Lib lurch to the left would be disastrous

Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, and former PM Tony Abbott on Saturday. Picture: Jeremy Piper

The Liberal Party would be mad to lurch to the left in the search for the mythical middle ground.

But first let’s pause to congratulate Anthony Albanese on a historic victory. Everyone who knows him, including me, regards him as a good bloke, a decent human being. That’s not enough to make you an effective PM. But it’s a good start. For the national interest, everyone should hope his government will be coherent and effective. It has a greater chance if it’s a majority government.

There were countless factors in the Liberals’ demise. It would be mistaken to regard it as essentially a left-right issue. And remember that after three chaotic conservative terms of government, between the Coalition, Pauline Hanson and United Australia Party 45 per cent of the electorate gave their first preferences to centre-right parties. There were big cultural questions and consid­era­tions of elementary competence.

Scott Morrison did some good things, but why did he lose? Like many contemporary leaders, Morrison overcentralised authority and was uncomfortable with strong leaders around him. He let way too many big cats leave his government. The Liberal Party had much less of a women problem and much more presence, authority and chutzpah in foreign policy when Julie Bishop was deputy leader. Mathias Cormann was a central buttress of credibility. Morrison should have moved heaven and earth to keep those two and others in politics.

Similarly, if in 2019 Morrison had brought Tony Abbott back to the ministry, the voters of Warring­ah who had supported him might not have thought him absolutely yesterday’s man.

Morrison had too little respect for process, especially within the Liberal Party. Was it so brilliant for Morrison to delay preselections in the NSW Liberal Party to the last minute, then choose them himself? Candidates were not in place, and rank-and-file members were denied the chance to participate in preselections. What is the point of belonging to a political party if you can’t influence policy or even vote in a preselection?

Some of Morrison’s choices were bizarre, especially Katherine Deves in Warringah. This is not a left-right thing, more a common sense-stupid thing. It’s OK to be concerned about women’s safety in sport but it’s not a frontline issue in an election. However, to use language like “surgically mutilated teenagers” when you want to represent a whole community is offensive and ridiculous.

If this was a pitch to socially conservative voters, it was surely the stupidest in the history of politics. If you’re seeking the votes of socially conservative Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and others in aspirational suburbs in western Sydney, western Melbourne and elsewhere, go out to them with genuine community candidates and talk about mainstream values. By all means reference the role of religious belief in your life as part of the backstory.

The only leader I heard talk about his religious faith was Albanese, whose easy formula, that he had been born into three great faiths, the Souths Rabbitohs, the Labor Party and the Catholic Church, was effortlessly effective. The Liberals should be worried that Albanese declared in his well-crafted victory speech: “This is the greatest country on earth.”

There are traps ahead for Albanese but that statement is an impli­cit rejection of the hostile characterisation of Australia in almost all academic circles. It is a rejec­tion, too, of the denigration of Australian history you get from Paul Keating. “This is the greatest country on earth and it could be even better” is an almost perfect basis for a program of social dem­o­cratic reform, or indeed it could work for conservative reform.

It would be characteristic and futile for the Liberal Party now to have an abstract debate over whether it’s socially conservative or socially liberal. Both strands must coexist vibrantly within a successful centre-right party.

Many issues are just common sense. Any party has to be willing to fight for core principles and policies. You cannot try to outsmart the electorate, bamboozle it with positioning, avoid a fight by tactical agility. Having a political fight doesn’t mean you have to be ultra-macho. Sweden’s government has just decided to join NATO. That’s a tough decision and the prime minister who took it is a Social Democratic woman.

If John Howard had been guided by focus groups he would never have advanced the GST. He had to fight, metaphorically, or if you like politically, to win the argument and implement the reform.

Boris Johnson won the battle of the Brexit referendum and then the Brexit election. He didn’t try to split the difference with the opposition and implement Brexit in name only. He argued his case, won the argument, then won the election.

Johnson, in contrast to Donald Trump, is neither macho nor abusive in campaigning style. He is the wittiest politician I’ve interviewed. The most notable quality about his political style is that he’s perennially good humoured. He never takes offence and he always tries to cheer you up.

Again, this is not a left versus right quality. Sometimes it’s necessary to be socially conservative because that embodies the truth and Liberal Party values. But you have to be willing to make a serious argument, to have lots of senior politicians who can carry the argument – that’s why the absence of all the big cats was so debilitating – and you need to mobilise third parties to support you.

Thus, even after changes, the national curriculum is an abomination. Instead of making otiose statements about transgender sport, why not run a serious campaign on that?

But Morrison had accepted that education minister Alan Tudge should sit with his back to the class in the naughty corner and no Liberal campaigned on the issue at all. That’s really, really stupid.

The Liberals have often gone left and lost disastrously, as in the last West Australian election. The South Australian Liberal government was dripping wet and served one short, undistinguished term.

Alternatively, the Liberals won every election since 2013 until this one by framing climate change as an economic issue. This time they thought embracing net zero, and not seriously contesting any element of Labor’s policy, would save the teal seats. Instead they convinced voters their opponents’ arguments were right all along.

If the Liberals believe in nothing but the zeitgeist they could fall into the pattern they now occupy in most states – they are only used by the electorate about once every 15 or 20 years to give Labor a single-term spell when it has become too old or creaky in government.

Liberal post-mortems will be lengthy. But sheer staggering incompetence, a lack of respect for party democracy, overcentralisation of power including candidate choice and a strange unwillingness to seriously fight for anything were more important than questions of left versus right. That’s a moderate conservative truth.