‘Australia’s great political shift‘, Inside Story, 28 July 2017
On the eve of Liberal and Coalition party meetings on an issue – marriage equality – which has, for some people at least, a religious element, this piece is timely. The author refers to recent Tony Abbott comments which put a particular religious twist on the idea of ‘Western civilisation’ and moves on to make the point that
Tony Abbott’s comments that night are a reminder of how much, and in how relatively short a time, Catholicism has come to characterise the Liberal Party. For much of its history, the party and its non-Labor predecessors were bastions of Protestantism; it was in the Labor Party, traditionally, that Catholics found their political home.
Much has changed in the last 30 years, and Abjorensen traces some of the history.