The Liberal Party is divided against itself and alienated from the political centre. This is a dual crisis and it runs deep. The truth is that recovery and reconstruction will take years. In the interim, Scott Morrison will govern as best he can, minimise the damage and hold out for a May federal election.
A straight line can be drawn documenting this tale of woe, and the immediate trigger was the catastrophic August push against Malcolm Turnbull. This has cost the government two seats on the floor of parliament, a price the party would not have paid if gifted with prior knowledge.
Consider the falling dominoes: the destructive decision by the deposed PM to force the Wentworth by-election; the victory in that by-election by a female independent; the destabilisation of the Morrison government caused by Wentworth; the debacle at the Victorian state poll; and the symbol of the party’s “women problem”, Julia Banks, announcing her ruthless decision yesterday to join the independents, thereby putting Morrison’s legislative agenda and authority in jeopardy.
Most of this is beyond Morrison’s blame but it is his responsibility. The Liberals still have a good case to put but it is being drowned by internal division and the party’s crisis of political character. The problems are too deep-seated.
The Liberals have misread the times. They struggle to talk to their own voters because they are unsure of their core beliefs. They have lost the battle of ideas and are usually outplayed by Labor at tactical politics. There are two rival mythologies fashioned from within — the conservative and the progressive — and this split is worsening despite Morrison’s best efforts.
Victoria was a state election but there are lessons to be drawn for both state and federal Liberals since the party crisis is sourced at multiple levels: belief, talent, policy, campaigning, finance and party organisation.
Australia has changed dramatically and the party is being left behind. It is no longer the party of the establishment with a dominant call on the nation’s power centres and loyalties — in big business, media, finance, family homes and elite institutions. Australia is a more fragmented, tribalised, complex entity where people have competing loyalties and where Victoria is more culturally different from Queensland than two generations ago.
The Liberals have either misread this transformation or failed to respond adequately. They are victims of this transformation because the electoral base of the Liberals and the Coalition has become far more difficult to hold together: its seats constitute the richest and poorest in income terms; the most progressive and most conservative in cultural terms; the most dedicated and sceptical of climate change action; the most pro-renewable and pro-coal in energy terms; and the most supportive and critical of big business and the banks in institutional terms.
Liberals MPs are split primarily because their voting bases are split. The conservatives destroyed the Turnbull leadership because, they said, he was unable to relate to the conservative base, notably in Queensland. That week many Victorian Liberal MPs warned the cost in their state would be fatal — then they voted for Morrison over Peter Dutton.
This week after the state election rout, senior Victorian progressive Kelly O’Dwyer retaliated — she foreshadowed dire consequences in Victoria at the federal election and attacked right-wing ideologues for betraying the true values of the party and turning off the Liberal base.
Prominent Victorian and Senate president Scott Ryan made a related critique, saying seats such as Goldstein, Higgins, Menzies and Kooyong, once “the cradle of the Liberal Party”, had sent the party a strong message in Victoria. Ryan called on the party to mend its ways and “to cast the net wide in the Menzies and Howard tradition”. This is harder than before, yet it is essential.
It is, however, undermined by the conservative lobby and its relentless push for policies that put a premium on product discrimination and that constitute electoral suicide: abandonment of emission reduction targets; attacking renewables; promoting a government-owned coal power station; quitting the Paris Agreement; throwing out the national energy guarantee and being more sceptical of climate change. These policies are the kiss of death in Victoria and much of the country.
The genius of Robert Menzies in the 1940s was to bring together a wide coalition of civic and interest groups as the foundation for the Liberal Party. Yet this coalition has fallen apart because of social and cultural changes. The Liberals, in response, have become a polarised party with a widening gulf between the conservative and progressive wings. It is more different to the Liberal Party under John Howard than many appreciate.
The Victorian election was focused on state issues. But voters know the brand is in crisis. They know the Turnbull-Dutton-Morrison showdown was not about power or popularity but the deeper issue of Liberal belief and identity. Turnbull’s removal reflected an existential crisis — that’s why it is so hard to discuss it with the public. The associated alarm is whether damage to the Liberal brand will jeopardise the re-election hopes next March of the NSW Liberal government, a more alarming threat than the Victorian loss.
The Liberal malaise, however, got tangible expression in the performance of the Victorian party. The Baillieu-Napthine Liberal government was dumped after a single disappointing term. Matthew Guy was never a political match for ALP premier Daniel Andrews, as reflected in the polls for years. Andrews’s focus on “getting the job done” and infrastructure to manage a growth economy overshadowed his opponents.
The Liberals have been humiliated by a big-spending Labor government hostage to trade union power, hostile to fossil fuels, pro-euthanasia, pro-Safe Schools, hooked on compassion gestures and a left-wing cultural agenda. The Liberal campaign was confused and ineffective. It mirrored worrying omens for the Liberals: their economic credentials are diminished; after 27 years of growth, economic management competence no longer has the political traction it once exerted for them; law and order, a key feature of the Liberal campaign, is a plus for a competent party but won’t win an election. The Liberals were outsmarted and out-spent.
On display was another variation of the proven ALP winning formula: generous funding of health and education; a compassion agenda dedicated to women, youth and minorities; a renewables-based industry policy to address climate change; a growth agenda for Victoria; trade union appeasement to secure union electoral backing; mobilisation of public sector workers; a focus on the feminisation of the workforce, selling the idea Labor is the friend of working women.
After his victory, Andrews boasted Victoria was “the most progressive state in our nation”. The Liberals face dire electoral trouble in Victoria, the most progressive state, and Queensland, the most conservative state. Now, that’s an achievement. The internal war is undermining them in both constituencies. They did badly in the low-income conservative Longman by-election and badly in the high-income progressive seat of Wentworth.
The Liberals have been outsmarted in terms of power and influence. The institutional norms that helped them from big business to the Christian churches are manifestly weaker; the rise of progressive values has caught them short and divided; the feminisation of the workforce has assisted Labor and left the Liberals exposed; the pervasive influence of the universities and education sectors fuels prejudice against the Liberals; they are constantly trapped by the rise of climate change as a moral issue and they have remarkably little cultural influence — witness the long-run damage the ABC as an institution has done to the Liberal cause.
Morrison is ready to fight. That is vital at the moment. Whether he succeeds or fails, the Liberals need a comprehensive strategic and structural revamp. The question remains: Are they capable of such self-assessment and reform?
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