Is the Liberal Party finished? Don’t bet the rent on it yet
There is talk about the Liberal Party being doomed. We’ve heard this before. Labor was finished in 1977. The Liberals in 1993. Both came back — and energy prices could be Labor’s undoing.
It was a stunning result, just over four weeks after Fraser had been sworn in as a caretaker prime minister following the dismissal of the Whitlam government by governor-general Sir John Kerr on November 11, 1975.
For a while, Labor was completely disillusioned. Partly because Whitlam did not step down as leader after the election and led his party to another devastating defeat in the (early) election held on December 10, 1977. Bill Hayden, who was to become a most successful Labor leader, challenged Whitlam for the leadership in mid-1977 but failed narrowly to get the numbers.
I remember former Labor MP Barry Cohen telling me that his mind told him to support Hayden but his heart went for Whitlam. Cohen followed his heart. At the time, Fraser was despised by many Labor supporters for blocking supply in late 1975 and bringing on the Dismissal. Later on, Fraser turned on Kerr, palled up with Whitlam and became much loved at literary festivals, where he received standing ovations from left-wingers who had once worn “Shame Fraser, Shame” badges.
In going through some files recently, I came across the December 17, 1977, issue of The Bulletin weekly magazine. The cover featured a large photo of Fraser holding his hands above his head in victory mode. It featured only three words: “Is Labor Finished?”
There is footage of Whitlam looking deeply depressed as he departed his post-election press conference accompanied by a red-headed staffer. It was Kerry O’Brien, best known for his journalistic life at the ABC.
In time Whitlam became one of Labor’s (secular) saints, remembered for the circumstances of his dismissal rather than the manifest incompetence of his government. Hayden took over from Whitlam and did well in his first election in October 1980. However, he was replaced by Bob Hawke on the eve of the March 1983 election, which Labor won comfortably.
The motivation of Hawke, Paul Keating, Hayden, Peter Walsh and other members of the Hawke cabinet was not to repeat the errors of the Whitlam years. They succeeded, winning five elections in a row until John Howard and the Coalition prevailed in March 1996.
So, Labor was back in office in just over seven years after the Dismissal and just over five years after The Bulletin queried whether the party was finished. There is a message here for the Liberal Party.
As I have mentioned in these pages previously, writing in The Age on July 17, 1993, left-of-centre academic Judith Brett declared that “the Liberal Party in the 1990s seemed doomed”.
That was after Liberal Party leader John Hewson lost what some called “the unlosable election”. However, the Liberal Party was back in office in 1996 with Howard as prime minister after 13 years in opposition. And its leader went on to become the second longest serving prime minister in Australian history.
Today, again, there is talk about the Liberal Party being doomed. Who knows? But we do know that it’s difficult to wind up and rebuild a political party. Especially in an electoral system at the commonwealth level that provides for preferential and compulsory voting (the latter now relies more on habit rather than compulsion).
Look at it this way. The Liberal Party of Australia has a federated system. It exists in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. In Queensland there is the Liberal National Party (the members of which formally belong to the Liberal Party). Then there is the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory. These days political parties depend significantly on government funding – calculated according to the primary vote that parties attain at the previous election. In short, it’s not easy to establish a new party.
As I pointed out in my 1994 book Menzies’ Child, when Robert Menzies established the Liberal Party of Australia in late 1944 he brought together a number of all but independent non-Labor organisations. The United Australia Party, which expired in 1944, was not an organised federated institution like the Liberal Party of today.
Commentators correctly point to the fact that, under the leadership of Peter Dutton, the Coalition ran a dreadful campaign in 2025. It should be noted that the Nationals, as part of the Coalition, did relatively well.
But it is also true that the Liberals ran an appalling campaign under Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 in which 14 seats were lost.
In other words, the Liberal Party has performed poorly under the likes of moderates such as Turnbull and political conservatives such as Dutton.
It remains to be seen whether Sussan Ley will succeed as leader. But she has developed stances on energy and immigration (the latter yet to be announced) that indicate the Liberals have some direction.
The recently released Australian Election Study suggests that, for the first time, Australian voters prefer Labor over the Coalition when it comes to economic policy. But it also indicates that cost of living is easily of most importance to voters.
The Coalition is ahead of Labor in only one area – namely, national security. But it’s an important issue.
It’s probably 2½ years to the next election. Labor is comfortably in office but appears to face long-term problems with rising energy prices, which are central to cost-of-living concerns as well as to businesses of all sizes.
As Liberal Party operative Michael Kroger consistently says, the task of the Liberals is to get back to home-ground issues. Namely the economy broadly defined, including cost of living and debt.
The Coalition is currently bleeding votes to One Nation, but unless it collapses, some of this support will come back via preferences.
Apart from a national security surprise, the next election is likely to be fought on economic issues. The Albanese government looks secure for now – but energy prices seem likely to remain a serious problem, even if sections of the media are yet to recognise this.
I suspect that the Liberal Party will be around for some time and that the answer to such a question – “Is the Liberal Party finished?” – will be in the negative.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
Next Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the Malcolm Fraser-led Coalition’s victory over the Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam.