Andrew Robb post-mortem uncomfortable reading for all

The importance of Andrew Robb’s ­report cannot be underestimated. Picture: Aaron Francis

If history is any guide, political party campaign reviews are ­designed to achieve one thing and one thing only — to find the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent.

At best they are useless documents that are quickly consigned to the dustbin of reviews past.

Not so Andrew Robb’s critique of the Liberal Party’s 2016 election campaign — the so-called disastrous victory.

The former trade minister and past federal director who was ­arguably the architect of the ­professionalisation of the Liberal Party machine in the 1990s was both a wise and dangerous choice to conduct this review.

Wise, because he would be expecte­d to do a thorough job, and not be content to put his name to a meaningless document that didn’t include the culpability of the ­parliamentary wing. It was dangerous for the same reasons.

Robb hasn’t named names of individual MPs and ministers but, by all accounts, it will be obvious who he is referring to. The report cites successive ­failures starting from the beginning of the Abbott term, then the rise of ­Malcolm Turnbull and the campaign that almost cost the government office.

It should come as no surprise that the campaign director and former Howard chief of staff Tony Nutt has taken a bullet.

This is standard operating proced­ure for campaign post mortems­ — but usually only when the party loses office.

Call it conventional wisdom or popular myth, the prevailing view is that the campaign was a disaster and the headquarters, CHQ, rather­ than Turnbull’s travelling party often mockingly referred to as Air Force Once, was to blame.

The report, however, will make uncomfortable reading for the entire­ parliamentary wing, from Turnbull down.

Nor will it be a document that Abbott can use to his political benefit. He doesn’t escape Robb’s forensi­c microscope either.

The report will suggest without saying it that Nutt was right to fall on his sword. Critical mistakes were made, although it is acknow­ledged that he was brought in at the 11th hour before being handed a poisoned chalice with an eight-week campaign which stretched resources to breaking point.

It may also jar with the narrative set by a string of ministers — Julie Bishop, Matthias Corman and Barnaby Joyce among them — who had personally addressed staff at the CHQ to tell them that they were running the best election­ campaign they had ever been involved in.

But Nutt is only a small cog in a bigger wheel that continues to roll towards electoral disaster.

The most significant take-out from the report, if it is ever released publicly, will be the implied failure of Turnbull and his backers, Scott Ryan and James McGrath. They had a strategy to take the leadership from Abbott but no strategy beyond that.

The importance of Robb’s ­report cannot be underestimated.

Its message will not be simply a catalogue for failures past but a harbinger for what is to come for the Liberal Party if it doesn’t learn from its mistakes, which are far deeper and broader than last year’s campaign.