Decomposing Trees

Alex Hawke will most likely be the next member for the Federal seat of Mitchell apparently winning 75% of vote for Liberal pre-selection. Alan Cadman was inevitably going to lose as in the 2004 pre-selection he won by a handful of votes. There were moves to try to stop his pre-selection but it seems they've failed.

Hawke was a former National President of the Young Liberals and belongs to the Right of the party, associated with NSW Upper House MP David Clarke.

Not only does it signal the strength of the Right in the Liberals but it makes you wonder how much longer any sense of social liberalism can remain in the Liberal Party when people like Alex Hawke get pre-selected.

Two years ago the Sydney Morning Herald did some profiles of young up and coming politicians, one of the people profiled was Alex Hawke.

You just shudder when you read it. Anyone on the progressive side of politics who think Tony Abbott, Phillip Ruddock or Bill Heffernan is bad has seen nothing yet.

"Nobody joins the Liberal Party to be left-wing," he says. "If you stand for compulsory student unionism, drug-injecting rooms [and] lowering the age of consent, you can choose the Greens, Labor or the Democrats."
Hawke's philosophy involves some nifty contortions. He is a fanatical advocate of freedom of choice in the economic sphere, even helping Education Minister Brendan Nelson draft the government's voluntary student unionism legislation. Yet he supports banning late-term abortions and Medicare-subsidised terminations. "I'm for human rights. These unborn children aren't able to defend themselves," he says.

He essentially wants to wipe out any sense of small 'l' liberalism from the Liberal Party using a whatever it takes attitude, John Brogden implicating him in a campaign to undermine him when he resigned.

It is scary that someone like this will be in Federal Parliament and another reason why we need to get rid of the Liberals.

UPDATE: An interesting Polemica post from two years ago