The Liberal Party does not need a renovation. It’s a knockdown rebuild job

As election nights go, Saturday was up there – at least for the political class.

Apart from the counting and the race between the networks, there is the more nuanced study in body language, weasel words and outright wishful thinking. There are the commentators obliged to hide their emotions in the name of objectivity and the party panellists, wishing the night would either end quickly or last forever, depending on whether they were winning or losing.

Defeated Coalition leader Peter Dutton concedes on Saturday night.Credit: James Brickwood

Then there is the pious act of denial by Jim Chalmers with the occasional “now is not the time to dance on Peter Dutton’s grave” as if to signal that the ancient ritual of grave-dancing was about to commence.

Then there are the notorious but hollow comfort words, “it’s still early days yet”, for those watching their fortunes disappear by the minute. Momentarily, the Liberal Party and the Greens were emotionally connected as storm clouds rolled into the Sunshine State.

But what about the defeated leader, Peter Dutton? The same man who just a few months ago was, we were told, within touching distance of minority government and possibly even majority government. The three months from the end of February to the beginning of May certainly give new meaning to the maxim, “a week is a long time in politics”. This is the same Dutton who had been written off with the kind of headline that challenged John Howard in 1988, “Why does this man bother?“, referring to him as “Mr 18 per cent”.

For at least the past 20 years, Australian politics has been defined by the art of making the small target even smaller. At the same time, the target that has become ever larger is the failed leader, whether they are defeated prime ministers or opposition leaders, who didn’t ever make it.

Let’s acknowledge the obvious. Leaders all have their failings. Dutton didn’t laugh. Malcolm Fraser was arrogant. Howard was ordinary. Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull were intellectual outsiders. And so, the homespun character assessments roll on.

The real problem with the endless forensic carve-up of political leaders is that it masks the greater flaws that are endemic in the nation’s politics. Political parties, unlike the mere mortals who lead them, are relatively immune to scrutiny and criticism.

Previously, I have written that, unlike political leaders who come and go, major parties don’t have a use-by date. Party machine operatives invariably avoid the fallout of defeat or dysfunction, regardless of their performance. The flak is typically reserved for the politicians, ignoring that the party machine has a crucial, at times the crucial, role to play in who wins the hard-fought democratic race.

Truisms are hard to avoid at election time. If the Spanish philosopher and writer George Santayana’s estate does not get a good royalty stream, it should. Santayana is credited with these words: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Perhaps the point will be more sharply made by simply invoking Groundhog Day, as the umpteenth election report is tabled, showcasing how the Liberal Party can improve its performance.

Here’s my gripe as someone who has been a Liberal Party member for almost 50 years and seamlessly active for all that time. We’re told repeatedly the party is a “lean, mean, fighting machine”. That is delusional garbage. The real problem is that enough members believe the delusional garbage, so getting a meaningful debate off the ground about reform is impossible. The truth is that the Liberal Party is both organisationally moribund and dysfunctional. But it’s more contrived than that.

Of the Liberal Party’s KPIs, nothing is more important than building a large membership. The number of members in Australia has always been a well-kept secret, which has more to do with Byzantine factional games than anything else. On a good day, we’re told there are about 70,000 members in a nation with a voting population of about 18 million. A significant proportion of membership is factionally driven. For many, it’s the reason they belong.

To do justice to the term “mass organisation” the Liberal Party should have a KPI of at least 500,000 members, better described these days as supporters. This cohort needs to be as diverse and vibrant as the Australian nation. This is not a quest for trophy numbers. These are the workers and volunteers who make “people power” happen – something that the Liberal Party has let drift into obscurity for decades. A new-look Liberal Party needs to be a statement of embracing the end of the two-party structure. It needs to be part of the solution rather than bemoaning how it’s all turned to custard.

With 500,000 supporters, the Liberal Party founded 80 years ago would be able to put the feet on the ground in an election campaign that Climate 200 and the teal MPs it supports has since its founding in 2019. Anecdotal feedback from teal seat to teal seat confirms a repeat of the 2022 federal election, where the Liberal Party was frequently outnumbered by 10 to one on polling booths, shopping centres and transport hubs.

This does not require a renovation. It requires a knockdown rebuild.

Starting with a base of 500,000 supporters, a political fighting machine can be taken seriously in conducting genuine community-based events, conducting strategic preselections, and genuine, grassroots fundraising. The hallmark of fundraising should be to raise money from large numbers of donors. As it is, political fundraising is about raising large amounts of money from small numbers of donors – something Climate 200 is coy and defensive about. They should come clean.

How much more evidence do we need that the electorate is resentful of our adversarial, two-party democracy? It’s time to get with a program underpinned by user-friendly structures that make them part of local communities. The Liberal Party needs to embrace a modus operandi where it does politics with people rather than at people.

As for the dancing-on-graves ritual, Dutton deserves a dignified departure from parliamentary politics. He has with sincerity and speed taken responsibility for one of the more lamentable election nights since Federation.

The more enduring dancing is likely to be on the grave of the two-party political system, at least as we knew it. The federal political pie chart now has three roughly equal slices, rather than two, based on first preference votes. Denial is no response to this move in the shifting tectonic plates of Australian democracy.

On Saturday night, a “landslide” result was recorded by the Labor Party with what looks like a 35 per cent primary vote, significantly less than the combined “others” vote, at this stage of counting. Welcome to the latest update in the death throes of the two-party system.

For the Liberal Party, the response should be about being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Beware the perils of trying to renovate the house with crumbling foundations.

Michael Yabsley is a former minister in the Greiner NSW government and a former federal treasurer of the Liberal Party. He was on the 2025 Liberal campaign committee for Wentworth and he wrote Dark Money – A plan to reform political fundraising and election funding in Australia.

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