James Morrow: Could Ronald Reagan make Libs learn to win again?

Winners need a positive vision. Sunny optimism beats picking over the past. The right can do this – think of everyone from John Howard to Ronald Reagan, they just need to remember how, writes James Morrow.

Dominic Perrottet and Peter Dutton should thank their lucky stars for Matthew Guy. Seriously.

Because while Mr Guy was never going to beat Dan Andrews to be the next premier of Victoria, he has done Liberals across the country an invaluable service.

Namely, he has shown them in chapter and verse what needs to be done – and not done – if the party is ever to maintain or come back to power anywhere in the country.

The lessons are simple. Have a point of difference – don’t play “me too”. Don’t patronise younger voters – talk to them.

And no one will vote for you because you point out what the other guy did in the past – they’ll only vote for you if you’ve got a vision for the future.

A defeated Matthew Guy speaks to supporters after his defeat to Daniel Andrews. Picture: David Caird

On point one, it has been hilarious listening to commentators suggest, as Malcolm Turnbull did recently, that Andrews’s return was a rejection of hard-right Trumpian politics. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For the average voter, Guy’s campaign seemed to offer little in the way of difference, just a sort of more moderate version of Labor as if they were trying to appeal to that narrow segment of voters who don’t mind a bit of socialism but are still angry about lockdowns.

World number 5 golfer Minjee Lee could have ridden a Melbourne tram for just $2 if Matthew Guy had won. Picture: Michael Klein

Consider: The Victorian Liberals promised free school lunches, $2 flat fare rides on public transport, and said they would legislate a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.

Guy also backed in the Andrews government’s push to advance a “treaty” with Aboriginal Victorians.

Rather than do something about housing (the No. 1 long-term issue conservatives need to solve to appeal to younger voters), Guy put out a series of cringe-inducing TikTok videos.

And as if conservatives were not alienated enough, the party speared pro-life MP Bernie Finn for saying he “prayed” for an end to abortion and Liberal candidate Renee Heath for being part of a Pentecostal church.

Premier Dom Perrottet, who faces an election next March, should heed the lesson of Victoria. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

This was hardly a “Make Victoria Great Again” platform.

Yet despite this attempt to avoid controversy at all costs, voters saw through it as a cynical ploy and Andrews was still able to characterise it as a hope-against-hate election.

And it is worthwhile noting that the Nationals, who do stand for something, picked up three seats in regional Victoria – echoing, at least in part, the 2016 election when Turnbull’s Coalition held on to 76 seats in the parliament because the Nationals picked up a win.

Which brings us to the second point.

It is no secret that the Liberals are on the nose with younger voters. One Liberal who worked a number of polling stations on the day in Melbourne said they estimated they were getting maybe one out of every five under 35s.

So what is the solution?

Yes, it is fair to blame the schools for being more in the business of indoctrination rather than education, and this may be why on values surveys Millennials are more about “progress” (as if things weren’t bad enough) than “freedom”.

High density housing could lock in progressive governments for years. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

But to win elections, one cannot sulk, like Socrates did 2500 years ago, that “the children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise”.

Instead, the Liberals – who will never beat the left on climate concerns – need to address practical ones.

At this stage, home ownership is a pipedream for millions of young Australians.

At the same time, study after study shows that a society of renters will always skew left.

The spread of high-density apartment blocks with lower owner-occupier rates have been credited with helping turn a number of blue-ribbon seats teal in May, and that’s just the start.

Former Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who lost his Victorian seat of Goldstein to Zoe Daniel at the last federal election, says nothing could be more critical for the Liberals’ electoral future than fighting on this issue.

“Labor and the Greens want a permanent class of renters in public housing or build-to-rent housing owned by super funds, whereas only Liberals want self-reliant families that own their own homes” he told this column.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton must make sure his party is seen to stand for something if it is to have any hope of victory. Picture: Gary Ramage

Could former US President Ronald Reagan make the Liberals learn to win again?

“Liberals shouldn’t advocate for home ownership, they should declare total war on Labor’s plan for permanent rentals and take the fight right up to them on it.”

What form that fight might take has yet to be determined, and judging by the Coalition’s last attempt to raise the issue at the tail end of the last election campaign, Labor will do everything to demonise any idea coming from the right in this space.

But it’s a fight worth having because it plays into the final point: Winners need to have a positive vision.

There is no excuse for the way Dan Andrews abused Victorians during the pandemic but it is human nature to move on.

Sunny optimism beats picking over the past every day of the week.

The right can do this – think of everyone from John Howard to Ronald Reagan – but they just need to remember how.

Originally published as James Morrow: Could Ronald Reagan make Libs learn to win again?