The Liberals have a historic chance to fix their women problem and their John Howard problem | Samantha Maiden

If the Liberals ever want to form government again, they need to fix their John Howard problem and their women problem, writes Samantha Maiden.

In the aftermath of the Labor Party’s 2022 election victory, there was much praise for Peter Dutton keeping the show together without any big blow-ups.

But as the Liberal Party surveys the scorched earth of their 2025 defeat, it’s worth asking the hard question: Was this failure to have the big policy fights one of their biggest mistakes?

The Liberal Party has been playing pretend for three years like they are still in government, too timid and too scared to rock the boat and have the fight.

High on their own supply of fantasy football that they would be storming the Prime Minister’s office after one-term in 2025, they wanted to keep a lid on the big debates.

There wasn’t even a leadership vote after the 2022 election.

Queenslander Dutton got handed the top job without ever having a fight or spelling out why he wanted it or deserved it.

Can you even remember any big policy barneys this term after the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years?

Even the opposition to Peter Dutton’s ultimate position on the Voice referendum was a genteel affair, leading to one bloke few had ever heard of – NSW Liberal MP Julian Leeser – retreating to the backbench.

Politics is meant to be a contest of ideas. The Liberal Party ended up looking like it didn’t have any good ones.

Defeated Liberal leader Peter Dutton shakes hands with former Prime Minister John Howard in Sydney before the election result. Picture: Dan Peled/Getty Images

Bizarrely, this mob appeared to have more robust arguments about policy while running the government than during the freedom years of the opposition.

Sure, Peter Dutton took a big gamble on nuclear power. But he then spent the entire campaign refusing to talk about it and refusing to back it in.

He showcased all the policy timidity and equivocation and anxiety that ended up swallowing him whole during the election campaign.

Liberal frontbenchers were tasked with coming up with acres of policy ideas that got buried in the leader’s office.

Mr Dutton, the big, bad, bald hardman of the Liberal Party, had a soft, gooey, frightened centre over policy fights like work from home. And it was his undoing.

By contrast, the teary Prime Minister, who cried when he called the election and talked about Medicare or whenever anyone mentioned his mum Maryanne, has always hidden a ruthless political tough guy.

Hell, Anthony Albanese this week even went around terminating cabinet enemies who got on his wrong side during his first term, including the NSW Right’s Ed Husic.

He even managed to get his deputy Richard Marles to take the blame. That’s next level Machiavellian gear.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles during the swearing-in ceremony at Government House, Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

People are complex like that and so are politicians.

But the fights the Liberal Party needs to have now are about policy, not personalities.

So here’s the best piece of advice to the Liberal Party as it tries to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Have the policy fights. Let it all hang out. It’s time to let your freak flag fly.

The fundamentals of what the Liberal Party is supposed to stand for are just fine – lower, fairer taxes.

Why that article of faith was trashed during the election by the brains trust of Mr Dutton and Angus Taylor is unfathomable.

It’s worth remembering that the seeds of victory inevitably lie in the lessons of defeat.

Would John Howard have governed for as long as he did without John Hewson losing the 1993 election?

Would Mr Albanese or his ALP campaign chief Paul Erickson have won the 2025 election without the brutalising experience of the 2019 election loss under Bill Shorten?

Most pundits seem to think the Liberal Party has Buckley’s chance of winning the next election. Those sort of predictions sometimes turn out to be wonky.

But let’s imagine it’s true. This is the Coalition’s big chance to knock down and remodel the Liberal Party for government in the future.

Time to call in the demolition crew and the architects.

To win government in the future, the Liberal Party must also fix two other issues.

First, grow up over John Howard, and second, grow up about women.

The former prime minister will always be a lion of the Liberal Party, the second-longest serving prime minister of Australia, after Sir Robert Menzies.

He served from 1996 to 2007, a total of 11 years. He is rightly revered and his counsel sought.

But the world has changed since that era and the Liberal Party has failed to change with it.

The whole show just smells incredibly musty.

You can respect Mr Howard without pretending that the issues that moved voters in the 1980s keep millennials up at night 40 years later.

Which brings us to the ladies.

The embarrassing Stockholm syndrome of women in the Liberal Party lining up to insist they don’t need quotas because it’s all about merit – it’s too much.

Here’s the cold, hard truth.

Please, please stop talking about merit when you have chosen the musty old crew of boring men you have on your frontbench.

If that’s merit, please don’t say this out loud, as people will giggle.

The problem with the bogus merit argument is staring us all in the face if you look at the frontbench photo under Mr Dutton. Just enough.

Ladies, we recognise this is the only way you get preselected, by pedalling this nonsense to 90-year-old Liberals in Launceston putting their teeth in a jar. We get it.

But it’s not going to get you into government.

If you talk to any blokes in the Liberal Party who have worked in the private sector, they will tell you.

Corporates worked out years ago that they needed to promote women into leadership if they wanted to get women into leadership.

They are not always ready. Neither are the men.

But until you fix this, your entire party is going to smell like your grandmother’s wardrobe.

So, no you don’t need to have quotas. Call it a target if you want.

Call it a TimTam. Nobody cares. Just fix it.

Good luck. Enjoy the freedom years. It could open the door to the government faster than you think.

Originally published as The Liberals have a historic chance to fix their women problem and their John Howard problem | Samantha Maiden