Paul Williams: Liberal party can’t be Trump wannabes if they want to survive

After an election wipe-up, the Peter Dutton’s party must listen to the real “quiet Australians” and return to broadly liberal values of Deakin, Menzies, Holt and Gorton, writes Paul Williams.

You could see it in their eyes.

The Liberal party faithful who gathered outside Queensland on Saturday looked more frightened than disappointed.

They knew this election was different.

Normally, the vanquished can soothe themselves that, in a two-party system, they will eventually return to the Treasury benches.

But Saturday’s result – which gave no ringing endorsement to a Labor party marshalling just 33 per cent support – has re-forged Australia’s electoral landscape.

There are no more certainties in Australian politics.

With populists like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer also fizzling, this election saw voters put all three major parties (even the Nationals suffered swings) on notice. The Greens and ‘Teals’ are the new parties of protest. And nothing will ever be the same again.

Labor won with just 33 per cent of the vote in 2022. Picture: David Gray/Getty Images)

The Liberals know they now face the same existential crisis Labor has suffered since 1996 when John Howard poached (especially male) working class ‘aspirational’ voters in the capital city fringes. These voters remained loyal to Morrison, at least in Queensland.

And now a similar fate befalls the Liberals who, while seeing their working class base hold up, have been gutted in the middle and high income suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

This election, framed around not just cost of living but also climate change and gender, was more than a rejection of Scott Morrison.

It was also a rejection of the sort of blokey, low-brow politics – from fear and smear campaigns to stupid photo ops – that has dominated Australian public discourse for a decade.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies (centre) shaking hands with Ian Wilson (left) on his “Meet The People” tour in South Australia in 1953. His daughter Heather Menzies is on the right. Picture: Dick Joyner/News Corp Australia

We all know Morrison, who liked to echo Robert Menzies’ appeal to the ‘forgotten people’, pitched to the ‘quiet Australians’.

But the ‘quiet Australians’ in 2022 are not the ‘anti-woke’ aspirationals in the fringe suburbs among whom climate change and transgender issues are anathema.

Indeed, in a post-Trump era, that demographic has been anything but forgotten.

No, Australia’s the ‘quiet Australians’ in 2022 are those centrist voters – about 60 per cent of Australians who, neither left nor right, live in the capital cities – know anthropogenic climate change is unsustainable, that religious freedom bills entrench bigotry, that well-funded universities boost productivity, and that an integrity commission will clean up politics.

Middle Australia has spoken: the low-brow anti-intellectualism of the past decade no longer serves an educated middle class.

If the Liberal party is to survive, it must be broadly liberal in the vein of Deakin, Menzies, Holt and Gorton, and not parochially reactionary like some Trump wannabe.