Thread by @timdunlop

Australian conservatism - its political and media wings - are in absolute crisis and it is damaging the whole country. Their entire project - economic and social - is incoherent, making it impossible for them to understand the nation they seek to govern, the world they live in.

Economically, they are nothing more than the party of rent seekers, doing the will of everyone from the corrupt banking industry to the dying fossil fuel industry. Instead of preparing us for the technology-driven economy of the near future, they are propping up the old order

Socially, they're dominated by old white men who refuse to acknowledge the inevitable diversity of a European settler nation in the heart of Asia with an Aboriginal past and future. They rail against women, immigrants, LGBTI: anyone who isn't them. It is damaging them and us

Ideologically, they can't tell the difference between fact & fiction, reality and fantasy. They think climate change is something we can choose to ignore, just like they think being gay is a choice. They are inevitably racist & misogynist, bc that is the only ground left to them

Institutionally, the LNP is a broken vehicle for conservatism. News Ltd is a broken vehicle for conservatism. They are the phantom limbs of the body politic: we feel them as if they are real, but they are gone. They can cause us pain, but they can't carry us into the future.

Those who want a future for conservatism should welcome the rise of thoughtful conservative independents wherever they emerge, as this is the only way forward for that side of politics. (And stop listening to the Jones-Bolt-Devine-SkyNews axis of idiocy.)

For those who want a more progressive country, we need to be braver and more demanding of the institutions that seek to represent us & trust that the electorate will embrace a practical AND forward-looking agenda. The biggest mistake is to play to a centre that no longer exists.

This goes much deeper than the Victorian election, and things will play out differently in different places, but if you think there are no national ramifications for what happened yesterday, you are still in denial. Or the LNP. Or the News Ltd bubble.

One last thing: they cannot be reasoned with, they can only be beaten.

Which is not a withdrawal from political engagement, just a recognition that the LNP and its supporters in the media are no longer the vehicle for reasonable engagement. It will need to come from elsewhere.