To be competitive again, the Liberal Party should focus on just one word

I am sick to death of the fight for the soul of the Liberal Party, or however else the genre of monologues inflicted on the public after the election is framed. Too often these diatribes are designed to seize control of a rotting structure for personal gain and aims. The monologuists are too busy fighting over what the Liberal Party means to them to consider why a liberal party was created and is now needed. In their way, they have almost all contributed to the rot.

Illustration by Harry AfentoglouCredit:

The conservative wing of the Liberal Party bears responsibility for deciding that “politics is downstream from culture” and training all its energies towards fighting back against the progressive culture wars. That distracted the party from prosecuting strong economic arguments. The centre right faction is responsible for fungible focus-group policies. Meanwhile, the moderates seemed to believe that the way to win was to cloak themselves in the policies of their political opponents.

The moderate approach is pointless because, even if you win, becoming your opponent is obviously Pyrrhic. If victory can only come from capitulation, what sense is there in fighting? To the marketing faction: messages are a tool, not a plan. And culture is, to adopt management speak, important but not urgent. Certainly not urgent in the same way as feeding your family. Conservatives should not need to have that explained.

The Liberal Party has had numerous chances to correct course, but it hasn’t. From Victorian Labor premier Dan Andrews’ triumph in 2018, it should have learnt that culture is downstream of economics. Andrews ran an election campaign focused entirely on infrastructure, then announced that he won because Victoria is “the most progressive state in the nation”.

“The trick goes like this,” I wrote at the time, “win on delivery but then attribute the win to culture.”

In 2019, Scott Morrison showed that he had, at least, learnt half the lesson. But he missed his moment to define the zeitgeist and governed by polling from thereon in.

In 2025, Anthony Albanese campaigned hard on the idea that voters would have their pockets lined by Labor and has now pivoted from that prosaic win to a grand statement on culture. Australia, he told this masthead, will pursue what he calls “progressive patriotism”.

It’s a great propaganda slogan: it has absolutely no meaning, but somehow sounds right. And putting two words that appeal to opposite sides of politics in close proximity with one another might just create space for patriots to be progressive and progressives to be patriotic (I won’t hold my breath for the latter).

The prime minister’s definition of the term is heavy spending on social programs, social housing and universal childcare. At the magnitude promised, this is not just a social safety net, but social engineering. The government will railroad you into the life it thinks you should lead, by taxing your endeavours and only returning funds if you take the path the state has mapped out for you.

What we’re witnessing is a lean towards the command-and-control economy celebrated by the left in Albanese’s youth. (It’s deliciously ironic that future-worshipping ideologues are so obsessed with rehashing a 150-year-old political theory; they just can’t seem to leave it alone.)

When Albanese was 26 years old, the Soviet Union fell, and its economic system was (again) discredited. The world saw how a government-run economy mainly benefits the type of apparatchiks who frequent the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, leaving the people they govern poor and increasingly unfree. Albanese should have been old enough to digest the lesson of the time. But he didn’t, and now we get to find out again. Progressive patriotism is central planning with Australian characteristics.

Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley and her deputy, Ted O’Brien.Credit: James Brickwood.

This should be a gift to the Liberal Party, which was created by Robert Menzies to provide an alternative to something very like this. If the Liberal Party started to lose its purpose as an alternative during the Hawke-Keating years, now its time has come again. It can return to its roots to find the way forward.

Those roots are in standing up for freedom. Freedom of worship, freedom of conscience, freedom to form a family or not, freedom to strive or fashion a simpler life. A renewed Liberal Party would need to understand the ways in which a low-choice environment limits and oppresses different groups – women, new Australians, school-leavers, young families – and offer them the ability to design life in a way that best suits them. Asking the right questions would be an excellent start.

On universal childcare, the Liberals might ask how many women really want to put their young children in centre-based care, if given a choice? And is there a healthier, safer and more fulfilling way to liberate women to balance motherhood with their career aspirations?

Building more social housing sounds great in a housing crisis until you look at the poor management and under-utilisation of the current government-run housing stock. And is state-owned accommodation really what Australians aspire to, or would they actually prefer to own their own homes?

Do young people all want to go to university, or would it be preferable to live in a society that doesn’t require they waste years on a qualification only tangentially related to their field of work? Do migrants want better-funded ethnic enclaves or a chance to become wealthy Australians in their chosen home country?

The answers to these types of questions should inspire a bold, liberal policy agenda – not triangulation, not nostalgia and not capitulation. If the Liberal Party cannot rise to the challenge of championing freedom in a time of creeping statism, then it must make way for a new party that can. Freedom is not a brand strategy, it is a purpose.

Liberalism with Australian characteristics can at once preserve a social safety net and maximise choice, rather than pursuing a narrow ambition to dictate the lives that we all may live.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.