Embrace your inner rebels, Nationals elders urge Ley
As Liberal Party support sinks, salvation may lie in allowing more mavericks, as the young men’s vote goes begging.
Sussan Ley and David Littleproud need more rebels and mavericks.
As the Liberal and Nationals leaders deal with party defections, resignations, policy schisms, voter desertion to One Nation and teals, rebels and mavericks within their own ranks, and a relentless Labor government seeking to exploit internal division and weaponise climate change to split the Coalition, this is the last thing they will want to hear.
In the past few months Jacinta Nampijinpa Price defected from the Nationals to the Liberals, then resigned messily from the Coalition frontbench and now is complaining about discipline within the parliamentary party; fellow Liberal frontbench refugee Andrew Hastie launched a personal campaign supporting family and Australian manufacturing; and Queensland LNP senator and former resources minister Matt Canavan fought steadfastly against a 2050 net-zero carbon emissions target.
Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have used what they’ve described as the “division”, “infighting” and “distraction” within Coalition ranks to continue to press down on the Liberals, the Treasurer declaring in parliament: “We won’t be distracted by the far right and the further right.”
Voter support slumps
At the same time, Coalition support in Newspoll has slumped to record lows as support for One Nation sits at near-record highs and fuels genuine concern in rural and regional seats that the loss of conservative support to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation hasn’t stopped.
On the moderate side, Melbourne MP Tim Wilson was the only person to actually win back a seat for the Liberals when he regained Goldstein and a new Liberal MP complained that the conservative rebels would cost the Liberals inner-city seats.
What’s more, the Coalition can no longer depend on a traditional level of voter support. The fragmentation of conservative parties and votes are global phenomena posing a seemingly intractable problem for political leaders.
Yet this advice to allow more rebels and mavericks comes not from malicious Labor strategists, naive or inexperienced politicians seeking to sunder the Coalition, create new parties or lurch to the right or left in an attempt to stop the haemorrhaging of support from the Nationals and Liberals.
No, the considered advice for the Coalition to develop clear policy, recognise the danger of fragmentation of the electorate, as well as further fragmentation of conservative parties and vote, comes from two former Coalition deputy prime ministers and Nationals leaders: John Anderson and Michael McCormack.
Neither sees the challenge as insurmountable but both recognise that the feeling of a lack of conservative representation first needs to be recognised and then sensibly dealt with, not by chasing ideological rainbows but by addressing the concerns of those lost voters through clear policy and good leadership. This need to appeal to voters, especially young men, who are attracted to other parties, particularly One Nation, is not addressed by wholesale changes that alienate other groups but by demonstrating conviction and alternative leadership.
Still in parliament on the backbench as the Nationals MP for the western NSW seat of Riverina, McCormack counsels calm for conservatives to avoid “a big lurch one way or the other”, to develop policies that draw people back who are attracted to other parties.
“Things change rapidly in politics. We are two years from the next election and really only one government scandal away from things changing dramatically,” McCormack tells Inquirer.
But he says: “We can no longer rely on set support. The voting public is much more fickle and we have to earn every single vote.”
‘Coalition must be a broad church’
As a former leader McCormack is not too upset by having a lively debate from the backbench and views it as part of the essential role for the Coalition to be seen as “a broad church”. He recognises that what far north Queensland advocate Canavan can say and get away with is different to what the Nationals’ most southern representative, Darren Chester, can say in Victoria.
“It’s good that Matt Canavan can use rhetoric that others can’t and get away with it. It’s even different in NSW in Riverina or New England,” he says.
While recognising the serious concern the Nationals have about One Nation, McCormack says he believes people can be drawn back to the Nationals with a maverick campaign like the old-fashioned ground-level campaign run by former Queensland senator Ron Boswell that initially defeated One Nation in Queensland.
“When Ron spoke, people listened, and Matt Canavan has more time and more latitude to freelance,” McCormack says.
Anderson, who has built a huge podcast following in the past seven years interviewing conservative guests, says the fragmentation is here to stay because of identity politics but he argues good leadership can draw back lost support, especially among young men.
The podcast has 765,000 subscribers with strong male support in a market shared with conservative US commentators and millions of viewers.
The One Nation threat
As deputy prime minister to John Howard, Anderson was aware of the threat from One Nation then – boosted by Howard’s early determination to change gun laws – and it has risen again because men, including young men, feel they are being cast aside as “toxic” just because they are male and that they are not being represented.
The latest Newspoll surveys show One Nation with a primary vote of between 12 and 13 per cent, strongholds in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, and having about a third of the Coalition support. These numbers are spooking Nationals particularly, and rural and regional Liberals are also at risk.
While “deeply concerned” about the fragmentation of politics and the dominance of progressive politics and policy in institutions Anderson is not without hope for conservative politics and takes solace from developments in the US and Britain.
Certainly Hastie, as he resigned from the Coalition frontbench last week, cited a lead taken in the US, Britain and Europe that could be transferred to Australia to restore the Liberal Party’s support in a “big tent”. Hastie directly quoted the dumping of 2050 net-zero targets by British Conservatives and alluded to US Republicans’ success with young voters – especially young men – through appeals to lower immigration and protection of manufacturing jobs.
“I think we’re going through a period of renewal,” Hastie said. “I think the centre right as a movement is fractured at the moment. We’re seeing the One Nation vote increase quite significantly. And I think one of the jobs we have to do as a Liberal Party is to reconstitute that natural constituency if we’re going to win government.
“And that means listening to aspirational mainstream Australians who love their country, love their local community, love their families, who want to build a better life, but they feel like Labor has taken control away from them, and who feel like they’re going backwards, and that’s who we’ve got to win back.”
‘Young men are unrepresented’
Anderson, an early mentor for Hastie and a staunch National and coalitionist, says these are the issues that young conservatives are responding to and have the potential to attract young men back to the mainstream parties, just as they did for Republicans in the US, and have built Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
“Young people are starting to wake up and good leaders are needed to stop them going to bad leaders,” Anderson says, warning that the Canberra elites don’t understand how unrepresented young men feel.
Anderson also says the young men have great potential and, like Hastie, points to developments in the US where military recruitment – army, air force, navy, marines and National Guard – has filled its quota four months ahead of schedule for the first time in a decade, leaving a waiting list of 10,000.
According to the US Department of Defence, recently rebranded the department of war: “This achievement represents a significant turning point for the army and indicates a renewed sense of patriotism and purpose among America’s youth.”
There is no doubt the recruiting success has occurred while US President Donald Trump has taken steps against the “wokeness” of the US military and controversially ordered troops into police actions, but it also has coincided with the end of Covid and much improved pay and conditions.
Hastie, as a former Special Air Service officer, has a particular appeal to young men and it is here that Anderson says there is potential for a “cooee march” sentiment that can lead people back to the Coalition.
Essentially, McCormack and Anderson can see the obvious challenges for the conservative side of politics, particularly the Liberals and Nationals, but are not advocates for drastic party change or excluding “outliers” who can pull back lost support.
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