David Leyonhjelm, Malcolm Roberts and Andrew Laming’s audience was overwhelmingly white and male when they spoke at a LibertyWorks event

Australia's 'political deplorables' head to the pub to call last drinks on major parties

In the sweltering confines of a Brisbane pub, as the rest of the city cut loose at work Christmas parties, a select group was finding communion with a trio billed as “Australia’s political deplorables”.

Two things stood out right away about a crowd lured by the promise of spending last Friday night with David Leyonhjelm, Malcolm Roberts and Andrew Laming.

One, most everyone seemed to take the tectonic shifts in world politics in 2016 – Brexit, the Trump presidency and even the resurgence of One Nation – as a sign things were going their way.

Two, if not uniformly angry, they were overwhelming white and male.

Of a crowd of about 80, there were maybe a dozen women. All except two people (not including the young man with dreadlocks) were Caucasian. In that sense, but for the seated grey-haired cohort, it mirrored your average metal concert.

This politics in the pub event was the brainchild of LibertyWorks, a libertarian thinktank with links to Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democratic party and One Nation via its chief economist doubling as a policy adviser to Roberts.

It featured a surprise guest of honour: Calum Thwaites, the Queensland University of Technology student and newfound martyr for a cause célèbre of the Australian right, the winding back of the Racial Discrimination Act and the role of the Human Rights Commission.

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Sympathy for Thwaites’ predicament was a touchstone for all three “deplorables”. (LibertyWorks’ billing of the trio referenced the fact all three had been “accused of pandering to the same angry white male and unsophisticated regional voters” that Hillary Clinton was referring to in describing Trump supporters).

Senators Roberts and Leyonhjelm, the latter fresh from an unsuccessful bid to show the folly of the act’s scope by complaining about a Fairfax columnist branding him an “angry white man”, called for the gutting of the act and the HRC.

Roberts, a former coal company executive, embarked on a lengthy segue into the chilling effect of climate action advocacy on the free speech of coal company executives.

Laming, emerging as the moderate centrist in the debate, spoke simply of dumping insulting and offending comments from the act’s scope and paring back HRC funding.

Asked by a woman in the audience if the Coalition government feared reforming the act because of backlash from “the Muslim community in western Sydney”, Laming replied that the concerns of “ethnic minorities” were a factor and the key lay in convincing those communities the laws could be used against them too.

Leyonhjelm was booed at his mention of joining Young Labor in his youth – he felt obliged to explain this sprang from opposing Vietnam war conscription and anti-abortion laws. He nominated the “nanny state, political correctness, high taxes, red tape and, of course, lefties” as “the things that really piss me off”.

It was not made clear whether Roberts, who otherwise deferred to Leyonhjelm as a source of “helpful” insights on a whole range of matters in Canberra, followed him in supporting gay marriage and legalised recreational cannabis on libertarian grounds.

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest uproar was reserved for Laming who, when asked if he thought tax was theft, said he thought it was something that citizens “willingly” handed over. He added that people were “addicted” to the receipt and redistribution of cash by government. This didn’t wash with the guy who said he offered not to pay GST on his lunch at the food court that day, to no avail.

Roberts at the outset declared what everyone in the room shared was “freedom” and the fact they were “human”. This was a setup for drawing laughs with his next comment that “what I’m about is exposing the Greens”, who he described as “dangerous” and “anti-human” and a key threat to the nation.

Roberts also warned that “history has shown us we can be driven as a mob” and questioned why Coalition MPs weren’t speaking up despite the majority of them were climate sceptics. He blamed John Howard for succumbing to the orthodox view on climate change in gearing up for his ill-fated campaign against Kevin Rudd.

Roberts’ strident disavowal of human-induced climate change, unbowed by recent CSIRO briefings, wasn’t shared by everyone in the room.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Leyonhjelm, Malcolm Roberts and Andrew Laming at a politics in the pub event held by LibertyWorks, a libertarian thinktank with links to Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democratic party and One Nation. Photograph: LibertyWorks

One young man in the audience, who loudly applauded statements on small government, openly groaned when Roberts ventured into climate change.

Roberts, asked by another audience member what he could do to help the One Nation senator debunk this “nonsense about carbon dioxide”, replied: “Do what you just did.”

“What, ask stupid questions?” the young man wondered aloud.

But there were hoots and applause all round at the mention of Roberts’ quaffing champagne with the leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, before TV cameras to celebrate Trump’s win.

Roberts said he “didn’t know enough about Donald Trump to be excited about him as a person”.

What was exciting, he said, was that “Americans had at last woken up and realised they have a problem” with both major parties. They elected “an outsider – they see him as an anti-establishment party – sound familiar?

“[Trump] represents the start of the overthrow of the establishment and giving government back to the people.” Cue thunderous applause.

Polling recently showed One Nation on track to win up to 13 state seats. The former Queensland premier Campbell Newman predicted it would form government with his former Liberal National party colleagues and seek minister positions.

One Nation has experienced a taste of that influence federally during a year that delivered an even bigger Senate crossbench for the Coalition government to negotiate passage of its legislation.

Leyonhjelm observed the “chemistry works much better” with Malcolm Turnbull than his predecessor, Tony Abbott.

Where Abbott was “very stiff” and “watched every word he said”, Turnbull was “warm and engaging” and his ministers were negotiating better.

Laming, who backed Turnbull in the takeover from Abbott, said: “You are looking at the difference between an idealist [Abbott] and a pragmatist [Turnbull].”

Moreover, the pair were unlikely polar opposites on two key questions for voters, “Do I like them? And are they like me?”

Abbott, “the first PM seen in swimmers since Harold Holt”, presented as an everyman but had a “likability problem”, Laming said.

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Turnbull’s wealth and lofty business career were unimaginable to the voter on the street but “he is a likeable person”.

“And that makes my life incredibly easy, not engaging in ideological battles at every turn, that’s the difference.”

It was an interesting echo of Roberts’ earlier observation on his own party leader, Hanson, who Laming referred to in an off-the-cuff word association exercise as “the ranga with purpose”.

Roberts said: “She’s got no ideology driving her other than listening to the people, serving the people and speaking up.”

Of course, exactly who among “the people” a party listens to and serves is the point.

Asked how establishment conservative force like the Liberal party could stay “relevant” in these times of unforeseen populist boilovers like Brexit and Trump, Laming was blunt.

Australia’s compulsory preferential voting would “absorb a lot of that swing to the right back into the major parties”, Laming said.

“I’m just being completely frank there and I’ve seen that happen before. There’s been a little bit of impact in Queensland, very temporarily.”

The hints were there in questions repeatedly directed at the government MP from this pub audience, full of people who wished the Coalition would go harder on some things.

Like immigration, like matching economic conservatism with the fight for social conservatism, like gun rights, like tax and welfare cuts, like fiscal repair, like section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and the HRC, like ignoring climate change.

Like the likes of One Nation and the LDP, in their own varying ways, do.

A government MP’s untroubled answers in the face of a populist right revival smacked of belief that, in de facto two party systems, political outliers looking for influence always need a host.