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Goodbye BC Liberals, hello BC United.

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British Columbias Official Opposition officially unveiled its new name and branding Wednesday evening.

The name change was approved last fall, with 80 per cent of members voting in favour of the rebrand.

I said from the beginning, when I ran to be leader of this party that I wasnt going to do it unless the party was prepared to undergo really big renewal, party leader Kevin Falcon told Global News in an interview.

Really its all about making sure that everything we do going forwards is speaking about the bold public policies that we want to do, making sure this is a really big tent that people feel welcome under.

Along with the new name, the party has adopted a new logo and new colours pink and teal.

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Falcon said he felt the new colour scheme was a little bit of a nod to the partys history, in the form of an updated version of the red and blue traditionally associated with liberal and conservative parties.

But to me its more important that they dont represent any of the established political parties, because Ive always said 96 per cent of the public are not members of political parties, they dont ID with political parties, theyre just normal people trying to raise their families and meet their family budgets.

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The name change comes after the partys defeat in two consecutive elections to the BC NDP, following 16 years in power under the BC Liberal name.

BC NDP Premier David Eby, speaking at one of multiple government media events staged Wednesday, took a shot at the opposition over the rebranding.

For the priorities of the BC Liberals, their priority right now is to change their name, I definitely understand why, Eby said.

I dont think it will change their legacy in the province. For us, were focused on housing, public safety, making sure that health care is there for people and that we have a strong economy that works for everybody.

University of the Fraser Valley political science professor Hamish Telford said the rebrand comes with potential political opportunities for Falcon and BC United, but will be a difficult balancing act.

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The BC Liberals have traditionally relied on a coalition of free-enterprise supporting Liberal and Conservative supporters, who Telford said come with different values and expectations.

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Dropping the Liberal moniker will likely appeal to the partys base in rural and Interior B.C., where voters tend to back federal Conservatives and may have been uncomfortable voting for a party with Liberal in the name.

That upside may be further increased, he said, given current Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus slide in popularity.

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Dropping the Liberal name however, could come at a risk with more progressive, urban voters, however, who he said Falcon will need to appeal directly to.

The way he has to do that is to put forward good policies, but also a commitment to certain progressive values, such as LGBTQ rights and taking the environment and climate change seriously, Telford said.

Those are the things that he has been doing in all honesty that will help him reconnect with the voters the party he has lost.

British Columbians are next scheduled to go to the polls in October 2024, which Telford suggested should give the party plenty of time to conduct outreach and promote the new name.

Falcon, for his part, said he was confident the new branding would connect with voters come election day.

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Six months ago if you went around to Vancouver residents and said, Have you heard about ABC? Nobody would know what you are talking about, he said.

But yet what did they do? Ken Sim and his team, they disrupted all the traditional political parties, through them out of office, and won a massive majority.

© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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So long BC Liberals, hello BC United: B.C.s opposition party unveils new name - Global News

This Dec. 5, 2017, photo shows flags of Canada and China in Beijing.Fred Dufour/The Associated Press

On Sept. 29, 1972, a story appeared on the front page of The Washington Post that began as follows: John N. Mitchell, while serving as U.S. Attorney General, personally controlled a secret Republican fund that was used to gather information about the Democrats, according to sources involved in the Watergate investigation.

Not allegedly. Not reputedly. The story flat out accuses the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government of running a political espionage operation on the side, with the obvious implication that this might have included the Watergate break-in.

Whose authority did the story cite for this explosive accusation, potentially ruining Mr. Mitchells career and reputation? Sources involved in the Watergate investigation. The story goes on to report Mr. Mitchell personally approved withdrawals from the fund. Who says? Several reliable sources.

The story, of course, was by the team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It was hardly unique in its reliance on unnamed sources, or in its willingness to make specific charges of wrongdoing about specific people on that basis.

Heres another one, from Oct. 10, 1972: The Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixons re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

No room for ambiguity there. A sweeping, potentially criminal indictment. The source? FBI agents. Unnamed or, as some prefer, anonymous (theyre not anonymous to the reporters) sources. Indeed the whole Woodward and Bernstein oeuvre depended on it: not only the particular sources of each story, but lurking over all, the famous Deep Throat, identified decades later as the then-associate director of the FBI, Mark Felt.

Would the story I mean the larger story, Watergate, the cover-up, the whole shebang have come out anyway, without Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernsteins scoops? Possibly. But their sources, and Mr. Felt in particular, evidently were concerned that it might not. So they placed their trust in the reporters.

The Woodstein team and their editors in turn decided to trust their sources, and asked the public to trust their judgment. Not everyone did. They were denounced, notably by the White House press secretary, Ron Ziegler, as traffickers in hearsay, innuendo, and guilt by association repeatedly, over many months. Other media were slow to pick up the story. Public opinion largely sided with Mr. Nixon, who was re-elected in a landslide a month after the massive campaign of political spying story appeared.

Worse, they got some things wrong: famously, in the case of whether a White House aide-turned-whistleblower, Hugh Sloan, had made a particular allegation before a grand jury or not. But in the broad strokes they were right. Did they rely on unnamed sources? Did they accuse people of wrongdoing? Yes, but what they reported was true. That, in the end, is what mattered.

Why am I going over all of this ancient history? Because something similar is under way now, on another story of political malfeasance: Chinas attempts to interfere with our elections, what help it might have received from domestic enablers, and what the Trudeau government did or did not know about it. I dont mean its as big a story (although its big enough). And we dont know yet what all the facts are.

But in the basics reporters alleging wrongdoing by public officials, based on evidence provided by unnamed sources, who feared the story might otherwise be suppressed it raises many of the same issues. Only this time its not only the flop-sweating spokespeople for the accused who are denouncing the reporters for their use of unnamed sources. Its much of the Canadian establishment.

That the Liberals have been actively encouraging this sentiment poke through the agonized online cries of my God what is this country coming to and this has all the earmarks of a coup, and you find a heavy concentration of Liberal partisans is undoubted. But it also has other, less cynical adherents.

It all sounds terribly well-meaning, until you stop to ask: What exactly are they saying? Let us suppose for the moment that the stories are true. It is plainly in the public interest to know by what means China attempted to tilt our elections, for what reasons, with what success, and with what assistance witting or unwitting, by commission or omission from domestic sources.

So their position cant possibly be that this sort of thing just shouldnt be reported even if true. Is it, then, that a reporter who is given evidence of this should refuse to report it unless their sources publicly identify themselves? But that, in the circumstances, amounts to saying it should not be reported: It is not just career-ending but illegal for intelligence officials to leak classified information. Unnamed sources are a critical part of investigative reporting, and were long before Watergate.

That does expose reporters to greater risk risk that their sources have it wrong, risk that they are getting played, risk that they have misinterpreted their sources. And the risks are especially great where the story involves accusations of wrongdoing, where not only the reputation and livelihood of the subject of the story are on the line so, potentially, are the reporters.

But that is a risk for the reporters and their editors to assess. It does not and cannot automatically mean the story should not be reported. The test, in the end, is not does this story rely on unnamed sources or does it injure someones reputation, but is it true? Or at least since perfect certainty is not given to us on this Earth has every reasonable effort been made to verify it is true?

Thats the legal standard, but if the reporter has it wrong he will pay the price regardless of how diligent he was. And if he has it right? Then all the bluster about unnamed sources and damaged reputations will be so much wasted breath. If the stories are true, reputations deserve to be damaged.

So: Lets find out, shall we? Rather than instantly accept or unquestioningly dismiss the allegations, as some have done, why dont we focus on weighing them against the evidence? In the particular case of the allegations against Ontario MP Han Dong, the truth or falsehood of them may soon be tested in court. As to the rest, that is the work of the various inquiries now under way to which a public inquiry is an essential addition none of which would have been launched had the stories never been reported.

The only purpose served by these operatic swoons that such things could even be reported is to fit a broader Liberal narrative of victimhood at the hands of the notoriously Liberal-hating media in which any and all allegations can be depicted, not as a sign that something is amiss with Liberal ethics, but that the press are out to get us.

Thus legitimate concerns about whether the independent special rapporteur on the China interference matter, David Johnston, was in a conflict of interest, by virtue of his long personal and professional association with the Prime Minister, are converted into these vicious attacks on that good man.

And thus the mounting questions about the management and directors of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation are dismissed, as were previous concerns about the management of the WE Charity organization, as attempts to destroy these wonderful charities. The truth or falsehood of the allegations is, apparently, immaterial: only their effect on Liberal amour propre.

These are magnificent deflections. In the case of the Johnston appointment one of several in quick succession to have raised conflict-of-interest issues his unimpeachable integrity, as I have written before, is irrelevant. There is no exemption in the conflict-of-interest rules for people of good character. The rule is not: Avoid conflicts of interest, unless you are a very good man. The rule is: Avoid conflicts of interest.

As for the Trudeau Foundation, earlier concerns over its acceptance, in 2016, of a $200,000 donation from a Chinese billionaire later reported by The Globe and Mail to have been reimbursed by the Chinese government have been supplemented by concerns over what it did with it afterward, after the sudden resignation this week of eight members of the current board, along with four members of senior management and six mentors. (Disclosure: My cousin once removed, the daughter of Pierre Trudeau, is one of those now-resigned board members.)

According to a story in La Presse, board members belatedly discovered that the money had not been returned, as had been promised after the story broke, apparently because the cheque that was to return the funds was made out to a different name than that of the real donor. Directors who had been on the board at the time of the donation were apparently asked to recuse themselves from any investigation, and allegedly refused.

An independent investigation, one director said, would have determined who the donor was, if there were conditions attached to these sums, and the relationships behind all this. As it is, said another, we have lost confidence in the organizations ability to handle this file with transparency, integrity and accountability.

Thats not the jackal press talking. Thats not the scandal-happy opposition. Those are (former) members of the board of the foundation itself. Perhaps they have their own agenda. Maybe they have their own questions to answer. Again, thats what an investigation is for.

But its a bit much to present the directors mass resignation, as the foundation attempted to do in the immediate aftermath, as a response to the politicization of its work (a bunch of lies, one of the departed directors told La Presse), or to dismiss the whole controversy, as the Prime Minister did on Tuesday, as merely a reflection of the level of toxicity and political polarization in the air these days.

That sort of response wont wash any more, or shouldnt. Sooner or later, the truth will out. Its time to stop deflecting, and start answering.

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Opinion: 'These stories are based on unnamed sources,' and other ... - The Globe and Mail

In better times, there likely would have been little reaction to the announcement in late March that an experienced investigator in the office of the federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner who also happens to be the sister-in-law of a senior Liberal cabinet minister would serve as interim ethics commissioner for six months.

In those better times, the opposition parties and the public would have been apt to accept Martine Richard as an honest broker who would act impartially and recuse herself from cases should the need arise.

After all, shes done so in the past, notably in 2018 when her brother-in-law, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, was investigated and found to have broken the Conflict of Interest Act by taking part in a decision to award a fisheries licence to a group linked to his wifes cousin.

That her original appointment to the ethics office happened a decade ago under a Conservative prime minister is also a signal that she is non-partisan. And given the number of times the ethics commissioner has busted the Liberals for violations since Ms. Richards hiring, there is little call to question her professionalism, or that of the broader office.

Except that these are not ordinary times, and Ms. Richard is another person, after David Johnston, whose credibility has been tainted by their association with a Liberal government known for its serial conflicts of interest.

These are the same Liberals that Mario Dion, the former ethics commissioner whose early retirement in February created the need for an interim replacement, found to be so oblivious to even the most straightforward conflicts of interest that he suggested on his way out the door that the Trudeau government send its ministers and parliamentary secretaries to his office for training.

And with good reason. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and two of his current and former senior ministers Mr. Leblanc and Bill Morneau have all violated the Conflict of Interest Act in an impressive variety of ways.

Lesser cabinet members have done it, too. Trade Minister Mary Ng and Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen were both caught giving lucrative government contracts to close friends and family members.

And just this year, Mr. Trudeaus parliamentary secretary, Greg Fergus, was caught violating the act by improperly intervening on behalf of a television station seeking a broadcast licence from the CRTC.

We wrote at the time of Mr. Dions announced departure that he had identified the real problem: a culture in the Liberal Party that starts at the top, and in which too many caucus members are indifferent to the conflict-of-interest rules governing MPs.

That toxic culture has created a party that appears to have lost interest in basic ethics, and it is rubbing off on much of what the Liberal government touches.

That includes Mr. Johnston, a man Mr. Trudeau calls a family friend. His appointment last month as the governments special rapporteur investigating foreign election interference might have gone over better had, prior to that, the Prime Minister demonstrated the faintest interest in avoiding conflicts of interest.

Instead, Mr. Trudeau himself violated the Conflict of Interest Act on two different occasions, his former finance minister did it once, two of his junior ministers were unaware that the public purse is not a bank account to be used for the benefit of best buddies and immediate family, and his parliamentary secretary missed the memo regarding his obligation not to interfere with a quasi-judicial tribunal.

And so any potential calculation that Mr. Johnstons well-earned reputation as an honest broker would bolster the Trudeau government has backfired. It has instead had the opposite effect and indelibly tainted the credibility of the special rapporteur process.

Mr. Trudeau breaks the rules that preserve the publics faith in the integrity of government, then he or his government appoints family friends and relatives to positions that oversee government, and he expects the public and the opposition to accept this at face value.

Like we said, maybe a prime minister who played by the rules would have the credibility to pull off the kinds of appointments Mr. Trudeau has overseen lately.

But then again, that kind of prime minister would never permit such appointments in the first place.

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Globe editorial: The Liberals' many ethics gaffes cast a long shadow - The Globe and Mail

The confidence-and-supply agreement between the Liberals and NDP is now just over a year old. The primary takeaway from the experience to date might be merelythat such a thing is possible that two competing parties can find agreement on a set of ideasand work together to implement those policies.

For the parties involved, the greatest lesson might be the value of communication and building personal relationships.

"When I contrast this minority government with the last minority government, there's just way more communication. And that, I think, is what helps keep us out of the ditch," said an NDP source, speaking on the condition they not be identified by name.

"Now that I've been through this for a while, I can totally see how it would be possible to end up in a confidence crisis that nobody meant to engineer. Just because nobody's communicating."

When opposing sides are left to interpret each other's actions and guess at motivations, suspicions are heightened and needless conflict can follow. So while the Liberal-NDP deal demands progress on the 27 policy items it covers, what it really requires is dialogue.

"Having set those structures in the agreement so we don't leave communication to chance, but there are structured meetings where it has to happen that's been really helpful, both in times when things are going smoothly, but also helpful when things aren't going smoothly," the source said.

"And I think it's also helped to build relationships at many levels between staff, between critics and ministers, between MPs, between the leaders, that [are] also helpful in kind of steering the ship."

A senior government source, also speaking on the condition they not be named, agreed.

"By working with folks closely, you learn how to talk to folks and that helps you in good and bad. And there's relationships and capital and goodwill to call on in good and bad," the government source said. "It's a relationship and you need to be building it."

The value of communication is the basic message of every guide to marriage. But if the notion of relationship-building seems novel in the context of Canadian politics, it's because public communication between parties consists almost entirely of accusations, boasts and taunts.

Judged only by question period, it seems the participants can barely stand to be in the same room together and are only capable of speaking in partisantalking points.

At least some of that conflict is necessary it creates accountability and gives expression to the differing views within a pluralistic society. But minority Parliaments cannot function without at least some amount of compromise and cooperation, at least not for long.

And if minority Parliaments are now more likely to be the rule than the exception, parties are going to need to work on their communication skills (or Canadian voters are going to have to get used to having elections every two years).

In most European countries where proportional representationessentially guarantees that no single party will win a majority of seats in the legislature parties working together is the norm. Even within the United States Congress (no one's idea of an ideal legislature)there is a rich history of members working across party lines. In such systems, some amount of cooperation is considered a requirement.

Not that such things were completely unheard of in Parliament before now. But a confidence-and-supply agreement seems to require a much greater degree of coordination. Liberal ministers can't simply call their NDP counterparts with a head's-up the night before a new program or bill is announced. For the most part, conversations are starting earlier in the policy-making process, with ministers and critics going back and forth over ideas and policy design.

Things have not always gone smoothly. Outside the 27-point agreement there have been notable points of conflict first over proposed amendments to new firearms legislation, then over the question of whether Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, would be called to testify about foreign interference at a parliamentary committee. The parties still regularly disagree and air those disagreements in forums like question period.

But the deal has held. The government figures it has completed 16 of the 27 items (not including the plan for dental care that was laid out in last month's budget) and this Parliament has now been in session for more than 500 days. If it survives until the scheduled end of the Liberal-NDP deal in 2025, it will be the longest-lasting minority Parliament of the last 60 years (the modern record is 888 days).

Whether the Liberal-NDP agreement will serve as a model for the future will depend to some degree on both politics and math.

There have been 10 minority Parliaments since the NDP first contested an election in 1962. In only five of those Parliaments did the Liberals and NDP combine to occupy a clear majority of seats in the House of Commons, as they do now. In all other cases, they would have had to work with a third party to be sure they could pass legislation.

In cases such as 2004 or 2008, that third party could have been the Bloc Quebecois. But it's not clear how willing any party will be in the future to make a formal deal with a separatist party. In 2008, when the Liberals and NDP attempted to form a coalition government with the Bloc's support, the Conservatives effectively weaponized the involvement of separatists to denounce the deal.

The Conservatives themselves could have a hard time finding a dance partner. During the two minority Parliaments that ran from 2006 to 2011, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were able to govern by either winning support for legislation on a case-by-case basis or by simply daring the other parties to vote against them and trigger an election (the Liberals of the day made a habit of standing down).

But federal politics may have changed in significant ways since then particularly as it relates to climate change. Would the Liberals or NDP be willing to work with, or even just avoid toppling, a Conservative government that was set on rolling back or outright repealing policies designed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Would either the Liberals or NDP allow a government led by Pierre Poilievre to follow through on his promises to scrap the federal carbon tax and clean fuel regulations?

While the Liberals and NDP may have had a relatively easy time finding points of agreement, it should be possible for nearly any two parties to find some amount of common ground. But could two parties possibly bridge a chasm as wide as the current left-right split on climate change?

For now, the Liberals might be keen to point out that they're working with another party and to contrast that with what they call the ConservativeParty's opposition and obstruction. And Conservatives might be happy to portray themselves as standing resolute against the progressive tide.

But the future might require that all parties learnthe value of communication, relationships and everything elsenecessary to ensure Parliament can function for four years at a time.

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The Liberals and NDP are learning to work together. Is that a model ... - CBC News

The defeated conservative governments recorded near-identical primary votes: 35.7 per cent for the Liberals at the South Australian state election in March 2022, 35.7 per cent for the Coalition at the federal election in May 2022, and 35.4 per cent for the Coalition at last months NSW state election.

Recent elections have shown the two-party system is officially cooked. Alex Ellinghausen

But Labor did not get above 40 per cent in its own right in any of its successful campaigns. Only Peter Malinauskas and Labor took power decisively in South Australia with a primary vote of exactly 40 per cent, and a two-party vote after the distribution of preferences of 54.7 per cent. , and a two-party preferred vote of 52.1 per cent, while with a primary vote of 37 per cent and a 2PP of 53.7 per cent.

The two-party system as we knew it in the 20th century, when a new government started with a primary vote of around 50 per cent, and its opponent still had a base in the low 40s, is officially cooked.

But it is the federal and state Liberals who are now facing an existential threat, with predominantly white and male party rooms. The Liberals are the least representative major party that the federal parliament has seen; a factor reinforced by the, in Melbournes outer east, last Saturday.

The party of Robert Menzies is outnumbered 26 to 30 in the lower house by their coalition colleagues from the Queensland LNP and the National Party. And the 10 city-based Liberals outside Brisbane are matched by the 10 independents and Greens.

Labor, on the other hand, can afford a record low entry vote into power because it has proven, at a state level at least in the 21st century so far, that it knows how to turn narrow first-term wins into second- and even third-term landslides.

Peter Dutton should understand this dual equation the vulnerability of his own side to the great shifts in Australian society, and the precedent on the Labor side for a decade-long rule across the national and big state parliaments following an era of divisive Coalition governments.

The loss of Aston was catastrophic not merely because it was the first time since 1920 that a federal government had picked up a seat from an opposition at a byelection. It is because Victorians have done this to the Liberals before at state level.

When Steve Bracks led Labor into minority government in 1999, there was an assumption that the Coalition would be competitive at the next state election because it no longer had the one-man drag on their vote former premier Jeff Kennett. Insert Scott Morrison in Kennetts place and you can appreciate why the Albanese government will be wargaming another byelection upset if and when the former prime minister resigns from his southern Sydney electorate of Cook.

Labor won the byelection for Kennetts seat of Burwood, in Melbournes middle east, in 1999, and then the byelection for the former National Party leader and deputy premier Pat McNamaras rural seat of Benalla in 2000. Neither had ever been held by Labor before, and while Benalla returned to the Coalition fold in 2002, Burwood remained in Labor hands during the next two Brackslides in 2002 and 2006. Today, it is part of the new seat of Ashwood, which Labor won with a primary vote of 40.3, and a 2PP of 56.2 per cent, at last Novembers state election landslide for Daniel Andrews government.

Dutton may not have bothered with the finer details of Victorian state politics when he was a rising star in John Howards Coalition government. But Bracks is the leader who is closest in manner, and underestimated political appeal to Albanese. Neither are white Anglo men. Bracks has Lebanese heritage; Albanese is half Italian. Neither man is consciously ethnic; in fact, they are routinely surprised when constituents share stories from homelands to which they themselves have no direct connection. Bracks and Albanese have diversity projected onto them. It is innocent in many ways. But in the head-to-head between Albanese and Dutton, in a nation that is majority migrant now, it matters more than the latter probably appreciates.

Dutton is already sick of hearing the advice from his own side that the Liberals have a problem with female voters, with young Australia who cant afford to enter the housing market, and with migrant communities, especially Chinese Australians whom he helped alienate with his war talk.

Illustration by John Shakespeare.

But there is a structural paradox that he and his colleagues ignore at their peril. It is inevitable that diversity will accelerate in every state.

Take a step back from the slicing and dicing of the electorate by cohorts and consider the basic question of population growth, through the concept of the Australian family tree, with First Australian roots, an Old Australian trunk and New Australian branches. The trunk represents non-Indigenous people who were born in this country, as were their parents and grandparents, while the branches cover migrants and their locally born children.

At the 2021 census, New Australia formed the majority with 50.8 per cent of the then population of 25.4 million; Old Australia was 45.4 per cent and First Australia 3.8 per cent. Almost two years on, the population is one million larger and the branches and the roots will have increased their respective shares at the expense of the slower-growing trunk.

We know this because of what happened in the boom years before lockdown. Migrants were responsible for the majority of the nations population growth for the first time since the gold rushes of the 1850s.

Migrants accounted for 60 per cent of Sydneys population growth and 54 per cent of Melbournes between 2011 and 2021. In Darwin, it was 62 per cent, Hobart 55 per cent, Canberra 46 per cent, Adelaide 44 per cent and Perth 42 per cent. Brisbane was the outlier at 39 per cent because it had a more even mix of growth thanks to internal migration. Yet once you add the children of migrants, 69 per cent of the growth in the Queensland capital came from New Australia. In Sydney, the figure was 97 per cent; Melbourne 88 per cent and Perth 75 per cent the three key cities from which the Liberals were evicted by Labor and the teals at the last federal election.

Australia, seen through Duttons LNP binoculars in Brisbane, looks like another country. But even Brisbane is moving closer to the cosmopolitan south. Remember that Greens picked up three seats here two from the LNP and one from Labor. They did this in the whiter parts of the city where young professional renters are moving the pendulum to the left.

The most brazen aspect of Duttons on the referendum for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament is the attempt to shake the leaves of our family tree. Migrant communities are among the key swinging voters in the referendum soft Yes voters, according to the public and private polls, who could be persuaded to vote no if change is seen as too risky, or complicated.

What Dutton seems to have forgotten is that Howard himself took an equivalent dark path as opposition leader in the late 1980s when he criticised Asian migration. It cost Howard the Liberal leadership at the time, and placed a personal re-entry barrier to the job which he finally cleared in 1995 by apologising for his comments. Howard helped make the Liberals electable again by dropping his ideological baggage on Medicare, industrial relations and migration. He met the electorate on its terms, while articulating a positive agenda around core Liberal values.

Where is the equivalent work being done by Dutton and his colleagues, either federally, or in basket case states or Victoria, South Australia or Western Australia?

On the evidence so far, Dutton believes he has nothing to learn. He went to work immediately after the Aston debacle determined to double down on the politics of division that helped make the Liberals a minor party across large parts of the country.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. .

The rest is here:
The two-party system is cooked, and the Liberals are leftovers - Sydney Morning Herald