David Elliott: Serving two masters led the Coalition astray at the polls
What we saw on the weekend was the result of a political party trying to appeal to north shore progressives and thereby exposing its Western Sydney flank, writes outgoing Liberal MP David Elliott.
Opinion
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There’s an ancient Biblical verse that warns us against trying to “serve two masters”.
It’s one of those prophetic scripts highlighting the fact that if you try and please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
One of the political lessons to be learnt from the Liberal Party’s devastating loss is that political parties need to stop trying to please everyone. It’s an impossible venture.
I had the honour of working alongside Dominic Perrottet for more than a decade. We have a lot in common.
But what we saw on the weekend was the result of a political party trying to appeal to north shore progressives and thereby exposing its Western Sydney flank.
No one doubts that climate change is a real concern to the majority of Australians and, regardless of what you believe the solution is, we should all try and be good custodians of the Earth.
The problem is that climate change, alongside any number of social policies that the chattering classes like to talk about, isn’t at the forefront of the minds of Western Sydney parents when they walk into a polling booth.
This meant that for every vote the Coalition tried to win back from the Teals over the course of the recent campaign ended up costing us two votes in our new heartland, Western Sydney. It’s no coincidence that some of the biggest swings against the Liberal Party last Saturday came from those aspirational suburban electorates that make up what we lovingly now call “Howard’s Battlers”.
Only they’re not all “battlers”. Plenty of them have, or plan to have, negatively geared investment properties, two cars, season tickets and a bit of superannuation.
More importantly, because they don’t have a fundamental need to be able to see Sydney Harbour when they walk down for their soy latte every morning they probably don’t have a seven figure mortgage to service.
The reality is that the first and last thing on their minds most days is how they can get ahead and if the Government is somehow going to move the goalposts on their journey.
Sure, Australian Liberalism has prided itself on being a “broad church” but that characterisation always had boundaries and the Teal phenomenon has pushed those boundaries in to No Man’s Land.
Now the party is in desperate need of having a good hard look at whether we revisit the map and stake a few markers or are we happy to allow Mark Latham and One Nation scoop up 25 per cent of the Liberal Party’s conservative supporters, never to see their preferences again.
To paraphrase the American Author Napoleon Hill “Opportunity often comes disguised as defeat”.
After twelve years in power it was always a massive task for the Coalition to win a fourth term, despite its record.
And with economic headwinds blowing there are many who would argue that this was a good election to lose, but that shouldn’t stop the Liberal Party from taking stock.
Does it stick with the cornerstones laid down by Menzies and promulgated by contemporary legends like John Howard, Nick Greiner and Jeff Kennett or does it reform into a light blue version of a centralist party in order to win back its north shore constituents?
Given the growth occurring in those aspirational Western Sydney seats there’s no doubt which course will pay the bigger political dividend and you don’t need to be a Princeton Graduate to see that Mark Latham is ready, willing and eager to capture those disaffected Howard Battlers and give them a political home.
It’s now up to the Liberal Party to determine its future.
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