When I was 17, I was a very undercooked but also very ambitious member of the Australian Liberal Party (I know, I’m shocked too). At that time, 1975, one of the people that inspired me to get involved in politics was an aspiring Liberal senate candidate, Andrew Thomas from Northampton, just north of Geraldton in Western Australia, who entrusted me to organise campaign events for him in places like Carnamah and Mingenew.

We became firm friends and after he was elected in 1975, I started studies at the University of Western Australia and he allowed me to crash nearby at the Crawley apartment, he kept for stopovers on his way home to Geraldton. Quite often he would arrive home on Thursday night, shattered after a long and turbulent week in Canberra. I vividly remember one such Thursday night when, over a couple of stubbies, conversation turned to the Fraser Government’s plans to gradually destroy Medibank (the precursor to Medicare Australia), introduced by the Whitlam Government in 1975. The reason I so well remember the conversation was that as a young Lib, I reflexively joined in the denunciation of Socialist Medicine as we called Medibank. So I was stunned when Andrew said that, although as a Liberal MP, he was required to join the chorus of derision, he was privately full of admiration for Gough Whitlam and his Medibank scheme.

I’m telling this story because this is a pivotal moment in our history. Not only does the fate of Climate change action rest on the outcome of Saturday’s election but so too the fate of our beloved ABC which will be dead within 10 years if the Morrison/Palmer Government is elected.

On top of that, there is a chance to wind back some gross inequities in society that result from past attempts by Liberal governments to shore up their vote by splashing money at their wealthy patrons via measures such as extending franking credit rebates (or gifts) to investors who had not paid any income tax. This is the most contentious of Labor’s economic reform agenda and while the number of people affected by this change is small, the impact on budget savings will be huge, as will Labor’s changes to Negative Gearing.

Liberals are reflexively required to oppose these economic reforms as well as real action on Climate Change. They are also tied to the Murdoch media agenda to destroy the ABC, something he has been pushing for years. Murdoch succeeded in his long campaign to nobble the NBN to protect his Foxtel from streaming services such as Netflix that would benefit from a superfast full fibre NBN. Now he also wants to nobble the ABC because it takes eyeballs away from his paywall protected news outlets and Sky News.

I firmly believe that there are many Liberal MPs who will be privately relieved if a Shorten Labor government is elected. I believe that many of them would be glad to be rid of the albatross of Abbott’s legacy of Climate Change denial; energy policy civil wars; denigration of people on income support; attacks on wage earners via cruel cuts to penalty rates; barely concealed racism; and unsustainable welfare subsidies for the relatively wealthy, like Negative Gearing and Franking Credits.

If I hadn’t heard a Liberal senator say something akin to that to me 40 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. My friend the Liberal senator, provided me with the proof that politicians quite often say one thing while firmly believing the opposite. Knowing that, I also know there must be decent people who also happen to be Liberal party MPs. I also believe that many of them must be embarrassed that they have been forced into defending an indefensible corner filled with cruelty, corruption and cognitive dissonance.

Help relieve the tortured souls of fair minded Liberal MPs who have a social conscience and are not Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and their like, and…

Vote Greens or Labor on Saturday.