Former Liberal leader Alexander Downer demands party stop undermining David Speirs and issue policies

Alexander Downer has issued some blunt messages to his state party colleagues.

South Australia’s most decorated Liberal, Alexander Downer, is challenging his state colleagues to stop factional leadership turmoil almost destroying the party and advance creative policies to win back government.

The only SA-based Liberal to lead the federal party, Mr Downer decries “a small number” undermining Opposition Leader David Speirs by “talking of leadership challenges”.

In a column for The Advertiser, Mr Downer warns this merely reinforces “the reputation the SA Liberals have for being deeply factional and divided”.

Mr Speirs in late July demanded any plotters “come on and challenge me”, insisting there was no speculation about his leadership beyond media reports.

Opposition Leader David Speirs at a press conference in March. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Morgan Sette

Mr Downer, who was Australia’s longest-serving foreign affairs minister, urges the state Liberals to “inspire the public with their ideas and their policies”.

“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,” Mr Downer writes.

READ ALEXANDER DOWNER’S COLUMN HERE IN FULL

“They’ve (the SA Liberals) 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.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer (left) with Prime Minister John Howard during Question Time in federal parliament on August 21, 2002.

Mr Downer, who was a right-hand man to prime minister John Howard, argues the state Liberal should follow their party icon’s example and start delivering major headland policy speeches from opposition.

“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,” Mr Downer says.

“ … 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.”

Echoing Mr Howard’s mantra that the Liberal Party should be a broad church, Mr Downer laments long-term damage from historic factional infighting.

“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,” Mr Downer says.

“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.”