Factionalism has almost destroyed the Liberal Party in SA | Alexander Downer

History has not been kind to oppositions who go down the path SA’s troubled Liberals are setting out on, writes Alexander Downer.

Life in political opposition is tough as the South Australian Liberals know.

After all, they’ve been in opposition for all but four of the last 22 years.

So with less than two years to go until the next state election, it’s not surprising that they are thinking about how on earth they could win the election.

There are always a handful of people in that parliamentary party who think that changing the leader is it sure path to success. It isn’t.

A brilliant and charismatic leader can make a big difference but these people don’t come along more than once in a generation. A small number of Liberals have been briefing the media in recent days once more talking of leadership challenges.

All that media briefing does is reinforce the reputation the SA Liberals have for being deeply factional and divided.

They need to cast off that reputation by working as a team.

The SA Liberals would be well advised to reflect on why the public have every so often elected the opposition party to power.

There are essentially two factors.

The one is that if the government is particularly woeful, the public will try the other side without any great expectation that it will make much difference.

Nevertheless, they are in a mood to punish the incumbent.

Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Matt Loxton

South Australian Liberal leader David Speirs. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

We saw this in South Australia in 1993 when the Arnold government was defeated by Dean Brown and his team.

It happened in December 1975 when the Whitlam government was evicted from office.

It has just happened in the UK last month whereas the 14-year-old Conservative government was perceived to be a disorganised rabble.

In those circumstances an opposition would be well advised to pursue a so-called “small target” strategy.

Given governments’ power of incumbency, it’s not often Oppositions find themselves in this position.

Ramping and aged care won’t be enough alone to deliver government to the Liberals.

There certainly isn’t a sense in South Australia that the state government is so bad it is beyond redemption.

The second reason oppositions sometimes win elections is because they inspire the public with their ideas and their policies.

As John Carrick, the legendary Liberal tactician and Senator, used to say, a good opposition is not only guided by its principles, it needs to communicate those principles to the public.

They need to explain to the public why they, if elected, would govern differently from the current government.

They also need to build a case over time by constantly articulating their principles and contrasting them with the incumbents.

Former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. Picture: Camera Press

Former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley. Picture: File

It’s not enough just to attack and criticise the government – although that is an important part of an opposition’s job.

The best example of this is Sir Robert Menzies.

In the 1940s he and his newly formed Liberal Party articulated an alternative future for Australia from the social democratic, collectivist direction of prime minister Ben Chifley.

He focused on individual families and their choices, home ownership in contrast to Labor’s preference for public housing, private investment and reward for risk and effort and choice and excellence in education.

By the time the 1949 election arrived, voters knew what a Menzies government would mean.

Two other federal opposition leaders are worth mentioning in this context: Whitlam and Howard.

By the time their government’s were elected in 1972 and 1996 respectively, voters knew what they and their parties were about. They offered a different plan from the incumbents.

So too did Don Dunstan locally and Dean Brown and John Olsen in 1993. And Tom Playford was electorally successful partly because he had a plan which, more or less, worked.

Former SA Premier Don Dunstan in 1982.

Former SA Premier Tom Playford in 1953.

There’s no point in just copying the principles and policies of your opponents.

Doing so does save the pain of abuse and denigration but the path to power requires the courage to argue your case against your critics.

So back to the SA opposition.

They’ve only around 18 months until the next election.

They need to use every day between now and then not only to attack the failures and misdemeanours of the government but constantly to repeat the broad principles on which their detailed policies will be based.

As John Howard always warned oppositions, you can’t fatten the pig on market day.

And there’s no point in just doing polling and repeating the polls back to the public. If they think you’re doing that, they won’t respect you.

So let’s have some headland speeches from the Liberals as John Howard did in 1995. And less factionalism.

Factionalism has almost destroyed the Liberal Party in SA.

It puts factional bosses above the parliamentary leader undermining his or her authority, gets people chosen as candidates not on their merit but on their factional allegiance and factional activists spend time on internal factional campaigning not converting the public to the Liberal cause.

It’s one thing to be a broad church. It’s another to be two churches under one leaky roof or to be so broad as to believe collectively in nothing!

Alexander Downer was foreign affairs minister from 1996-2007, and high commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2014-18.