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khms comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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Hmm. My understanding is that the liberal parties are rather often, let us say, closer to the conservative side of the spectrum. The reason this appears strange to especially citizens of the USA is that, for convoluted historical reasons, they use the term "liberal" to refer to the progressive side of the spectrum, whereupon their liberal party needs to be called "libertarian". (And it's not particularly progressive, either.)
(nods) U.S. political discourse does strange things to the word "conservative" as well.
I don't find it surprising it is that "conservative" comes to mean different things. It's always struck me as an odd term: someone who hadn't heard the term before would think a "conservative" party would just be a "status quo bias" party.
If you have two different countries, with different political histories, you would expect labels to mean different things. We currently view libertarians as closer to conservatives than to liberals, yet libertarians regularly seem closely aligned to 19th century writers such as Bastiat, who were described as Liberal. One could imagine an alternative history where the 19th Century Liberal tradition moved towards a typical conservative position (e.g. as a response to a Labour party).
(I can't say whether this is what happened in Australia, because I don't know the necessary history)
Liberals in Australia are basically culturally conservatives and fiscal liberal.