It’s marvelous to behold. The good conservatives of the LNP, those with actual values of freedom and self-determination, are in the process of destroying “Psycho” Morrison’s attempted sleaze cult takeover:
The Liberal party’s infighting over preselecting federal candidates is heading back to the supreme court after a member of the NSW state executive began fresh legal action on Tuesday, challenging the federal party’s intervention to save two ministers and a sitting MP.
A member of the NSW state executive, Matthew Camenzuli, has filed in the NSW supreme court a challenge to the endorsement of the sitting MPs, which was achieved last week by a brief takeover of the troubled NSW branch by a special committee appointed by the federal party.
A three-person committee, acting on behalf of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, took over the NSW branch for 72 hours last week and endorsed the immigration minister and member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke, the environment minister and MP for Farrer, Sussan Ley, and the MP for North Sydney, Trent Zimmerman, who is a key figure in the moderate faction.
All three had been facing challenges for preselection. In the case of Ley, she was likely to lose her seat to a conservative right-winger, Christian Ellis, if a branch vote was held. The other two MPs faced an uncertain outcome.
…NSW senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells sent a bulletin to members on Tuesday afternoon announcing Camenzuli had commenced proceedings in the court to “uphold your rights and challenge the validity of the committee’s decision to impose candidates in New South Wales”.
Let’s recall the recent history of this latest Morrison imbroglio. How did it come to this? The Pentecostal duo:
The two main factions blame Mr Morrison’s close ally in NSW, Alex Hawke, the secretive Immigration Minister, for holding up the selection of candidates.
…“Hawke has been up front that elections will not give us the candidates they want,” said one participant in the negotiations. “We’re in procedural warfare. Everyone’s hands are tied.”
Why? To parachute in more missionaries:
A rare, glowing endorsement written by Mr Howard for St Vincent’s Hospital cardiologist Michael Feneley labels him an “outstanding person” and an “ideal candidate”.
…“The Liberal Party is in need of candidates who have achieved esteem and success in the real world. Professor Feneley certainly falls into this category”.
The endorsement comes despite the Prime Minister’s backing for businesswomen and Pentecostal preacher Jemima Gleeson.
To what end?
Scott Morrison may be Australia’s second most famous Pentecostal after his mentor, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, but he is far from the norm. Those who subscribe to the youthful, feel-good, glam-rock, self-help teachings of the Pentecostal church tend not to be white, 50-something and male.
Elle Hardy, author of a new book on the global rise of the Pentecostal church [says] Pentecostals are increasingly “concerned with the here and now” and that secular society, or the elites, are taking over the world and they need to fight back.
“Reshaping America and the world so that Christ can return just so happens to look a lot like gaining power in the here and now,” writes Hardy.
…Hardy makes the point that Christian Dominionism is about seeing a religiously run America that conforms to Pentecostal values.
“It’s pretty clear that a lot on the religious right in America have given up on democracy, they know they have lost the battle, and you hear instead the line that the US is a republic, not a democracy,” Hardy says.
“It’s about conquering and victory. That’s where the seven mountains come in because if you can control the seven pillars of society, you can transform society.”
Donald Trump was a gift to the Pentecostalists. His rise, along with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, lies in no small part to the rise of Pentecostals. The movement has a penchant for populist, strong-arm leaders with a flair for entertaining the masses, on one hand, while simultaneously scorning the cultural Marxists with their post-modern notions of gay marriage, gender identity, racial and sexual equality.
A 2019 US study found that 53 per cent of Pentecostals agreed that Trump had been anointed by God.
“Long a shelter for the marginalised and the dispossessed, in an age of gross inequality, Pentecostalism is becoming synonymous with an anti-liberal worldview,” writes Hardy.
Along with a raft of other bad actors, Hardy says it comes as little surprise that the “Stop the Steal” storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 involved 7M soldiers.
As one pastor who spoke to the crowd that day put it: “We are not just in a culture war, we are in a kingdom war.” At the same time, a Pentecostal magazine put up a Facebook post that said: “There are but two parties right now, traitors and patriots.”
In anointing “Psycho” Morrison to prosecute her aims, god chose poorly.
