The wake of an election campaign always brings a flood of beard-stroking “analysis” from Monday’s Experts. So, why shouldn’t I join in? Well, I already have but why stop when we’re having fun. And the most fun, post-election, is poking through the entrails of the losing side.
The most notable thing here is that there is less gloom for the Libs than you’d think. In fact, as the door to the Lodge slams shut, a rare door of opportunity is opening for the party to renew itself. The most spectacular losses for the Liberals were exactly the sort of people it is frankly well shot of: the so-called “moderate” blue-greens. Scott Morrison proved to be a woeful leader (domestically, at least: internationally was another matter, as I’ve often written) who was viscerally hated by voters.
So, that’s two dead weights removed from around the party’s neck. The question is whether they have the smarts to seize the opportunities within their grasp.
Tony Abbott is one of just four Liberal leaders to win government from opposition. He came within a hair’s breadth of doing so after a single term in opposition. So, the party is well advised to pay heed to what he says.
A swath of moderate, progressive Liberal MPs has been wiped out by teals running on just two policies – an integrity commission and more cuts to greenhouse gas emissions – in a parasitical political campaign that cost Scott Morrison any chance. In an election that mostly concentrated on cost-of-living pressures, the seats of Wentworth, Kooyong, North Sydney, McKellar, Goldstein and Curtin were not clamouring for income support […]
He has recognised the likelihood of entrenched elitist, inner-city MPs holding traditional Liberal seats, just as Greens will hold traditional Labor seats, and the need and potential for Liberals to extend support in the outer suburbs and link with the regional and rural support of fringe Liberals and Nationals.
The demographics and election results speak for themselves of the potential for Liberal appeals to small business, family, migrants, tradespeople and contractors in the less affluent suburbs. In Sydney’s western, formerly Labor seat of Fowler, the only true independent success of 2022, Dai Le, who defeated former NSW Labor premier, Kristina Keneally, who was parachuted in from Sydney’s uber-exclusive Scotland Island, did so as a migrant and small businesswoman, with a family and grassroots support.
The Australian
With Morrison defenestrated, there is a chance for a new Liberal leader to speak to constituencies about economic advancement and aspiration that matters to mainstream Australia in a way that Labor, the Greens and teal independents cannot. The Liberal Party fires on all cylinders when it offers an agenda that is quintessentially liberal, clearly differentiating itself from Labor.
Still, as Labor’s Tanya Plibersek crowed, “a win is a win”, and opposition is opposition. Historically, the Libs should expect at least the next two terms in opposition. Or should they?
As bleak at the future looks for the Liberals, Labor may be facing worse. Voters, even teal supporters, are about to discover how a Labor government with a small majority and its own internal struggles will manage looming challenges that will hit large swathes of the country in different ways. The new Prime Minister doesn’t start with the commanding power and prestige that Whitlam did in 1972, or Bob Hawke did in 1983 or Kevin Rudd did in 2007 […]
For the first time in decades, Australians are experiencing rising inflation, meaning higher interest rates and mortgage stress.
The Australian
In 2010, Tony Abbott took the Liberals from a landslide defeat to within a bee’s dick of winning back government. Without the gutless treachery of two independents representing traditionally conservative seats (both were gone before the next election), he would have pulled it off.
Meanwhile, Albanese is facing some of the toughest challenges, with the most lacklustre team, that an incoming government in Australia has since Labor’s Jim Scullin in 1929. Scullin’s happens to be our last one-term government.
For now.