Calls for more conservative think tanks to help Liberals rise from ashes of Dutton defeat

Amid growing concerns in conservative ranks about the lack of new ideas, research centre boss Nick Dyrenfurth said the ALP learnt from ‘getting beaten by John Howard again and again’.

Peter Dutton concedes defeat during a Liberal Party election night event in Brisbane. Picture: Getty Images

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Senior Liberal and Nationals figures want more conservative think-tanks and policy-focused groups to emerge from the ashes of their election defeat, as the head of the Labor-aligned John Curtin ­Research Centre said the ­Coalition’s messaging was “stuck in 2001”.

Amid growing concerns in conservative ranks about the lack of third-party policy machines to generate and support new ideas, John Curtin Research Centre executive director Nick Dyrenfurth said the ALP had learnt from “getting beaten by John Howard again and again”.

With conservatives in Australia, Britain and Canada licking their wounds after heavy election defeats, senior Liberal MPs on Sunday said right-aligned think tanks across the globe must work together to help rebuild and modernise conservative parties.

Current think tanks in Australia with Liberal and Nationals links include the Institute of Public Affairs, Centre for Independent Studies, Menzies Research Centre and the Blueprint Institute.

Dr Dyrenfurth said it took Labor a long time to “work out where and how the battle would be won – but that’s light years ahead of the Liberals, who still haven’t worked out there’s a war”.

“If you lose the arguments, on a long enough timeline you’ll lose the votes,” Dr Dyrenfurth said.

“I lived through years of federal Labor being distracted by every culture war argument going around and then getting beaten by John Howard again and again and again because he was trusted on the only game in town: the economy.”

Dr Dyrenfurth said “for the ­Coalition, it’s still 2001 in their messaging and 1979 [the year Margaret Thatcher was elected] in their ideology”.

“If you see a thread through everything the John Curtin ­Research Centre and other like-minded organisations and ­unions have been saying, it’s that Labor needed to be the party of the outer suburbs, the material voter,” he said.

“Not only has Labor done that, at the same time Liberals have become the party that talks about welcome to country and trans issues and wokeism – all ­during an inflation and cost-of-­living crisis. It’s riveting and ­remarkable.”

Jim Chalmers (left) and Nick Dyrenfurth. Stuart McEvoy/The Australian.

Labor MPs have at times worked with leading think-tanks and research groups including Jim Chalmers, who was executive director at the Chifley Research Centre in 2013.

Dr Dyrenfurth said “Labor’s think tanks are all led by people my age and younger – in our 40s.

“I can’t think of a single thought leader on their side who isn’t under 50, if not over 60”.

“In a very real sense, this generation gap is the election margin. People over 60 aren’t trying to buy their first house or raise their children,” he said. “They own their homes, their kids have moved out, they’re superannuated now.

“The swing voters are not represented in the leadership or the thinking of the modern conser­vative movement.

“And if any major party – let alone a conservative one – has nothing to say to parents, nothing to say to workers, nothing to say to those buying houses and building their lives in our community, what is the point of them?

“I spent so long making this point in Labor that it’s extra­ordinary to me to see the Libs ­forget it.”

Dr Dyrenfurth said while Labor had won the recent ­battles, the party must “resist ­complacency”.

“Labor needs to stay the intellectual and political course,” he said. “It needs more working ­people in its ranks. And it needs to commit fully to the current direction – not just in the party but in the parliament and the people who will go into parliament over the next two electoral cycles.”