Dutton must aim for Liberal renovation

New Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tracey Nearmy

Facing a debilitating loss, new Liberal leader Peter Dutton has signalled his tactical grasp of two fundamentals – make the Albanese government the issue and prioritise stability and unity within a deeply damaged Liberal Party.

Defeat breeds frustration, anger and division. The first task is healing and repair within. Dutton’s opening remarks identify, as much as possible, a road ahead. That’s vital in creating a sense of purpose amid the ruins.

But the Liberals need to grasp that Labor is most unlikely to fall apart in office, that just holding Labor to account won’t do the trick, and that the Liberals need a strategy of organised and managed change of their party, top to bottom.

The real lesson of this election is that power and culture is changing in Australia. Deny this and you sign your death warrant. That means the Liberals must change – and the party has been slow to absorb this lesson. This is one of the reasons the Liberals lost. Dutton needs to oversee renovation for a shifting country – but that means looking forward, not being dragged into false remedies.

His immediate commitment to an anti-corruption commission with an emphasis on integrity revealed a willingness to rethink. Obviously, this shift was essential given the needless damage the Morrison government suffered on this front. Dutton was astute in invoking Robert Menzies’ still relevant “Forgotten People” credo but his task is to apply this philosophy for our times.

The Menzian principles were a Liberal Party with a big, wide vision that sought to transcend class and social divisions, a party that sought the material betterment of people but embodied a powerful moral sense and a party whose belief in individual aspiration was tied to a better society.

“We must not be pallid and bloodless ghosts but a community of people,” was Menzies’ message.

Dutton’s vision is the revival of the Liberals as a broadbased centre-right party. This is core business. It means no revolution, no defeatist panic. It assumes the model is viable and that the two-party system is not finished. From Dutton’s initial press conference his purpose is to reinterpret the vision of Menzies as refined by John Howard.

Dutton’s longevity in the parliament, reaching back to the Howard era, means he sees the Liberal Party in historical perspective. His job is to rebuild its ties to community and restore trust in the institution. That’s a daunting job because the party’s identity has been battered with three Liberal prime ministers in nine years – Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison – each with a different view of the Liberal Party and how it should govern.

No wonder the voters are disenchanted. The Liberals got confused about their identity. The country changed around them over climate change, justice for women, integrity in government and the style of politics.

Dutton’s correct priority “will be the forgotten Australians in the suburbs, across regional Australia, the families and small businesses”, but Dutton will abandon no territory whatsoever. “I’m not giving up on any seats,” he says about the victory of the teals in once blue-ribbon Liberal seats. This is essential. The Liberals cannot return to office without reclaiming some of the teal seats.

One of Dutton’s shrewdest comments was that Liberal policies can appeal to people both in the cities and suburbs. We are a more diverse people but we are not different countries just because of the teals eruption. The Liberals are still capable of making a broad appeal across electorates.

Dutton is a product of his background – a family-oriented conservative, a former Queensland cop, small businessman, with sustained success in a marginal seat, a conviction politician with a long record in security issues. For those who know him, he is likeable and personable.

But for much of the nation he is typecast as an aggressive and divisive figure. Leadership demands repositioning and Dutton now embarks on that journey. He needs to expose his empathetic side and discipline his natural aggression. He has on display in Anthony Albanese’s victory one of the spectacular remakings in our politics from leftist radical to measured, methodical leader.

But Dutton confronts a trap in the consensus politics being pushed by Albanese and Jim Chalmers bringing together business, unions and community groups. Just as Bob Hawke’s consensus 40 years ago confounded the then Coalition opposition, Dutton needs to beware being outsmarted by Labor and succumbing to yesterday’s politics.

Dutton’s natural strength lies with the conservative faithful. As a conviction leader he can repair disillusion within the party base – but he needs to do this on his terms. And that will take time. The party must show discipline and eliminate the indulgent public remarks from MPs about the need to turn left or right – such binary debating points being counter-productive.

The conservative majority moment in Australia has passed with this election. Progressive control of the institutions from the school upwards is mirrored in political results.

As Dutton knows, he leads a party called Liberal, not conservative. The worst advice coming to him is to conceive of the party as conservative (contrary to Menzies and Howard), turn hard right and ditch net zero at 2050 – the guaranteed road to deeper electoral grief.

For too long the Liberals have defined themselves by what they oppose – and paid a terrible price. They need to become far more inclusive, as Dutton seems to recognise. New deputy Sussan Ley will have the challenging task of addressing the alienation of female voters – but Dutton must engage in that project.

The Liberals need to assess how they regain cultural power, one of their central problems. They should frame their identity and their policies in moral terms, an axiom the progressives learnt 20 years ago. Supporting the classic liberal ethic of equal respect for all people and rejecting the categorising of individuals according to their characteristics is a pivotal step in an age of identity politics that so diminishes human dignity.

Dutton’s dismissive comments about big business are partly justified given its hypocritical tactic of going woke to curry favour. But they’re a mistake that only plays into Labor’s hands. It reflects a dangerous reflex among Liberals to hit out at constituencies that show their disenchantment with the party. The Liberals need to renew dialogue with big business at this moment of attempted Labor flirtation. It makes no sense to surrender the party’s ties to business and financial power.

That Dutton and Ley have been elected unopposed is a crucial step. There is no internal challenger to Dutton, a situation completely different to the Liberal party room after the 2007 defeat when Brendan Nelson became leader in a decision Turnbull never accepted.

Dutton can see Labor’s weakness – its primary vote fell, the result showed “huge hesitation” about Albanese, a stack of problems loom from high power prices, higher interest rates and economic tribulations. Dutton will be adept at holding Labor to account, but that’s not enough – the core lesson is the need for a renovation of the Liberal Party.