Liberal MP Nick Goiran has shared his thoughts about the party’s election wipe-out dismissing suggestions that Christian candidates are a reason that voters turned away from the party at the ballot box.
Penning an opinion piece for The West Australian, Goiran said suggestion that religious candidates played a part in the devastating loss were just “trite commentary”.
“The trite commentary from those seeking to blame so-called ‘powerbrokers’ and ‘Christians’ is the usual smokescreen seeking to deflect from underperformance.
“The inconvenient truth is that for quite some time the Liberal parliamentary party and organisational wing have consisted of far too many passengers and destabilisers.” Goiran said.
In an accompanying interview with the newspaper Goiran denied that Christian Conservatives had views that were out of touch with regular West Australians. While the party had dumped candidate Andrea Tokaji after it was revealed she supported conspiracy theories that suggested coronavirus was related to the 5G mobile phone network, Goiran said it was unreasonable to assume that Christians being in parliament would lead to a proliferation of conspiracy theories being supported.
“One would expect the Liberal Party is going to be pre-selecting and continuing to preselect a large number of conservative people for office. There’s nothing strange about that. The conspiracy theories? Well, we don’t support that, so of course, those people shouldn’t be running.”
“It’s a quantum leap to suggest that if you’re going to have people in the Liberal Party who are conservatives, and they’re Christians, it’s going to end up resulting in a lot of conspiracy theories running around in Parliament. Demonstrate the evidence for that. You’ve given one example of one candidate with a 5G conspiracy theory.”
Gorian said it was an “absurd suggestion” that party pre-selectors were under the belief that Christian candidates should be backed over other people putting their hand up for selection.
The MP said he understood why former leader Zak Kirkup had dumped Tokaji as a candidate but said many party members felt the decision went against the party’s values of free speech, and the decision to dis-endorse the candidate had become a distraction during the campaign.
During the campaign several candidates Christian values were questions including Victoria Park candidate Amanda Sue-Markham, Legislative Council candidate Phil Twiss, and Jandakot candidate Mihael McCoy.
Earlier this week former Party President Barry Court offered his advice for rebuilding the Liberal party saying it was important the remaining MP’s remind the McGowan government “how powerful the Church is in running this country”.
Court, the husband of religious reader Margaret Court, is the son of former Liberal Premier Sir Charles Court, and his brother Richard Court was premier in the 1990s.
“My father, when he was premier, often said the rules of running the country are all in the Bible and if they went by those, he said he can shut the prisons and get on with running the country,” he told parishioners at the Victory Life Church.
“We’ve just elected a lot of new members of Parliament, they’ve never been in there before, I encourage you to look up and find out who they are and where their office is.
“All the offices of politicians in WA, to my knowledge, are always available on Fridays. There’s no Parliament, they make it their office day where their constituents can go and talk to them and meet with them.
“I encourage you today to do that … find out who they are, make an appointment and go and have a talk to them and let them know what the Church is doing because the the country is governed by the government, but it’s really the Church, right over the years, the Church has run the world.”
Sir Charles Court was the member for Nedlands for over three decades, holding the seat from 1958 to 1982, his son Richard Court succeeded him and held the seat until 2001.
OIP Staff
Love OUTinPerth Campaign
Help support the publication of OUTinPerth by contributing to our
GoFundMe campaign.
