Libs must change to forge new path back to power
The Liberal Party federal executive should keep Tancredi’s advice in mind as it absorbs the post-election review. For if the Liberals are to remain a prospective party of government, things will have to change.
A defeat is always difficult to absorb. Learning the correct lessons from a defeat is harder still.
The temptation is usually to dodge the strategic questions and focus on the tactical failures. But if the Liberal Party is to remain a viable party of government, it must grapple with both.
One of the key strategic questions is how the Liberal Party repositions to win back those Liberal seats that fell to the teals.
Nine traditionally Liberal seats are now held by independents. Abandoning these seats is simply not an option. Unless we can win back some of them, there is no viable pathway to government. And unless we address the causes that lead to their loss, we risk further such losses.
Analysis of the voting patterns across the teal seats makes clear the teals’ core support came from traditional Labor and Greens supporters who chose to vote tactically, a point also made clear in the Australian Election Study published by the Australian National University.
In the six seats won by teal candidates at the 2022 election, the Labor and Greens primary vote in the Senate was up by an average of three percentage points. But this did not translate to voting in the House of Representatives, where the average Labor primary vote was down by seven percentage points and the average Green primary vote down by six percentage points. Where did these Labor and Greens supporters in the Senate go when it came to the House of Representatives? They voted tactically, to defeat the government, and so turned teal.
In Wentworth, for instance, Labor won 10,000 more primary votes for its Senate ticket than it did for its lower house candidate. The Greens attracted 11,000 more primary votes on their Senate ballot paper than they did for the lower house. These 21,000 votes lost to Labor and the Greens in the lower house instead went to the teal candidate in Wentworth, with the same pattern repeated across other teal seats.
Across the teal seats, about two-thirds of the teal primary support came from voters who supported Labor and the Greens in the Senate. If the Liberal Party had retained its primary vote share, this threat would have been manageable. But the increment that put the teals over the top was disaffected Liberal voters: those who supported us in 2019 but turned against us in 2022.
Nationally, there was a 5 per cent swing against the Liberal Party. But in the six teal seats, the swing was closer to 10 per cent. These voters did not switch to Labor or the Greens. They voted teal instead.
There are several lessons to be drawn from this. First, the task for the Liberal Party is not to win over the Labor-Greens base of the teal candidates, but to win back those disaffected Liberal voters who ultimately proved decisive in these seats. These voters are characterised by higher levels of income and education, and more progressive social attitudes. People under 55 and females make up much of them. We need to develop policies that are true to Liberal values but address their concerns and priorities, including on housing affordability, cost-of-living pressures, childcare, climate change and equality.
Second, we need to be as focused on the threat from our left as we are to that on the right. We cannot obsess about seeing off One Nation, Shooters and the United Australia Party if it comes at the expense of our support in the political centre.
Third, we need to accept and adapt to the changed demographic reality in Australia. The era when strong support from baby boomers could deliver an election win is over.
The 2021 census revealed millennials (those aged 25 to 39) now match baby boomers (those aged 55 to 74) as the largest single generation in Australia, and will soon eclipse it.
Millennials and Gen X (those aged 40 to 54) voters now make up close to 60 per cent of Australia’s voting-age population. This is the demographic where the Liberal Party is struggling.
As the ANU study reveals, more than one in three voters aged under 55 deserted the Coalition at the 2022 election. These younger voters should be fertile ground for the Liberal Party and our values. They value their personal freedoms and individual liberty, embrace flexible careers, are entrepreneurial, see themselves as individuals rather than part of a collective, back their own abilities, welcome technology and innovation, and disavow class warfare and other contrived distinctions.
With the policies we pursue, and the candidates we put forward, the Liberal Party needs to speak to their priorities and concerns. As importantly, we must not alienate them with outdated attitudes on climate, gender equality or sexual orientation.
We need to be a modern Liberal Party that seeks to represent modern Australia. Modern Liberals, if you like.
Dave Sharma is the former Liberal member for Wentworth and is a former diplomat.
As the movement for Italian unification gathers force, the young Sicilian aristocrat Tancredi tells his uncle, Don Fabrizio, in Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”