Rita Panahi: Liberal party lost sight of who they are and what they stand for

In order to hold on to a handful of inner city seats, the Liberals compromised their core values and policies and ignored an opportunity in the suburbs and regions.

This is the election loss the Coalition needed to have.

After spending 20 of the past 26 years in power the Liberal party had lost sight of who they are and what they stand for; the Broad Church had become incoherent, contradictory and often just a confused imitation of Labor.

No policy shift better demonstrated the Liberal’s incoherence than the commitment to net zero.

A harebrained political strategy from a supposedly centre right government which was designed to diffuse climate change as an election issue, but did precisely the opposite.

It emboldened Labor, the Greens and Simon Holmes a Court’s teals and prevented the Coalition from arguing against the madness of adopting policies that will reduce reliability while increasing prices.

Given the energy crisis in Europe, including the UK, where net zero policies and the transition towards a low carbon economy have seen prices soar to astronomic levels – and that was before Russian’s invasion of Ukraine exacerbated the problem further – the Coalition could’ve run a powerful campaign on why prices and reliability are more important than emission targets.

Liberal party’s decision to embrace net zero meant they could no longer provide an alternative to the climate change policies pushed by the Left. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

That’s what they did successfully in 2019 in what was called “the climate change election” but this time they adopted Labor’s policies and could not argue against what they themselves were pledging to implement, just in a slower fashion.

Meanwhile, the party’s most Left leaning “progressives” lost in spectacular fashion from Higgins to Wentworth but don’t expect that inconvenient fact to stop the Leftist media from arguing that the Liberals must lurch further Left to win back power.

Advice so diabolically dumb that if adopted would see the federal Libs become as unelectable as the WA and Victorian counterparts.

In order to hold on to a handful of affluent inner city seats, the Liberals compromised their core values and policies and ignored the opportunity in the suburbs and regions where cost of living was the number one concern.

The decision to embrace net zero meant the Coalition could no longer provide an alternative to the climate change policies pushed by the Left where emissions are prioritised above energy cost, reliability and jobs.

The impact in Australia would be even harsher than what is happening in Europe given the local ban on nuclear power.

Senator Matt Canavan called on his colleagues to ignore the Leftist media’s calls to move further left and to focus on what people care about most; cost of living. Picture: Gary Ramage

As Senator Matt Canavan explained on Sunday the Coalition lost because they forgot the forgotten people.

“We forgot the quiet Australians … the electorate hasn’t changed all that much in three years but we did,” he said.

“We adopted a liberal moderate platform on energy, on climate, on culture issues, and that platform has failed.

“It failed in WA, it failed in South Australia and it has failed nationally.”

Senator Canavan called on his parliamentary colleagues to ignore the Leftist media’s calls to move further left and to focus on what people care about most; cost of living.

“We legitimised the green agenda because we signed up to the destination,” he said.

“When you take a pale imitation of labor’s policies to an election people go for the real deal.”

The Liberal party’s base is no longer in wealthiest suburbs but among working class and aspirational Australians in the suburbs and regions who are socially conservative and no longer identify with modern Labor’s often radical policy positions.

These are people who weren’t born into wealth but work hard to create financial security for their families.

They care about energy costs more than emission targets.

They care about their children being properly educated rather than indoctrinated in school.

They love their country and are not embarrassed by it like so many privileged and self-loathing Greens and teals.

That’s the Liberals new base and the sooner they realise it the sooner they will be back in office.