The
usual rule is that the first person to mention the Nazis has lost the
argument. Liberals such as George Brandis and Bronwyn Bishop are so
keen to compare people they don’t like to Nazis (the Greens and Muslim
women, respectively) that they seem to have lost any moral compass
whatsoever.

There are still people walking down Carlisle
Street, St Kilda or Marine Parade, Bondi with numbers tattooed on the
inside of their arm – numbers that have stretched and grown as the
child who received them grew to adulthood. It’s one thing to call
someone – as people from all sides of politics do – a “little Hitler”
or similar, but to make these sort of extended comparisons is as much a
betrayal of the victims of Nazism, as it is a disgrace to the intended
target.

But
when are we going to hear a more forthright defence of liberal
principles – and basic decency – from within the party itself? Do Petro
Georgiou, Judi Moylan, Bruce Baird, Marise Payne and others really feel
comfortable giving silent consent to the propagation of such garbage?

While
holding our breath waiting for this, we might want to consider the most
basic paradox in all the press coverage of this which is that no-one,
but no-one, has pointed out that one of the few concrete things we can
say about “Australian identity” is that it includes a constitutional
guarantee of the freedom of religion. To recap for, it seems everyone,
section 116:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing
any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for
prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test
shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust
under the Commonwealth.

Of course Mesdames Bishop and
Panopolous have called for regulations within state schools, which
could get round a Commonwealth protection of religious freedom – but
what is bewildering is that no-one has mentioned the paradoxical nature
of defending “our” culture by opposing the spirit of our founding
document.

Does this indicate that nobody knows? Or that nobody
cares? Or both? In fact the only person to mention “our beautiful
constitution” was Bishop herself (on the Terry Lane program The National Interest)
who argued that it guaranteed “a secular state.” She somehow forgot to
mention the clause about laws prohibiting religious expression.

It
is worthless asking the ladies who lunch themselves of course – Bishop
is genuinely stupid, and Panopolous is staking out territory. But if
no-one in the party is willing to publicly renounce this giddy,
ignorant and dangerous rush to the right, then they are doing no more
than preparing for a split – such as that of Steele Hall’s Liberal
Movement of the late 1960s, which ultimately ushered in the Dunstan
era. Given the swing against the Liberals in seats such as Higgins in
2004, what sort of purchase could a genuinely liberal party make there
and elsewhere?