Opinion: Liberal Party on the ropes, must do 3 things to survive

The typical Coalition supporter is now a retired Christian with a high school education, aged over 65 and living in regional Queensland, writes Paul Williams. VOTE IN OUR POLL

The American author Mark Twain, on reports of his demise, famously said news of his death was an exaggeration.

The lesson? Don’t condemn to the grave that which still has a pulse. Twain lived for another 13 years.

I’d wager Twain’s quote has been uttered frequently this past couple of weeks across Liberal and National party branches. Opinion polls have not only written out the Coalition’s death certificate, but they’ve begun digging the grave.

Last week’s Newspoll pegged the Coalition’s (and not the Liberals’ alone, which is even lower) first-preference vote at just 27 per cent (down five points since the May election). It was the Coalition’s lowest support in Newspoll’s 40-year history, and almost certainly the Liberals’ own worst result since the party’s founding in 1944. The Liberal-National Coalition has lost 20 primary vote points since John Howard’s historic 1996 win.

Sadly, Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who trails Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister by 20 points, will unfairly cop much of the blame. Yes, Ley’s personal approval rating is rapidly going south – minus 17 points this month compared to minus seven in July – but Ley was given the worst job in Australia: restoring a creaky old Coalition mansion, with dodgy wiring and leaky plumbing, run down after years of ideological neglect. That the Coalition is a dilapidated piece of political real estate no one wants to buy is hardly her fault alone.

To identify the true culprits, let’s look closely at who supports today’s Coalition or, rather, who doesn’t. This week’s Newspoll demographic breakdown shows the Coalition trailing Labor in every state except Queensland (where the LNP leads by a single point on primary votes, but trails Labor after preferences).

Both male and female (on 29 per cent each) Coalition supporters are rarer than male and female Labor voters (at 38 and 34 per cent respectively) – yes, men are deserting the Coalition for the first time since Howard – and the Coalition is losing every age cohort except the over 65s (those born in the 1950s or earlier).

Even higher education – a reliable predictor of voter behaviour – offers no solace to a Coalition now losing to Labor among both TAFE and university graduates. Even those with no tertiary education – once enthusiastic supporters of Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Pauline Hanson – are today split evenly between Labor and the Coalition.

Worse, voters in every income bracket, even those earning over $150,000, prefer Labor to the Liberals and Nationals, with only retirees backing the Coalition over Labor. At least Christians support the Coalition over Labor.

The profile of typical Coalition supporter today is a retired Christian with a high school education, aged over 65 years and living in regional Queensland. That’s not a demographic on which to rebuild Australia’s most successful federal political outfit.

But, like Twain, reports of the Coalition’s – and especially the Liberals’ – death is an exaggeration. Labor lost 31 seats in a 6 per cent swing in 1996, but returned to office under Kevin Rudd 11 years later. I choose the 1996 election not because it was Labor’s worst defeat (it wasn’t) but because so much of Labor’s working and lower-middle-classes deserted the party for the aspirational John Howard: the so-called battler’s friend.

In short, Labor in 1996 was pronounced dead, buried and cremated, and was advised by all and sundry to reinvent itself, possibly under a new name, as an entirely new outfit.

Yes, Labor changed somewhat – it dropped some of the elitism of the Keating years – but the party, essentially a social justice organisation, remains largely the same.

The first reform is membership. The Coalition parties remain overwhelmingly masculine, with a membership no longer a reflection of middle or urban Australia. Women’s quotas for winnable seats is therefore an immediate must, with appeals to younger voters – on, for example, higher education – also essential.

Second, the Coalition must move into the 21st century and offer the policies a modern and moderate Australia wants. Threats to abandon net-zero carbon emission targets and revive old culture wars are a guarantee the Coalition will lose again in 2028.

Third, the Liberals must elect leaders who eschew petty point-scoring and instead offer a genuine vision for the country. Ley blaming Albanese for the actions of a mercurial Donald Trump, for example, fools no one.

No, the Coalition is not on its deathbed. It just needs a youthful blood transfusion topped up with a daily dose of reality.

Paul Williams is an associate professor at Griffith University

Originally published as Opinion: Liberal Party on the ropes, must do 3 things to survive