CBD loves a good arcane political schism. And the latest comes not from a bunch of dirty lefties, but the freedom freaks over at the Libertarian Party (formerly the Liberal Democrats) who are on the brink of civil war over a logo. Thanks to a 2022 High Court decision that followed decades of objections from the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democrats were forced to change their name to the Libertarian Party.
But choosing a new logo has become a fraught exercise. Some senior Libertarians including NSW upper house MP John Ruddick wanted to put the rebrand to a vote. But in behaviour more reminiscent of a bloated Canberra bureaucracy, the federal executive resisted and instead hired a Brisbane marketing firm called New Word Order to run focus groups and come up with a snazzy new look.
On Sunday, we got a sneak peek, a map of Australia with random lines coming out of it, plus a series of posters with weird fonts and all lower-case captions. The response was lukewarm, at best. “It reminds me of Jehovah’s Witnesses literature,” Ruddick told CBD.
The MP reaffirmed his calls for the party’s leadership to hold a vote on the redesign. Former Howard government MP Ross Cameron, who’s now president of the NSW division (dubbed the democracy division by those in the Premier State) agreed, telling CBD that denying members a say was exactly the kind of behaviour that drove him away from the Liberals. But south of the border, Victorian Libertarian MP David Limbrick took a different view.