Pro-Voice Liberal says referendum defeat gave the party ‘a false sense of confidence’

The Coalition’s success in defeating the Voice to parliament referendum gave the Liberal party “a false sense of confidence” about its chances of victory in the federal election, says former shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser, who resigned from his opposition portfolio in 2023 in order to campaign for the referendum.

Noting that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “seemed to lose his way” after the Voice referendum was defeated in all states in October 2023, Leeser told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that this, combined with Albanese’s poor handling of the local antisemitism crisis, “gave so many in our party a false sense of confidence”.

Julian Leeser says he is “shocked” the Coalition used the Voice as an indicator of how people would vote in the election. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Leeser says he was “shocked” that the internal polling conducted for the Coalition by Freshwater’s Mike Turner used the number of Labor voters who voted no in the referendum in his calculations of a swing against the government, which was instead returned in a landslide and is likely to end up with 94 seats, equalling John Howard’s record in 1996.

“On one level, there is nothing wrong with trying to target those Labor voters who voted no in the referendum campaign,” he said, saying Howard targeted those who rejected the republic proposal in 1999, but only to remind them of other issues such as border security.

“I thought it was very strange there was such a focus even on the campaign itself,” Leeser said.

“Part of the reason my colleagues were successfully defeating the referendum was in 2023 the issue did not seem to be one of top priority for Australian voters. Certainly, in 2025, it was completely irrelevant and I had no idea why the issue kept reappearing in our campaign.”

While former opposition leader Peter Dutton regularly raised the Voice as one of several examples to demonstrate that Labor was out of touch, he campaigned in the final days of the campaign on the claim that the government had a “secret plan to legislate the Voice” after Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast that she thought “we’ll look back on it in 10 years’ time and it’ll be a bit like marriage equality”.

Albanese ruled out bringing back the Voice and accused Dutton of “verballing” Wong.

Leeser said he was “completely surprised” by the focus in the last week on Welcome to Country and the Voice.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Peter Dutton raised the Voice and Welcome to Country as election issues. Credit: James Brickwood

“It indicated we were not in touch with the concerns of ordinary Australians. People were not talking to me about those issues until we raised them; they were concerned about paying the electricity bills, their mortgage, about the future of their children and what sort of jobs they would have in a world where AI will present both threats and opportunities.

“We were not talking about any of those enough, and instead focused on esoteric issues and I think it indicated a lack of discipline and real focus.”

Leeser held his north Sydney seat of Berowra despite a 5.9 per cent swing to Labor. Dutton brought the former lawyer back to his front bench in January as assistant foreign affairs minister after Leeser, who is Jewish, proved a staunch campaigner on antisemitism issues. There is speculation within the Coalition that he could return to the shadow legal affairs portfolio under Opposition Leader Sussan Ley.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was the face of the No campaign, is expected to lose her “government efficiency” role in the reshuffle because of its Trumpian overtones, but she may have a different portfolio.

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