Is the Australian Liberal Party far Right?

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I am not Australian, but the more I read about their Liberal Party the more I can't help but shiver. It strikes me that the governments of John Howard, Tony Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison are some of the most despicable far-right regimes in the Western World.

I'll give you just one striking example to think about. For decades now the Pacific solution of John Howard has been a centerpiece for the Liberal Party's platform when dealing with Asylum seekers.

Kim Beazley actually commented on it back in 2001, "No matter the circumstances it will be a reasonable and authoritative thing for an Australian officer to take a boat that is sinking, and in which there are life-threatening situations involving the people on board and drag it out. That will be capable of being sustained by this bill- drag the boat out, sink it, people die. It does not matter what you think ought to happen; this is what the bill permits"

And I do not think this view is far-fetched as Australian Liberal government has shown an overwhelming willingness to disregard the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world at every point. With the Tampa Crisis back 2001, John Howard willingly let a makeshift refugee vessel carrying hundreds of people travel through perilous waters without any support, even as Australian aircraft scouted it and could have conducted a rescue operation at any moment.

This strikes me as nothing less than despicable, and far worse than what I have seen of even the most conservative governments in the Western world.

It’s centre-right and classic liberalism (I hear the word “classic” a lot from people who don’t seem to be socially liberal or progressive, like blue dogs but no idea what “classic” means)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal ... _Australia

Everything I (an American) know about Australian politics I learned in 1980 when I saw the movie "Don's Party", a comedy about a suburban couple inviting their friends over to watch an election on TV and how they all get blind drunk. Contemporary with "Road Warrior" it was one of the first wave of movies coming out of Australia that reached America.

The two opposing parties that the characters talked about were "Labour" and "Liberal". Confusing at first. But I deduced that "Labour" meant "Liberal" (in the modern American sense of meaning "progressive"), and "Liberal" meant "conservative". So in my head I substituted "Labour" with "Democrats" and "Liberals" with "GOP", in my head, and then the movie finally started to make perfect sense.

The reason that their conservative party calls itself by the seemingly opposite label of "Liberal" is because they are using the word "Liberal" in the original Victorian era sense to mean "Laissez Fare Liberalism" ( letting the free market do its thing- regulation is a no-no) which is a tenet of modern conservatism.

Aussie here.

My first vote helped bring in Labour with Kevin Rudd in 2007. I had high hopes for improvements labour would make like the NBN, more humane handling of asylum seekers, and a response to environment issues that's not worthy of condemnation.

Ever since, I've wanted and waited to give the libs my vote, but the smelly bastards just can't pull themselves together and merit it.

Kevin had his own special brand of narcissistic issues, then Abbott came along and started earning everything bad that's happened to his career more recently.

It's just an absolute shit-show. Not as bad as GOP and Trump, but bad. Some of the stuff I hear from U.S. it's just like, what planet did these aliens beam down from? Not the same one as me.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is the main far-right party in Australia.

While the GOP has gone further to the right, especially since Trump took office, I don’t officially consider them to be far right. The Constitution Party is far-right, and of course, the American Nazi Party is.