Jason Falinski: The Libs should reconcile with the Nats. Just not yet

Jason Falinski is a two-term Liberal MP for the seat of Mackellar, and was until recently the president of the NSW Liberal Party. I spoke to him on Wednesday and Thursday.

Fitz: Jason, thanks for making time for this. All the other Liberals I know are wringing their hands over the split with the Nats, yet your approach has been, “This is not bad, it opens up all sorts of exciting opportunities.” Is that a fair summation?

JF: Pretty much. It’s like, “You guys [Nationals] represent about 15 per cent of the electorate [in fact, 3.8 per cent]. But you’ve been driving our policies. So good on you, you’ve been standing up for your communities. But it’s really time for a bit of give and less take because if we don’t, we just end up in this position where we have no seats in the city.”

Fitz: Funny you should say that, because just this week, Ross Garnaut made the point that since the election, “The Coalition holds only about 15 per cent of seats in the eight capital cities where most Australians live.” I know you think it can be revived, but when did you truly know your party was on the edge of the abyss?

JF: On election night. A mate called me and said, “Have you seen what’s happened in [the one-time blue ribbon Liberal seat in Victoria] Aston?” I said “No, what is happening in Aston? He said, “There’s a seven per cent swing to Labor.” At that point, I knew it was all over. If the ALP had Aston, they had everything.

Fitz: Well, everything bar what the teals had already come back for second helpings of. You were famously knocked off from your own seat of Mackellar in 2022, by the teal Sophie Scamps. Is it fair to say you, and other Libs knocked off by the teals, were hamstrung because they were putting out views on things like accepting the science of climate change, that may have been your own views, too, but – because you had the Nats riding shotgun on the Coalition – you couldn’t say them?

JF: [Pause.] Um, yeah. Look all urban members were hamstrung by the fact that we were believed to be members of a party that was indifferent to climate change. Or, even if we had spoken up like I did, they thought, “but it seems like the National Party is opposed to it, and they really run the roost”.

Fitz: But what I don’t get is how it all got to this point, that the Libs allowed a party with such minimal support – they only got 3.8 per cent of Australia’s primary votes across the board – to have such influence on your policy?

JF: It’s a long story, and many mistakes were made. But, right now, the point is that the Liberal Party really needs to start appealing to aspirational Australians who predominantly live in the cities, and also live in a lot of seats that the National Party hold. We need to reach out to them, too, proactively.

Fitz: Given this last result, can you acknowledge the bleeding obvious that choosing Peter Dutton as the opposition leader in 2022 was a mistake?

Peter Dutton “came up with some interesting policies”. Credit: Monique Westermann

JF: I think that Peter Dutton performed really well, he kept the party together. He came up with some interesting policies. You know, we cannot underestimate the impact that Donald Trump had on the dynamics of Australian politics through 2025.

Fitz: Jason! I’ve sold you to my editors as “a straight shooter”. I respectfully submit to you that saying Peter Dutton was a great choice, and he came up with great policies is not right. I mean, what were these great policies? I can name nuclear, which was a rolled-gold disaster, a cut in the fuel excise – which generated no fewer than 17 photo ops – and getting rid of working from home for the surviving public servants after they sacked 41,000 of them, both of which they caved in on.

JF: [A little chastened.] Yeah, look, [it did get tough] you’re absolutely right. We ended up in a Mexican standoff with the ALP over who could give out more subsidies, and if you’re talking about giving out subsidies, then the Labor Party is going to win that war every time, because they have more experience at it, and people believe that the Labor Party is going to do that much more than they believe we will. And so ultimately we got completely boxed in.

When it rains: Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley.Credit: Eddie Jim

Fitz: OK, you now run a strategic advisory firm, whatever that is. We know you think the best advice you can give the Libs is they must say to the Nats, “Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.” My advice would be to listen to their own Charlotte Mortlock who noted that the average Liberal Party member is a 70-year-old male, while the average Australian voter is a 36-year-old female. These days, you could probably make it into the Young Liberals as a 50-year-old, so long as you still went to Shore and wear a tie. It is obvious to me, that has to change. Surely their policy star from here, has to be what will bring in young women. Do you agree?

JF: Broadly. We’ve got to start reaching out, and bring more people of all kinds in. There’s a great Reagan quote, along the lines of, “We’ve got to stop talking to ourselves about ourselves, and go out there and tell the people that while we’re fewer in numbers, we’ve got the values and principles you’ve been looking for.” And by the way, I don’t think Charlotte’s right, I think most Liberal Party meetings that I go to, it’s actually probably 70-year-old women, and there are some older men, and to be fair they want younger people to come through.

Fitz: Indeed, a problem. The point has also been made that in the whole of NSW, the Liberal Party does not get a single harbour view, and along the entire NSW coast from Victoria to Queensland you have only one coastal view, in Scott Morrison’s old seat of Cook, which has somehow held on!

JF: That’s right, and that speaks to our challenge, and also speaks to why we must go our own way from the National Party.

Fitz: OK, so you think it shouldn’t be a trial separation, it should be a divorce, with a custody battle over who must take Barnaby?

JF: [Laughs.] No. I do hope the couple can still get back together, but before they can, they need to deal with the fundamental issues that have driven those problems. And I don’t think we should just reconcile with the Nats just because it looks better. I think we should reconcile only after we’ve dealt with the fundamental issues underlying the problems that we face. We Liberals now need to go and do the hard, arduous work of talking to and being in dialogue with the Australian people, so that in a year’s time, when we start coming up with ideas, we have a far better understanding of what problems and what challenges they’re facing. Then, and only then, should we come back together and talk to the Nationals to see what they’ve come up with. But I repeat: If we don’t develop polices for our natural constituencies in the big cities, we will be completely lost.

Former Liberal MP Jason Falinski. “I don’t think we should just reconcile with the Nats just because it looks better.”Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Fitz: Aren’t you already lost? Laura Tingle has said that, basically, the Liberal Party’s manoeuvred itself to be little more than an observer in the current House of Reps and that’s fair. Without the Nats, you’re hobbling around on one leg, and can’t really run a proper campaign in an election.

JF: I don’t agree with you or Laura. We’re still the official opposition party in the lower house and in the Senate regardless of whether we’re with the National Party or not. What we need to do most of all now is look after our patch, and let the Nats go and look after theirs.

Fitz: Do you agree that, whatever happens, David Littleproud’s crazy-brave insistence that nuclear must stay on the table is batshit crazy when you went to the polls with that as your major policy, only to come up – dot three, carry one, subtract heaps – 50 seats behind! Can you explain how it is even possible for the Libs to get back together with the Nats if they are stuck with that insane policy?

JF: Look I think it is batshit crazy to lock it in for another three years without actually undertaking a fundamental review of it. But there actually is an argument that as everything turns electric, the demand for electricity will be five times what it is now, and we will only be able to meet those demands in 2050 by having nuclear as part of it. You may be right that we can do all of this on renewable energy, but there is no one else in the world that is saying that. At the moment we’re relying on coal to make up the difference, but it might have to be nuclear in the end. I don’t think “nuclear with government subsidies”, but you could allow market forces to come into play.

Fitz: On the subject of coal, you were a strong voice against Matt Canavan’s contention in 2021 that our future was coal, coal, coal. Yet I remember a recent controversy where the lobby group you are involved with, Australians For Prosperity, took $725,000 from coal interests?

JF: Sure. Coal Australia is a major supporter of mining in Australia, and they represent a lot of mining communities, and yeah, they did donate money to us to help us to stand up for economic policies that are about driving prosperity in the Australian community, and I don’t think we’ve had a lot of that in the last generation, and it’s something we’ve got to get back to. Our group was founded on the proposition that there’s too much time spent in Australian politics talking about social and cultural issues, and how do we divide the cake? And no one – or very few people in Australian politics these days – talks about, how can we actually grow the cake so everyone gets a little bit more than they’ve got, or a lot more than they’ve got at the moment.

Fitz: Traditionally, that is the argument made by the Liberal Party. To finish though, is it possible that the Coalition is just … done? You know, that all of the debate, all the manoeuvres of the next three years is no more than a “bouncing of the rubble”, because the whole thing has collapsed in on itself?

JF: [Long pause.] It’s possible, but improbable. For now, we need to re-engage with our people, and listen to them – and let the Nats do the same. Then and only then should we even contemplate re-forming the Coalition. Regardless of what happens, a lot of people in this country want the government to promote fairness and stand up for the right and freedoms of individuals. If we want to survive and thrive, that is what we need to do.

Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist. Connect via Twitter.