Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has called on Australians to boycott Woolworths.
This comes after the retailer announced it won’t be selling Australia Day merchandise this year.
Peter Dutton says Australians should be free to decide whether they want to celebrate Australia Day or not.
- Sky News Australia, 11th Jan 2024.
There is no story told in a vacuum. The problem with a story like this is that although it exists today, and although it does not exist in isolation, we never remember the farmer, we only remember the fruit, and we don't remember the inventor, we only remember the boom and the impact going forward.
What else is going on here? Is this merely about Peter Dutton dancing around his annually erected green and gold maypole for pantomime culture warriors to dance around in confected outrage for the benefit of the Angertainment Complex?
Whipping up anger full of air, is the business model of News Corp and their political wing, the Liberal Party. I suspect that News Corp and the Liberal Party don't actually care about the issue, but are happy whip this up for those sweet sweet advert dollars, or in the case of the Liberal Party, votes.
Why does Peter Dutton want Australians to boycott Woolworths? Why should he care about a supermarket? Well, the answer is in fact quite quite old.
Peter Dutton is moving to lock in a replacement for outgoing Liberal Karen Andrews within weeks to stave off a likely threat from a teal candidate at the next election.
- The Australian, 31st Dec 2023
From what I understand, Liberal Party strategists are reported as being “increasingly concerned” about the possible startup of a teal threat named “McPherson Matters”.
In a classic move which the Liberal Party pulled off before, by hiring a Public Relations Officer (Scott Morrison), the front runner for preselection from the Liberal Party for the seat of McPherson is a chap called Adam Fitzgibbons.
Who is Adam Fitzgibbons?
https://au.linkedin.com/in/adam-fitzgibbons-40728622
Adam Fitzgibbons is the Head of Public Affairs for Coles Group, Australia's leading supermarket retailer.
- Linked In, 12th Jan 2024.
The idea that Peter Dutton acting as spokes-potato for the Liberal Party on behalf of Coles, is completely expected given that Coles and the Liberal Party go back a very very very long time.
The most recent direct involvement of crossover from Coles to the Liberal Party was in 1992 when, the former chairman of Coles Myer, Bevan Bradbury OA, retired from the chair of Coles Myer Ltd. to take up the post of the NSW Liberal Party President. However, go right back to the beginning of the formation of the Liberal Party and we find that Coles and the Liberal Party are even closer.
Sir Arthur William Coles (1892–1982) "AW", founded Coles Variety Stores along with his brother George James Coles (1885-1977) "GJ" in 1919. Coles Variety Stores would later become the Coles Group, after passing through various iterations, and alongside Woolworths is one of the two largest supermarket chains in Australia.
AW in what I can only gather looks like an act of revenge against Melbourne City Council, ran for the position of Lord Mayor of Melbourne and won it, in 1938. He held that position for two years, and then after his term had ended, used that popularity to run for the House of Representatives seat of Henty in the Sep 1940 election, which he also won as an Independent.
However, sometime during the 1940-1943 term, although AW caucused with the United Australia Party under Sir Robert Menzies, Menzies' increasing vassalage to London, practically exploded the UAP. AW as one of the two independent MPs propping up the UAP/Country Coalition in government since 1940, crossed the floor in parliament. Curtin's Labor Party with the help of the two independent MPs passed a £1 variation budget, thus ensuring supply and handing government to Curtin.
After the war, AW Coles was handed a cushy job as Chairman of the National Airlines Commission in 1946 and returned the favour to the then Chifley Government by practically handing his old seat back to the Opposition. It seems somewhat strange that AW should give his ex-seat in the House of Representatives to a Member of the Opposition until you realise what had happened on that side of the political floor.
Menzies after exploding the old United Australia Party, spent roughly three years in the wilderness. In the meantime, Menzies courted his friend Sir Keith Murdoch at the Melbourne Herald who had given him practically free political propaganda, , and his friend Sir George James "G.J" Coles (AW's brother and Chairman of what was now GJ Coles Ltd.) and helped set up the Institute of Public Affairs in 1943.
Not only did the Institute of Public Affairs send delegates to that opening meeting at the Formation of the Liberal Party on 13th October 1944, but also to the Conference of Representatives of Non Labour Organisations on 16th October 1944, but they parachuted members for preselection upon the formal announcement of the formation of the party held at the Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945.
I have only really found vague inklings of a meeting held at the Kurrajong Hotel in Canberra in September of 1944; so I do not know if it was just Menzies and Murdoch or Menzies, Murdoch and Coles who were the three seed members of what would become the party. What we do know is that the Institute of Public Affairs and the Liberal Party of Australia have been so intertwined that at times you can look from one to the other, and back from the other to the first one; and it is impossible to say which was which. Not only was GJ Coles present right at the beginning of the IPA and the Liberal Party but he became the IPA's president in 1965.
So then, for Peter Dutton, to act as spokes-potato for the Liberal Party on behalf of Coles, and demand that the general public boycott Woolworths, who is Coles' retail enemy, looks completely in line with a poltical party which frequently acts belligerently against its enemies. GJ Coles as one of the original founders of the IPA before there even was a Liberal Party, would have wanted it this way.
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