While Labor and Anthony Albanese have been wounded by the results of the Indigenous voice referendum, illustrated by declining primary and personal support in its aftermath, there hasn’t been a commensurate uptick in the Coalition’s primary vote according to the latest polls.
The public has concerns about Labor but it doesn’t think the Coalition is ready for a return to government. If Peter Dutton wants to defy history and become the first opposition leader to defeat a one-term government in nearly a century he’ll need a quality team around him.
One thing that is patently clear is that the Coalition’s parliamentary team is weak. It desperately needs to be bolstered, which is why the NSW division’s pick to replace former foreign minister Marise Payne, who retired from the Senate in September, really matters.
The worst thing the Liberals could do is select a blatant factional operative such as Andrew Constance, who would use a position in the Senate to feather his factional nest. Yet that is exactly what is on the cards unless something changes between now and preselection on November 26.
My pick would be former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma. In the current climate his foreign-policy skills would be an important addition to the Coalition’s parliamentary line-up, especially after losing a former foreign minister. It is clear Dutton plans on running a national security focused campaign at the next election.
The fact Sharma spent a term in parliament as the member for Wentworth is a bonus. The Cambridge graduate understands the parliamentary system and could move immediately into a ministerial role after the election, straight on to the opposition frontbench in the meantime.
In the Senate he could apply his large policy brain better than he ever could as a parish-pump marginal-seat MP. Sharma more than held his own on the ABC’s Q+A on Monday night against a stacked panel debating Palestine. He also would be a valuable addition to the opposition’s Senate estimates line-up.
And while Liberal preselectors tend to not be interested in such things, Sharma’s Indian ancestry adds much-needed diversity to the Coalition’s parliamentary ranks.
Constance is, however, the preselection favourite, probably precisely because he’s the epitome of a factional operative: born and bred on the teat of the moderates network, going right back to his Young Liberal days.
After 19 years serving as a state MP he deserted his NSW Liberal colleagues in the lead-up to a difficult re-election campaign, contesting the federal seat of Gilmore at the 2022 election instead. Because the seat overlaps with his old state electorate, Constance thought it would be a lay-down misere, but he narrowly lost, after which he clamoured to win the vacant Senate position following the death Jim Molan. That failed too, so now he’s at it again, contesting the latest Senate spot up for grabs. Any port in a storm.
If Constance really wanted to help the Liberal Party he’d have another crack at Gilmore, where his personal following in the wake of the 2020 bushfires (generated by bashing the federal Coalition government, by the way) could be of some assistance.
Constance has little to offer as a serious policy wonk who could do meaningful work in the Senate, on estimates committees or as a federal minister. Most concerning, a Constance victory would represent a win for the Liberal Party’s ongoing factionalisation, which is a turn-off to mainstream Australia – a sure sign the party isn’t ready for a return to government.
That also would be true if Monica Tudehope were to win as the factional candidate for the hard right. The Liberal Party needs to kick the elitist image of being the organisation for the landed gentry. Tudehope is the daughter of NSW Liberal MP and factional powerbroker Damien Tudehope. While the Liberals do need more women in parliament, the balance is pretty good in the Senate and Molan was replaced by Maria Kovacic. Perhaps they can find some women whose parents aren’t serving Liberal MPs.
Like Constance, if Monica Tudehope really wanted to help her party she’d take up the challenge of wresting a lower house seat off Labor or the teals, bolstering the small number of women in the Coalition’s lower-house team. She should target Greenway.
Zed Seselja’s candidacy can be dismissed fairly easily. The former ACT opposition leader turned ACT senator lost his seat to independent David Pocock last year. Apart from the bizarre imagery of a NSW Senate candidate recording his preselection message in front of Lake Burley Griffin, Seselja should muscle up against Pocock again rather than attempt to slither into the NSW Senate ranks. He hopes an endorsement from Angus Taylor may help him over the preselection line. If Taylor has such sway, the Liberal Party is in worse shape than I thought.
There are other good candidates besides Sharma, such as former RSL president James Brown and tax barrister Ishita Sethi.
But neither has Sharma’s experience nor his ability to appeal to moderate and conservative Liberals alike. Brown and Sethi look set to be knocked out early in the count on November 26. If the party is serious about regeneration and diversity of representation it will help this pair’s pathway into parliament. To his credit former prime minister John Howard has been advocating a vote for Brown.
Getting preselections right is the most important thing a party’s members can do in modern politics. The traditional role of helping out on polling booths increasingly is being outsourced to professionals.
Electronic campaigning also has diminished the role of card-carrying party members. Fundraising is becoming more dependent on corporate donations than on micro payments by members. And policymaking now is done entirely within the parliamentary team with the help of professional consultants. These are the realities of the evolving electoral professional party model that political scientist Angelo Panebianco first identified back in 1988.
It is important that party members who get a say at preselections don’t cede that power and responsibility back to self-serving factional bosses who are simply on the lookout for one of their own. Doing so is a pathway to electoral failure; it hollows out of the role of the party membership and ensures the offices of new MPs and senators become hotbeds of factional politicking, rather than play the role they should by holding the Labor government accountable.
If the Liberals are to have any chance of winning the next election they need a strong team around Dutton. That means preselecting good candidates rather than factional hacks who have little to offer.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.
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