Julian Leeser offers a blueprint to rebuild the Liberal Party, says serious cultural change the answer

The former frontbencher said the party was still to seriously reflect on the demographic and electoral challenges it faced.

Liberal MP Julian Leeser says the party must seriously engage with rebuilding its branches “because we need them to embody and reflect the vast middle”.

Julian Leeser has urged Liberals to embrace serious cultural change, develop a strong economic plan and properly invest in professional campaign staff if the party is to be competitive at the next election.

Laying out his vision for what the Liberal Party must do as a political organisation “to reconnect with and reach that vast middle”, the Member for Berowra on Tuesday night said women, multicultural Australia and young people must make up more of its membership and the fringes ignored.

“Our pathway back to government is only through and with the vast middle. To get that group to join our party requires us to change. The first change is to make community organising central to our activities,” Mr Leeser said at the annual Bradfield dinner.

“I believe one of the lessons of the last election is that in too many communities voters believed that our first loyalties were to party, rather than conscience, values, and our communities.

“As a party, we also need serious cultural change. We need a bigger space for debate, for listening and persuasion. We need a bigger space for difference and respect for it. Menzies once called our party a ‘community of thought’ and it must be that again - a party that is a community, as well as a place to engage. The scourge of factionalism has done great damage to that.”

Mr Leeser warned the party was yet to seriously reflect on the demographic and electoral challenges before it, after senior Liberals and former leaders and ministers called on Peter Dutton to conduct a wide-ranging policy review to promote a stronger agenda and identity.

Australians expected nothing less than a serious economic plan, Mr Leeser said, which dealt with not only the symptoms of inflation, productivity and wage stagnation but also the causes.

Acknowledging the party’s membership has been shrinking for decades, Mr Leeser said at the last federal and NSW elections Liberals struggled to man their booths - even in some seats it held.

In Liberal heartland seats, he said non-Liberal workers were out in force in numbers two, three and four times that of the party.

“We are losing the ground game,” Mr Leeser, who quit the frontbench to campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament, said.

“We are failing to engage with the question ‘what does true political organising mean in this day and age?’ There is no point having the best polling or digital game if you can’t get people to work with you on booths? Or if you can’t turn out volunteers that reflect the community we seek to represent.

“The fringes are loud and noisy and it’s not where our are political future is.”

Mr Leeser said professional campaign staff had to be given opportunities to work and observe campaigns in other countries, test out new techniques and train other staff and volunteers.