Liberals’ problems are worse than you think
It is not merely a matter of waiting for the pendulum to swing back to the centre-right, as if there is a natural justice that apportions time in power to the major parties. That is nonsense. Nor is it simply a matter of uniting the party, keeping Labor accountable and coming up with new policies. These are important, but not enough.
What is required is a complete renovation and rejuvenation of the Liberal Party from top to bottom. The sooner the party leadership realises this, the better-placed it will be to begin the path of recovery back to political relevance. The two-party system, a mainstay of post-war politics, is at risk of permanent fracture if the Liberal Party slides into the abyss.
While I have long argued the recuperative powers of parties are underestimated, many do not survive. The Liberal Party’s principal founder, Robert Menzies, not only understood this but lived it. He recognised that the United Australia Party would not survive in the wake of the 1943 election so set about forming a new party.
There is no guarantee the Liberal Party will survive. It seems many are looking at the electoral map, thinking the loss of 40 seats in the dozen years between 2013 and 2025 – not including the Nationals-dominated LNP in Queensland – is an aberration. In reality, voters are ditching the party in droves, whether in or out of government.
In metropolitan capitals, the party is vanishing. The Liberal Party holds few metropolitan suburban seats in Sydney (Berowra, Cook, Lindsay, Mitchell), Melbourne (Goldstein) and Perth (Canning). The LNP held Bowman in Brisbane. It holds no seats in Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra or Darwin. It has ceded heartland seats – some held by the party since 1946 – to Labor, the Greens and teals.
Polls since the election underscore how bad it is, and how absurd the continued denial of reality is. Newspoll, published on Monday, showed the Coalition had fallen to its lowest level of support in the poll’s near 40-year history: a dismal 27 per cent. It is a party going out of business.
The Conservatives in the UK, under siege from Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK, are also facing oblivion, falling to 17 per cent in the polls. Republicans in the US are virtually no more as it is now a MAGA party.
The Liberal Party is fast becoming an old white conservative man’s party. There is no future relying on this ageing out-of-touch voter cohort and membership. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Liberal Party enjoyed reliable support from the youngest voters, aged 21 to 30, women and migrants. From the 1970s, those voters ebbed and flowed from one party to another. These essential constituencies are now strongly in Labor’s column.
The most dire omen is the under-60s vote. The only age group where the Coalition outnumbers Labor is baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, where it is ahead 54-46 per cent on a two-party basis, according to RedBridge. Among Gen Z (1997-2012) the Coalition trails 32-68 per cent, and among millennial (1981-96) voters, 41-59 per cent. Gen Z and millennials outnumber boomers.
For a party that needs to win back support from migrant communities, especially those of Chinese and Indian heritage, it was hugely damaging for Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to claim the government favoured Indian migrants because most voted Labor. Sussan Ley was right to sack her from the shadow ministry for refusing to apologise to Australia’s Indian community and support her leadership.
At its core, the Liberal Party is suffering from a crisis of identity as to its philosophy, values and purpose. Menzies argued the party needed a statement of faith to guide its policy development. But what does the Liberal Party believe in these days? What are its galvanising principles? Does it still represent the mainstream moderate liberal-conservative tradition?
It needs to ignore culture wars on flags, welcome to country and “woke” school curricula, and focus on freedom, choice, enterprise, opportunity and security – bedrock Menzian values. Yet Liberals seem stuck in a time warp on many issues, not least climate change. Newspoll shows only 28 per cent of voters think reducing emissions should be slowed down; 62 per cent support current government actions or want them accelerated.
The danger is if the party drifts further to the far-right populist fringe. Liberals are planning to speak at this weekend’s CPAC Australia conference in Brisbane. So is xenophobic nativist Pauline Hanson. This is an antipodean MAGA wing. Most of the organisers and speakers are fervent Donald Trump supporters. One of their pitches to attendees is to “Make Australia Great Again!”.
Have they learnt nothing? Trump is toxic Down Under. Peter Dutton learnt this the hard way. This is why Liberals should avoid CPAC like the plague. In a compulsory voting democracy, it should not need to be said that elections are won in the centre ground. So any embrace of Trumpian-style politics and importation of this culture is a dead end in Australia.
The Liberal Party must also focus on organisational renewal. In the two biggest states, NSW and Victoria, the organisation is in chaos, its leaders utterly lacklustre. In Western Australia and South Australia, the party is likely to be out of office for a long time. Party membership across the nation is ageing and male-dominated.
Parties can often rebuild with effective leadership. Ley, who leads a divided party with rumblings about a leadership challenge, must initiate a rescue mission. This starts at the top. If urgent action is not taken, there is every chance the Liberal Party sinks further into irrelevance and goes backwards at the next election.
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The Liberal Party’s problems are much worse than most in the party think. It is facing an existential crisis that has long been downplayed by elders, MPs and members, but it is undeniable and goes to its leadership, MPs, core beliefs, constituency and party organisation. This denial of reality is threatening the party’s survival.