Many mainstream Australians would feel as if they had been dropped in a foreign country at the Conservative Political Action Conference, lost amid oblique references to transgender swimmers, blue hair, and women's bathrooms. This year's event in Brisbane featured rightwing campaigner Monica Smit deep in conversation with a Donald Trump impersonator, opera singers belting out the national anthem twice, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her folk singer husband singing the anthem again, and Stefanovic jokingly thanking CPAC for "rudely interrupting my unemployment."
Stickers depicting Anthony Albanese with a Pinocchio nose, holding a brown burlap sack and a large blue sex toy emblazoned with "United Nations global citizen award" were found in the conference hall and men's urinals. Journalists were asked to wear large red media accreditation lanyards emblazoned with "FAKE NEWS."
For all the spectacle, the prevailing theme of the conference was preferences. With 94 Labor seats and a splintered rightwing vote, the Coalition opposition under Angus Taylor is being diminished by Pauline Hanson's surging One Nation. The conference saw Australia's conservative right recognising in real-time that they need to find a way to cooperate; that despite mocking Albanese Labor as "the worst government in history," conservatives face a third successive election defeat. Last year's event featured speakers criticising Peter Dutton as "Labor-lite."
Barnaby Joyce handed out notes as props during his free-wheeling lecture about the value of money and the historical silver content of Roman coins, while seemingly every One Nation figure with a public profile wandered the halls. Alongside boilerplate rightwing chaff like lower taxes, fiscal discipline and welfare, the conference served as a hotbed for hyper-engaged conservatives riled up on the red cordial of Sky After Dark.