a portrait in pallor, whereas the Republicans had two sons of immigrants from the island of Cuba and a black millionaire folk-hero-surgeon who is now in the Cabinet. This country's spokeswoman in the United Nations is the tawny-skinned daughter of Indian immigrants, who was born into a non-Christian home.

If this is what white Christian racism looks like, we should have some more of it. It is the Nikki Haleys and Marco Rubios of the world who are the living proof of the GOP's claim that the liberal project, which began in England in 1215 and was institutionalized in America in 1787, finds takers in people of every persuasion, from places all over the globe.

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan uttered the words heard round the world when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," outraging the Beinarts of the moment to no end. "Anthony Lewis complained that the speech was outrageous' and primitive,'" Steve Hayward tells us. "What is the world to think,' Lewis wrote, when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology?'"

Natan Sharansky, in prison in Russia at the time, expressed a different opinion. "The leader of the free world had spoken the truth," he said. In the long run, the world thought so, too.

Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."

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Trump spoke in Warsaw, and liberals just didn't get it - Washington Examiner

Federal Liberals could take a political hit over the government's decision to settle a lawsuit with Omar Khadr rather than fight it in court even if most Canadians believe the former Guantanamo Bay inmate was owed an apology, a pollster says.

"It's not unreasonable to say this maybe has the potential to be one of the lasting or sticky missteps of this government," Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute told HuffPost Canada Tuesday.

"The broken promise on electoral reform, for example, seems to be something that isn't necessarily haunting the Trudeau Liberals in the same way that this might haunt the Trudeau Liberals."

Kurl says a new poll from her firm suggests Canadians are specifically uncomfortable with the compensation Khadr received, even though the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled in 2010 that his constitutional rights were violated.

While Liberals aren't revealing details of the deal, citing confidentiality, it was widely reported last week that the settlement was $10.5 million.

"This is as much about the money as it is about anything else," she said.

Seventy-one per cent of respondents think the government made the wrong decision and should have fought the lawsuit in court, according to the Angus Reid Institute poll. Twenty-nine per cent support both the apology to Khadr and reported $10.5-million payout.

The survey questionnaire spelled out that Canada's top court already ruled the "Canadian government of the day acted unconstitutionally after Khadr's arrest" in Afghanistan in 2002 and that it was "partly responsible for his continued imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay."

The court found Canadian intelligence officials obtained information from Khadr in 2003 under "oppressive circumstances," including significant sleep deprivation, and that they illegally shared evidence with the United States.

Fully two-third of respondents also told the firm they reject the notion idea that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government had "no choice" but to settle with Khadr, who had filed a $20-million lawsuit against the government.

Tory Leader Andrew Scheer has said he would have fought the case in court on principle and has blasted the deal as "disgusting."

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said at a press conference in Ottawa last week that a settlement was the only sensible course for a case with "virtually no chance of success."

Goodale was also sharply critical of the previous Tory government of Stephen Harper for not advocating for Khadr's return to Canada when he was detained at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr was repatriated in 2012 while the Tories were in government.

It's perhaps not surprising then that 91 per cent of past Tory voters told the Angus Reid Institute they opposed the settlement.

Yet, 61 per cent of past Liberal voters and 64 per cent of NDP supporters also share Scheer's perspective, raising the spectre that some Liberals could pay a political price for the decision.

"It's quite telling to me that it's not just majorities of past Conservative voters who are expressing a level of discomfort with this deal but also really significant numbers of past Liberals and NDPers," Kurl said.

The poll also suggests Canadians have conflicting views of the Toronto-born Khadr, now 30, who was captured after a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound. He pleaded guilty before a discredited military commission to throwing a grenade that killed U.S. special forces soldier Chris Speer. He has since recanted and has long said he was tortured during his years in Guantanamo Bay.

Seventy-four per cent of respondents say Khadr was a child soldier and should have always been treated as such. Yet, when asked if Khadr has been treated fairly or unfairly during his saga, 42 per cent said they were unsure, while 34 per cent said he was treated fairly.

A majority of respondents also indicated Khadr was at least owed an apology for his treatment.

Asked to imagine themselves on the government's negotiating committee, 29 per cent of respondents said they would offer both an apology and compensation, while another 25 per cent would offer an apology but no money. Forty-three per cent said they would offer neither.

Kurl also believes outrage over the settlement may be affecting the way Canadians see Khadr, who has publicly renounced violent extremism. He has long said he was pushed into war by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was killed in 2003 as he stayed with al-Qaida operatives.

Shortly after Khadr was granted bail by an Alberta court in May 2015, 55 per cent of respondents told the Angus Reid Institute they thought he remained a potential "radicalized threat now living in Canada." The latest poll suggests 64 per cent of Canadians now feel that way.

"It's not as though Omar Khadr has been doing seen doing anything that would indicate he remains a radicalized threat. If anything, he's kept a very low profile," Kurl said.

"Whatever statements he's made have continued to reflect that he continues to renounce that world view."

The Angus Reid Institute's survey was conducted online between July 7-10 among a representative randomized sample of 1,521 Canadian adults. For comparison purposes, the firm notes a similar poll would carry a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Scheer and other Tories repeatedly refer to Khadr as a self-confessed or "admitted terrorist."

Khadr told The Canadian Press last week he is not a "hardened terrorist" and asked for Canadians to judge him on his actions.

Even though the deal is done, Scheer has pledged that Tories will force debate on the issue once the House of Commons resumes sitting in September, the Calgary Herald reports.

At the G20 summit in Germany over the weekend, Trudeau said the settlement reflected that the Charter of Rights protects all Canadians, "even when it is uncomfortable."

"When the government violates any Canadian's Charter rights, we all end up paying for it," he said.

With files from The Canadian Press, previous files

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Omar Khadr Settlement Could 'Haunt Trudeau Liberals': Angus Reid Institute Pollster - Huffington Post Canada