It is no secret that the modern Liberal Party is – insofar as it can be characterised in ideological terms (always an important caveat, since few people’s views map neatly onto the organising ‘isms’ used by intellectuals) – an alliance of liberalism and conservativism. Interestingly, this is often an alliance within individuals as well as between individuals. There are social conservatives who hold essentially liberal (ie, pro-market) views on economic matters. There are social liberals who hold essentially conservative views on economic matters (ie, in favour of the old protectionist system). The Prime Minister has often discussed the liberal-conservative alliance, such as in this April 2006 speech:

The Liberal Party of Australia is the custodian of two traditions in Australian politics. It is the custodian of the classic liberal tradition, but it is also the custodian of the conservative tradition in Australian politics. You have frequently heard me use the expression the broad church. We are a broad church. We do have within our ranks people who would describe themselves as small-l liberals and we have people who would describe themselves as being more conservative. I am a small-l liberal on some issues, I am a conservative on others. I have frequently described myself unapologetically as being a social conservative and an economic liberal. Some would describe themselves as both socially conservative and economically conservative, although I think the second rung of that is a more dwindling group, but nonetheless some would regard themselves as both social and economic liberals.

In an article that is to be published in the November issue of The Monthly, but which was extracted in The Australian yesterday, Rudd trys to drive a wedge through this alliance. As Don Arthur has started to point out there is some innacurate characterisation of what ‘neoliberals’ believe, but this can be ignored as not essential to Rudd’s argument. The core of it is here:

There are no more corrosive agents at work today, on the so-called conservative institutions of family, community, church and country than the unforgiving forces of neo-liberalism, materialism and consumerism, which lay waste to anything in their way. This deep split within the Right provides new opportunities for the Labor Party to argue for a comprehensive set of values that intelligently harnesses the importance of the market and the importance of the family, community and society that markets ultimately serve.

Nowhere amid the triumphalism of Howard’s recent address on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Quadrant was there any attempt at a philosophical framework for the reconciliation of the Right’s competing neo-liberal and conservative tendencies. That battle, it seems, has already been fought and the neo-liberals have won.

Rudd is asserting here that there is fundamental contradiction in the Liberal Party, and it is the conservatives who are being dudded in this alliance – with of course the implicit (and perhaps explicit, in the full article) argument that the conservative working and lower-middle class voters who have kept Howard in power should switch to Labor, the true conservative party. He is trying to wedge the Liberals.

While Howard did not try to reconcile the competing tendencies in the Quadrant speech (his most absurdly over-analysed comments of recent times; it was a feelgood talk for the magazine’s supporters, not a statement of his governing philosophy) he has done it elsewhere. For example:

Contemporary Australian society understands that we do live in a world of change, they understand that globalism is with us forever, they may not like some aspects of it but they know they can’t change it and they therefore want a government that delivers the benefits of globalisation and not one that foolishly pretends Canute-like it can hold back the tide. They accept and they understand that. But they also want within that change, sometimes that maelstrom of economic change, they want reassurance and they want to protect and defend those institutions that have given them a sense of security and a sense of purpose over the years.

In this, Howard’s basic analysis is similar to that of Hawke and Keating. We need a flexible and dynamic economy to deliver the living standards people want and expect. But alongside the change this produces, we need stabilising influences. Hawke and Keating delivered this through reform gradualism and via the ’social wage’. Howard has been much the same in his broad thrust, though there are many differences of detail. It is why Howard has massively increased spending on families, and why he is raining cash on rural Australia, to replace the water it is not getting. It is why he slowed tariff cuts and spent up big on assistance packages for declining industries to spread out and ease the process of change. It is why he regularly refers to social cohesion, to the point of even making social democratic statements about ‘fair’ wealth distribution. Arguably, his culture wars activities are part of all this too. He saw Keating’s cultural agenda as pushing unwanted and unnecessary changes on a people already suffering reform fatigue over necessary changes.

If anything, the people who should be aggrieved in all this are not conservatives or liberal conservatives, but liberals (’neo’ or otherwise). While Howard has made some modest progress on market reform, he has entrenched high government spending and taken conservative stances on gay equality and euthanasia. But Rudd isn’t trying to create a wedge with liberals, because there are too few to affect elections, and it doesn’t allow focus on industrial relations reform, a key Labor campaign strategy.

There are interesting issues here about whether the Hawke/Keating/Howard/Rudd analysis favouring state action to counteract market dynamism is correct. I think it is greatly exaggerated – but something for another post. But I don’t think there is much ground for Rudd’s wedge strategy. Howard has delivered much to the Liberal Party’s conservative and liberal conservative support base; far too much for us in the ‘neoliberal’ wing of the party.