Published: 3 February 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
STEVE MEACHAM: Incensed at the Coalition’s treatment of asylum seekers, Victor Kline founded a new liberal party based on liberalism’s compassionate values
“THE INCREDIBLE CORRUPTION of this Scott Morrison government is the worst we’ve seen in Australia since the Rum Rebellion,” says Victor Kline, co-founder and leader of the nation’s youngest political party.
“If we are fortunate enough to hold the balance of power after this year’s federal election, we’ll insist on a federal ICAC [corruption and integrity commission] with real teeth.
“The most important policy for any thinking Australian has to be urgent action to stop climate change.
“But our party’s number one policy in negotiations about the balance of power will be to insist on our vigorous federal ICAC model. Because without cleaning up the corruption in Australian politics, we can’t achieve anything on climate change.”
A self-admitted “political novice”, Kline, 70, confesses the party he has led since it formed in February 2019 has one strategic aim. “To knock off the Morrison government.”
The current coalition has been in power since 2013 when voters tired of Labor’s dancing horse carousel of Rudd, Gillard and Rudd - only to find it replaced by another fairground favourite, the laughing clowns of Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.
Voter dissatisfaction is at an all-time low in most western democracies. So is membership of political parties. In Australia, both Labor and the Liberal/National coalition have succumbed to branch-stacking scandals because so many branches have so few genuine members.
Which is why the coalition’s apparatchiks were so eager to ban the name of the party Kline leads: The New Liberals.
