Liberals urged to improve messaging, embrace environment to win back voter trust

The Liberal Party has been urged to show they care about the environment, and appeal to a younger generation by voters in the teal seats that abandoned the party. Here’s what they said.

Wentworth independent MP, Allegra Spender has returned to the seat once considered a Liberal stronghold. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Liberals have been urged to show they care about the environment to win back traditional voters who have switched to supporting the Teals.

Voters in Teal candidate Zali Steggall’s affluent northern beaches electorate that had been the Liberal stronghold of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said they voted for her because under the skin “she is really a Liberal with a heart”.

Former NSW Liberal minister David Elliott said Liberals needed to start retelling voters about the values they shared.

“It’s about time we started highlighting the successes of the party in progressive policies like universal health care without walking away from being economic rationalists and advocates for a strong defence capability,” he said.

“Yes we can go to the centre but cannot walk away from the $270 billion mining sector.

“It is about time conservatives stood up and said we need to be custodians of the environment – that doesn’t mean you have to go and get your hair dyed purple,” Mr Elliott said.

Former state Liberal MP David Elliott says the Liberal Party needs to tell voters about their shared values. Picture: Richard Dobson

NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman has already vowed to keep the party at a state level “firmly grounded in the sensible centre of Liberal politics”.

Former Liberal Party strategist Kristy McSweeney, a media adviser to previous Prime Minister John Howard, said the problem was not a lack of good policies but poor messaging.

“There is no doubt the coalition had sound policies, it had really good women’s policies that were simply not rolled out,” she said.

And while the Liberals struggled to campaign on “20-year-old tactics” the Teal candidates realised “the demographics of Australia have changed” and reached younger people through social media.

“The Teals were able to fill the vacuum and create the perception that the Liberals had swung to the right,” she said.

In the seat of Warringah that convinced voter Gerrard Fitzgibbon from Mosman that Ms Steggall was “really a Liberal with a heart”.

Cafe owner George Schiffer has been a long-term Liberal voter in the seat of Wentworth where Teal Allegra Spender held the seat for a second term against Liberal contender Ro Knox.

George Schiffer, the owner of Twenty One Expresso, in Double Bay is a long-term Liberal voter, but said the party’s campaign was a major issue. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“Albo didn’t win, the Liberals lost,” he said.

“Their campaign was atrocious. I think the Liberals need to head in a totally new direction.

“Allegra’s great - she’s strong, well educated, and you can’t take that away from her. She deserved the win.”

Younger voters in Wentworth also felt the Teal message resonated far more than that of the Liberals.

Taylor Blewett, 24, said that “as a woman” she was “pretty chuffed” to see Liberal leader Peter Dutton and the party handed such a drubbing in the polling booths.

“For the Liberals to come back or ever appeal to us I feel like they’d probably have to get rid of a lot of their old school mentalities, definitely things such as climate change and women’s rights,” she said.

Luka Cepus, 20, said that with baby boomers now outnumbered by the younger generation the Liberal Party needed to become “more progressive”.

“That older generation are kind of getting, like, fizzled out,” he said. “To get the vote of newer generations they’re going to have to start catering towards younger audiences.”

Teal candidate Allegra Spender defined that young vote-winning philosophy in her victory speech at Bondi Bowling club.

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender at Clovelly Surf Club on election day. Picture: Jonathan Ng

She said the values that she entered the last successful campaign with were summed up by “Shaun from Bondi” and would be carried into her second term.

“You can care about the environment, you can care about business and want to live in a kind and decent society,” she said. “We need to take these values of care and compassion into the political world.”

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Originally published as Liberals urged to improve messaging, embrace environment to win back voter trust