John Howard: Liberals ‘must stand ground on policy’ if teal wave is to be turned

John Howard says the Liberal Party is ‘too factionalised’ and that ‘both sides can be blamed’ as he exhorts the party to maintain policy differentiation to win its way back into power.

Former prime minister John Howard says ‘you don’t win anything back by embracing the other person’s policy. The last thing the Liberal Party should try and do is be Labor lite’. Picture: Justin Lloyd

John Howard says the Liberal Party is “too factionalised” and that “both sides can be blamed” as he exhorts the party to maintain policy differentiation to win its way back into power.

The former prime minister made the comments in the soon-to-be-aired Sky News documentary Liberals in Power in which former deputy leader Josh Frydenberg pointedly does not rule out a return to politics.

Other former senior Liberal parliamentarians have urged the party to moderate policy positions to win back seats from teal independents. “If the Liberal Party thinks it can win from the right, it’s going to be in opposition for a long time,” said former defence minister and leading moderate Christopher Pyne.

One-term Liberal MP for the western Sydney seat of Lindsay, Fiona Scott, shared a similar view and said the loss of blue-ribbon seats to teal independents showed the party had a problem with moderate women. “My question to the Liberal Party’s really simple: why did these women (the teal ­independents) not join the Liberal Party? If they did, why did they leave?” Ms Scott said.

She argued the problem would be fixed only when women such as the teal MPs were able to win preselection in such seats.

These arguments were repudiated by Mr Howard. “There are those in the Liberal Party who say really, to win back the teal seats, you’ve got to implement the teal agenda on climate change,” Mr Howard said. “Well, you don’t win anything back by embracing the other person’s policy. The last thing the Liberal Party should try and do is be Labor lite.”

The Liberals in Power series examines the highs and lows of the Coalition in government from Tony Abbott’s 2013 election victory, through Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership to Scott Morrison’s 2022 defeat. More than 20 interviews provide rare insights into leadership and policy machinations, with views shared on how the Liberals, now out of power across the mainland, can recover.

Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Crosling

Former treasurer Mr Frydenberg (who recently announced he would not recontest the seat of Kooyong at the next election after losing it to teal Monique Ryan last year) argues the state divisions need to be reformed. “We need to get them back to where they are an effective party-political fighting machine,” he said. Asked if he is done with politics, Mr Frydenberg said: “You never say never.”

Mr Howard argued the factions have become “preferment co-operatives” that can only be tackled by “effective leadership” at a state and federal level. He said some branches were so factionalised they decided who could join the party depending on their ideological disposition. “Years and years ago, when I was cutting my teeth on Liberal Party activity, the mantra was to go out and recruit people, and the idea of running a tape measure over their ideology before you allowed them in is ridiculous,” he said.

Trent Zimmerman – a former NSW Liberal Party president and the member for North Sydney before being defeated by teal independent Kylea Tink last year – believes both major parties have failed voters on stability. “The challenges that we faced internally ourselves undermined completely that central value proposition that a party brings, that it can offer the type of ­stability, which means that we don’t end up as an Italian parliament,” Mr Zimmerman said. But Mr Howard believes the teal seats were lost largely as a protest vote by offering a non-Labor alternative to the Liberals.

“There’s one thing I would very strongly publicly and privately counsel the Coalition against,”

Former prime minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Jason Edwards

Mr Howard said. “It’s this idea that you’ve got to have a teal-specific approach. If you have strong policies on the economy, on national security, on family issues, you’ll win the public back – and you choose good-quality candidates – and when you’ve chosen somebody, get behind them, whether they’re a man or a woman, or dripping wet or bone dry or whatever.”

The most recent Liberal prime minister, Mr Morrison, offered a big-picture outlook. “We believe Australians can be amazing and we just want to help them achieve that, and when they’re amazing, the country’s amazing,” the current member for Cook said. “The Labor Party believes the government can be amazing – I think I’ll go with the people.”