Wooley: State Liberals face their own game of thrones

A federal electoral drubbing means conservatives at all levels must plan ahead to lure talent for the future, writes Charles Wooley

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton conceding defeat on election night, alongside his sons Harry and Tom, at the W Hotel on May 3, in Brisbane. Picture: Dan Peled/Getty Images.

This week the consensus of most journalists picking over the entrails of the eviscerated Liberal Party has been, “Well we certainly underestimated Albanese.”

Apparently we did. “I’ve been underestimated my whole life,” the Prime Minister told a press conference back in April 2022. “My whole life has been one whereby I haven’t got a leg-up. I fought for everything that I’ve got.”

Well, Albo should know he is not Robinson Crusoe. Like him, most Australians weren’t born into wealth and privilege. But let’s face it, mixing it with the political class in parliament and up the front of the plane for 30 years is not exactly a reliable guide to the life of everyone.

And as for not “getting a leg-up”, the awful truth is that Peter Dutton’s disastrous election campaign gave Albanese the biggest political leg-up since 2001 when a ship called the Tampa, laden with refugees, sank Kim Beazley’s prime ministerial hopes.

Both parties this time have recorded historically low primary votes, but Liberal campaign incompetence matched only by Dutton’s deep unpopularity have delivered the Albanese government an astonishing victory beyond all reasonable expectations.

We have been hearing the details all week. It is enough to recognise that this was a record-breaking and historical victory.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton conceding defeat on election night, at the W Hotel on May 3, in Brisbane. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire

Albo’s campaign was unexciting but flawless, whereas Dutton’s was unexciting but deeply flawed. And now, whatever you think of Albo, he will be there for two more parliamentary terms.

And given the alternative it does seem that the Australian voting public probably chose the least bad option.

I don’t always love the result, but I agree with Paul Keating’s maxim that like it or not, “The Australian voter always gets it right.” Although he told me that after his second election victory, not after his final loss to John Howard.

Still, I reckon Paul was right. And now the small cohort of Australians who voted 1 for the Liberals will just have to cop it sweet. Six years in the political wilderness should give their party ample time to repent and reform.

It’s time they will need. Because looking at the depleted Opposition line-up it would be easy to consider that the next Liberal prime minister of Australia is not yet in the parliament.

You might remember that back in the 1980s federal Labor’s team was so skint for leadership talent that ALP smart strategists looked outside their parliamentary ranks and drafted Bob Hawke from the ACTU.

The Liberals should now be looking for smarter strategists and new political talent.

Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest may be the man to bring back the Liberals after Peter Dutton’s humiliating defeat, according to Charles Wooley. Picture: Supplied.

My outsider pick for the Australian Liberals would be Twiggy Forrest – if he could spare the time.

The Canadian Liberal Party looked outside its own ranks to choose an eminent banker, Mark Carney, who wasn’t even in the parliament during the election campaign.

It was a daring but amazingly successful strategy. Admittedly Carney got one of Albo’s leg-ups from Donald Trump’s virtual declaration of war on Canada.

I’d pick Twiggy Forrest as politically acceptable. Australians wouldn’t cop a banker, but nearly everyone loves a miner. They pay our way.

But moving from the bigger world down to our own Lilliputian affairs, how does the ALP’s triumphant winning of four out of five federal lower house seats translate to the next Tasmanian state election?

Aside from our likeable Premier Jeremy Rockliff, pictured here at a Devonport cafe with his mum Geraldine, the state Liberals don’t have much to offer in the leadership department, according to Charles Wooley. Picture: Supplied

Honestly, your columnist doesn’t have a clue and I’m hearing there may be no effect at all. As Premier Rockliff told the parliament this week, “I’m no Peter Dutton.” Clearly.

Unlike Dutton, when the premier goes, despite everything, it will be on his own terms.

I once thought the Opposition would force an election over the shock revelation that the government had forgotten to build port facilities for our billion dollars’ worth of new ferries.

I can’t think of anywhere else in the democratic world where a government could survive a monumental stuff-up of these proportions.

But survive they have, and our likeable premier often appears almost insouciant. Now, despite the public unease about his government directing us towards an even bigger spend on a billion-plus football stadium, at the moment of writing he threatens a footy-less future if the upper house doesn’t toe the line.

Meanwhile, polling suggests what a Labor insider has told me, that the stadium issue “remains politically neutral” despite strong opposition in the North where people fancy what many still call York Park.

But what really neutralises the politics of the issue is bipartisanship in the lower house. When the Laborials agree it doesn’t really matter what most Tasmanians think.

Rebecca White is congratulated by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra, after her successful campaign to win the seat of Lyons. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The strenuous and successful campaigning by Rebecca White in Lyons shows how one highly identifiable Labor candidate can succeed spectacularly. But that mightn’t mean so much in a state election not due for two-and-a-half years.

All of which for now leaves the genuinely likeable premier Rocky simply to do what Churchill advised in the darkest days of World War II and “just keep on buggering on”.

Sometimes that works.

But what if Rocky gets fed up and wishes to return to the bucolic quiet of spud farming in the rich chocolate soil of the North-West?

And why wouldn’t he?

Here is fertile ground for speculation. If he succumbs to the call of the kennebec, the state Liberals would be in exactly the same leadership quandary as are their federal colleagues today.

Newcomer and Infrastructure Minister Kerry Vincent has the right stuff: extensive business and local government experience. But he’d need to move from the upper house and probably have to serve at least a term as deputy premier.

Although Tasmanian MP Eric Abetz possesses many admirable leadership qualities – such as industriousness and a meticulous eye for detail – Charles Wooley questions whether he measures up in terms of likeability.

But deputy to whom? The usual suspects are too tainted by ongoing disasters. That leaves only Eric Abetz, who has all the political virtues: headstrong stubborn inflexibility, intractable rectitude, industriousness and an attention to detail (he’d never have forgotten to build a port for those ferries).

But if I could put it diplomatically, he might be found just a tad short of the great likability of Jeremy Rockliff.

Of course, that is where his affable deputy would come in as the good cop to the bad cop. Would you cop that?

Succession is the eternal bugbear of politics.

The clear lack of it must be what keeps Jeremy Rockliff so far away from the farm.

Presumably he remains a captive of that old saying of obscure origin:

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”

Charles Wooley is Tasmanian-based journalist.