It’s time for the parties to consider rebranding themselves

June 10, 2026 — 8:00pm Photo: Megan HerbertTo submit a letter to The Age, email letters@theage.com.au. Please include your home address and telephone number. No attachments, please include your letter in the body of the email. See here for our rules and tips on getting your letter published.Angus Taylor says that he wants to see Australians led by a centre-right party in Canberra. Ahem. We’ve got one of those already so I think Taylor is batting on a losing wicket there. The Australian political parties really need to take a look at themselves and rebrand. The Labor Party now is a rubbish name; we’re now post-industrial, we don’t have thousands of people working in nationalised heavy industries. With their new values they really need to call themselves the Liberal Party.The Liberals are far from liberal. They need to re-form and reveal what they are, a Conservative Party, then they can say what they really think without having to bother with One Nation. If they have the ticker they could go the whole hog and rebrand as the Conservative and Unionist Party. I think they’d like that, grand and they get to add red and white to their blue.The Greens, well, no change there, they can stay the same; they are Green but they’ll never be truly Green like they were in Europe under Petra Kelly. The problem with being Green is that it you actually need to be able to afford it. Independent candidates will always be that, perhaps they can keep their name but go grey, because, with the exception of people like David Pocock aren’t they all former bluebloods connected to Liberal Party royalty?That leaves the Nationals. How they must miss the days of apple-cheek cherubic children running around the paddocks, cheap farm labour and landlines. They need to get back to their roots, the Country Party beckons.There you go, sorted.Simon Clegg, DonvaleThe neoliberal crowd is not our friendYour correspondent (Letters, 10/6) rightly observes that the Coalition’s record of economic management has involved ″⁣looking after business and the wealthy with the promise that some crumbs will trickle down to the workers″⁣.The name for this is neoliberalism, the economic philosophy that shattered the post-Great Depression rise of Keynesian economics that gave us a more equal world for 40 years.Neoliberalism – and the immense wealth disparity it delivered – is the underlying reason for the international rise of grievance politics. (Inter-generational wealth disparity is but a symptom, which is a significant reason Labor’s urgently needed reforming budget has found difficulty in cutting through the bleating of the self-interested pack.)One Nation, with its incessant cheering on of the neoliberal crowd, including Donald Trump and his MAGA cartel – not to mention such things as taking multi-million-dollar gifts from billionaires does not offer solutions; rather, it is very much part of the problem.Graeme Samuel’s Comment (10/6) ″⁣Don’t fall for vested interests’ howls″⁣ was spot on.Dennis Dodd, SheppartonGoing with One Nation is to self-destructIt is time for the Coalition to stop ideology and start thinking about what is best for Australia. Angus Taylor’s thinking to preference One Nation ahead of Labor smells of the Coalition’s self-destruction in the 2028 election at the hands of One Nation. For One Nation to govern in its own right it needs an extra 74 seats in the lower house. For this to be achieved there would not be a Coalition MP left.The more likely scenario is that One Nation would form the opposition with a handful of Coalition MPs. But really can One Nation fulfil the role of government or opposition with their ragtag followers? One Nation could never manage to appoint reputable ministers or shadow ministers to manage a complex society and economy. The Coalition best understand, if it can’t form government in its own right, Australia is best run by its political rival Labor.John Rome, Mt Lawley, WATHE FORUMHowl of hypocrisyGraeme Samuel’s Comment piece ″⁣Don’t fall for vested interests’ howls″⁣ (10/6) in relation to the necessary changes to CGT concessions and negative gearing hits the mark. It’s ironic that people demand change and then when it occurs, it’s hijacked by vested interests who too easily, convince many of those who are beneficiaries, that they are somehow missing out.I remember during the 2019 election speaking with people who were concerned about Bill Shorten’s proposed changes to housing policy, even though none of them had investment properties. Surely this helps explain why few politicians engage in ″⁣bold″⁣ policy reform.The art of conservative politics still seems to be to persuade the many, not the well-off, to vote against their own interests. Equally, it must be comforting for those with assets in property watching those who haven’t do their bidding.Craig Jory, Albury, NSWLabor’s brave moves . . .Good on you, Graeme Samuel. For weeks now the only issue debated has been the breaking of promises, as though that is fundamental to judging whether we have good government. The national benefit from good tax reform has been barely mentioned. As Samuel wrote, people clamour for reform but any serious proposal instantly brings on the megaphones of protest and doom-saying from privileged minorities. I hope that the brave start to taxing trusts like companies is just a beginning, and the proposal to largely end negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount is sustained by a brave government against all howls of protest. For decades it has seemed that tax reform had become impossible, and privilege would be preserved forever. Wonderful to see a political party serious about good government and not scared to challenge undeserved privilege.Robert Bender, Ivanhoe East. . . Now to gambling adsWhile it was interesting to read about the political ″⁣courage and determination″⁣ shown in relation to tax reform in the budget (″⁣Don’t fall for vested interests’ howls″⁣, 10/6), many of us would love to see it applied to gambling ad reform. Reform in the gambling industry also needs the political fortitude to resist vested interests and recognise the great harm that is caused by normalising gambling. We live in hope.Maryanne Barclay, Frankston SouthLibs’ identity crisisIt’s not too much of a stretch to place the large measure of responsibility on the rise of One Nation on the Coalition. In directing preferences to One Nation in the Farrer byelection instead of the independent, enabling One Nation to win the long-held Coalition seat, One Nation has moved from being a fringe party in the mind of the electorate to one which is capable of winning lower house seats – the first step towards being able to govern.By continuing to air the possibility of further alignment, the Coalition is ceding ground to One Nation, whose policies seem to be more mimicked by the Coalition, who are now beginning to be seen as followers rather than leaders on the right of politics. It begins to look like the Coalition has adopted the mantra, ″⁣If you can’t beat them, join them″⁣, which many in the wider community seem to be adopting by switching their allegiance to One Nation. Time will tell whether this is an enduring phenomenon, but it does place responsibility back upon the Coalition to re-establish their unique identity on the centre-right of the political spectrum.Gary Heard, Bullsbrook, WAAssessing AUKUSWaleed Aly infers (Comment, 5/6) infers the Labor government decision to spend $368 billion on eight nuclear-powered submarines is a fait accompli, a highly fanciful speculation at this early stage.He wisely suggests that public concern over AUKUS appearing out of nowhere is emblematic of a deeper existential question about where Australia stands in an increasingly fractious world. He then asserts the recently announced public inquiry into AUKUS will deliver a predetermined outcome, notwithstanding that commissioners include a former Chief of the Defence Force, while suggesting that the debate is “almost too large for the public conversation to process” – surely a good reason to have an public inquiry. Along the way Aly claims that the secondhand US Virginia class submarines will have “the teething problems ironed out”, and that the benefits of a new submarine are “negligible”.Both are highly contestable statements. He then states there is a “sense” that AUKUS wasn’t properly examined, while musing that AUKUS is a flashpoint about how we envisage sovereignty and defence – 100 per cent. Sounds like there couldn’t be a better time for the Australian people to thoroughly assess AUKUS.Peter Garrett, SydneyThe roads to truthRoss Gittins’ idea (Comment, 10/6) of a stage when “the economy has become ungovernable” approaches the truth. All roads lead not to the capital, but to capitalism, the ideology which has long since reached the point of requiring its shortcomings to be publicly acknowledged, just as, long ago, Christian churches had to bury details of their doctrine as scientific discoveries became increasingly irrefutable.Economists, who are scientists of a kind, have unfortunately not been as proactively progressive for establishing truths contrary to the wishes of the powerful of their day, as were Galileo and his peers.Ruth Farr, Blackburn SouthThe outsider appealRoss Gittins is spot on (Comment, 10/6). In the past 30 years price increases have outstripped wage rises and, as a result, many people are struggling to survive.Politicians have put forward proposals to redress the situation. For example, Malcolm Turnbull’s push, for a fairer Australia with reforms in economic growth, health, education, childcare and disability. Unfortunately, these were all met with strong opposition especially from within his own side of politics.We should never forget the 2019 election scare campaign when Bill Shorten proposed sweeping economic reforms to negative gearing, capital gains taxation, dividend imputation, trusts and superannuation. These reforms would have delivered massive tax cuts to Australians, greatly improving living standards.ABS data shows that 10 per cent of households own about 45 per cent of Australia’s total private wealth. Whenever reforms have been proposed to redress this situation influence, misinformation and obfuscation have been used to generate a public outcry, resulting in political leaders timidly backing off.People are turning to Pauline Hanson not because she has the answers, rather because she is not seen as an insider. However, she is likely to be the latest iteration of populist enjoying short term support which disappears when placed under scrutiny.If Australia is to achieve real reforms that improve the living standards of everyday people, as Gittins says ″⁣it’s vitally important″⁣ that Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese press on with their reform program.James Young, Mt ElizaAI, the servantAI offers many great things, but it must always be servant, not leader. The threat it poses to humanity is “logical” expedience in the absence of ethics, the more emotional but critical qualities that define us as humans. Viewed this way, AI has the capacity to fuel the most ruthless of economic and political systems, and to provide and enact “solutions” that are evil. We have already seen the early stages of this, where instead of making life easier and better for all, AI has enabled brutal mass sackings in order to expediently achieve corporate goals.Government use of AI poses similar risks, for example, in an amplified Robodebt kind of way. It is our choice how we use AI, but passive acceptance and unawareness of the risks it poses will ensure the latter.Emma Borghesi, RyeAnother intelligencePerhaps the governments’ embracing of AI can be applied more effectively by using it to model the benefits of all tax-funded business cases to see how they really stack up, without any political or preferential bias.Let’s start with the case for building energy-draining, water-guzzling data centres on one of the driest continents on Earth during an energy transition crisis. No? Didn’t think so.Stephen Farrelly, DonvaleSubject was NetanyahuI disagree with the Australian Press Council Adjudication (10/6) on the “Grass roots” cartoon from January 7. If the character beating the drum was shown as a generic Jewish person then it was antisemitic. But it showed Benjamin Netanyahu beating the drum. Netanyahu is only the Prime Minister of Israel, he is not representative of all the Jews worldwide. In the same way that Donald Trump is not representative of all the Americans worldwide or Xi Jinping is not representative of all the Chinese worldwide or Anthony Albanese for Australia.We see many cartoons with Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Anthony Albanese and others and those are OK; they are not considered anti the country or racist.The cartoon was only a reflection on the actions of Netanyahu not Jews in general.Laurens Meyer, RichmondThe Trump EffectSo much blame is being directed at the major parties for the rise of One Nation, when the cause is more than likely “The Trump Effect”.We’re heading into an age where “Greed is Good” and xenophobia is to blame for everything.Robyn Williams, Sale Photo: Matt GoldingAND ANOTHER THINGPoliticsHow long does Angus Taylor have to save the Liberals? (Analysis, 10/6). I suggest he be given no more time than he gave Sussan Ley.Les Aisen, ElsternwickAngus Taylor is not captain of a sinking ship. The Liberal ship has sunk.Alan Williams, Port MelbourneCan anyone suggest a hobby that Tony Abbott could adopt that would keep him away from politics? The nation would be grateful.John Walsh, WatsoniaIt is an interesting time in politics. Tony Abbott has likened One Nation to the MAGA cult, but is happy to deal with them.Michael Brinkman, VentnorRecently, I’ve been hearing some people describe Pauline Hanson as a “breath of fresh air”. Where have they been for the past 30 years?Bernd Rieve, BrightonPauline Hanson’s comment to Jacinta Allan to ″⁣suck it up″⁣, is pure Trump. It will be a sad day indeed if this kind of language becomes part of Australia’s political discourse.Margaret Brennan, YarravilleFurthermoreWe think of commuting as catching the bus to work. Donald Trump thinks of it as cancelling the sentences of rich criminals.Tony Haydon, SpringvaleEd Husic is right. Having being wedged into AUKUS, it’s high time the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese edged out. To do otherwise is high risk and an extremely poor value proposition.Jim Allen, Panorama, SAIt’s a disgrace that it’s easier to build huge data centres than housing for the homeless.Paul Chivers, Box Hill NorthFinallyI hope the death of a seven-month-old child in Palestine will bring light to those who think death is the way to power, and end this maniacal mess.Bruce Dudon, WoodendFrom our partners