January 13, 2024 - 8:00am
It was a startling comment for an ambitious opposition frontbencher to make, and one that should have been unimaginable given that less than 18 months ago Australia’s centre-right Liberal Party was in electoral ruin, its moderate wing reduced to dust. Haemorrhaging 18 seats, the Party was all but wiped out in inner-city areas.
“This next election will be competitive,” Party senator James Paterson stated, as 2023 drew to an end. “We certainly haven’t got it in the bag […] but we know what we need to do to get there.”
In May 2022, the Liberals’ crown jewel electorates were gobbled up by a new wave of mostly female teal candidates, who championed action on climate change and posed as the antidote to then Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s pugnacious style. One Australian Liberal described it to me as “an extinction-level event”.
So why didn’t the Liberals fall into a spiral of self-destruction like the one currently gripping their British equivalent, the Tory Party? The reasons are twofold and serve as vital lessons for the philosophically aimless Conservatives, who seem intent on creating ever more sub-factions as their government draws its dying breaths.
The leadership of Peter Dutton, who took over following the 2022 election defeat, has been critical to the Australian Liberals’ recovery. Hailing from the Right of the party, his latter years in Cabinet were largely spent openly baiting “Lefties” on national security and migration, so politicians from the country’s Labor Party rubbed their hands at the prospect of the Liberals’ lurch to the Right. Yet this didn’t happen.
While some members of Australia’s centre-Right party have shown interest in following US Republicans and British Tories by pursuing issues such as the trans debate, Dutton has tried to steer clear of contentious culture-war topics. “He wants us to be mainstream and avoid distractions,” one frontbencher, who is close to the leader, told UnHerd.
Another senior Liberal told me that Dutton has put a premium on internal unity and has focused on non-partisan, “centrist” issues, citing the cost of living, energy costs and government competence. These same issues should be the Tories’ bread-and-butter should they find themselves opposing Prime Minister Keir Starmer by the end of the year.
Yet Right-wing Tories need not fear that electoral viability requires a lurch to the Left, either. This line of thinking was en vogue immediately after the Coalition’s defeat, but Dutton resisted calls from what remained of the moderate wing to tack towards Labor’s policies.
This paid off in two ways. On climate, the Liberal leader was faced with an early test when Labor legislated the country’s 2050 net zero target. A vote against this motion would have risked ignoring the will of an electorate broadly in favour of stronger climate mitigation; a vote in support would have blown up the remains of the party’s backing in Queensland, one of Australia’s most conservative-voting states. Dutton read the party room. The legislation passed, as it was always going to do, without Coalition support.
Then there was his opposition to the Indigenous Voice campaign. Though public polling was in favour of saying Yes to the motion, Coalition members were strongly against providing additional constitutional rights for Indigenous Australians. In the end, Dutton’s view was overwhelmingly backed by 61% of the population when it was put to a referendum, the result shattering Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s confidence.
First elected to the House of Representatives in 2001, Dutton not only has a working memory of working in a successful and stable Coalition government but, critically, an understanding of how the “broad church” of the party’s various factional wings can and should operate in government. In November polling company Newspoll had the Coalition, comprising the Liberals and the National Party of Australia, neck and neck with Labor for the first time since the election.
The Liberals are unlikely to reach government, yet it is astonishing that they are within striking distance of power, given the scale of the Coalition loss in 2022. Wiser heads in Britain’s Tory Party should take note: recovery from a near-existential loss only becomes existential in how one responds to it. Choosing unity over division reveals that the pathway back to power does not have to cost an entire generation of talent and experience.
Latika M. Bourke is a journalist and author based in London with more than twenty years of experience covering Australian politics, British politics and international affairs. She writes at www.latikambourke.com.
latikambourke
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAustralia’s 3-year federal election cycle allows such quick recoveries in party politics but also prevents genuine reform by the right while the left-infested public service just marches on regardless.
” prevents genuine reform by the right”
Perhaps the key is to ignore the tantrums, get rid of subversive fifth columnists and just get stuck in and do what you were elected to do.
I find all this wailing rather pathetic. The Tories have been in power for over a decade, if they can’t face down, reform or stack the civil service with allies in that time they deserve to get nothing done
Problem is only half of them are actually Conservatives. And the whole Civil Service have obstructed, denied and disregarded the Government whenever it has tried to achieve anything remotely Conservative.
Hence the pile-on if a minister starts acting like a Conservative.
They’ve been undermined by quislings and had their hands tied.
Perhaps we need a party for Conservative – and another one for all the others.
Not a lot you can do in the short-term when the size of government at all levels has grown so much.
A steady government job with guaranteed pension and generous leave entitlements , all paid for from OPM, will always attract the left-leaning crowd. Enterprise, creating and building businesses tend more to the centre or right, but will conform to some extent to the leftward drift in order to get along with the bureaucracy.
The most reliable way to get wealthy in Britain today is to work for the government and get a mortgage.
You’re kidding yourself. Dutton is looking for any excuse to inflame culture wars. Just witness his recent calls to boycott a supermarket chain that dared to publicly state that it would not be stocking “Australia Day” merchandise due to a declining level of consumer interest. This from the leader of the party of “free enterprise”.
A boycott is an act of choice. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. That’s freedom.
I suppose in the same way that missing the point is an act of choice
Maybe next time you could choose to make a point other than standard “don’t like Dutton”.
The managers of these supermarkets must be mad to make that Oz Day comment. As if anyone would have wondered why they couldn’t buy a flag at the shops? It just shows how deeply retail has entered into the political and it’s a big mistake. Just sell stuff, don’t push culture down our throats.
It might be more instructive to compare the recent New Zealand election and the governing NZ labour party’s dramatic decline. From an unprecedented (under the MMP system) outright majority Labour collapsed to 26.9% allowing the formation of a strong conservative/right coalition government.
Labour’s incompetance, racist “co-governance” program and pathological wokeism was definitely a factor in their demise but that alone might not have done it. The three right wing parties were much more positive and believable and listened and responded to the people’s concerns. They’ve wasted no time in ditching the destructive and divisive policies of the left. Good!
What done Labour in NZ was interest rates climbing and people feeling worse off, the rest was largely an irrelevance. In almost every country now the party who was in charge when worldwide inflation started to bite has lost the subsequent election or look likely to
Yes BB, the pre-election surveys certainly showed strong concerns about the economy. That was a very dramatic fall in support though. A reflection of a widespread belief that Labour had no answer to economic weakness? Or anything else I suspect.
Lefty commentator Chris Trotter on his Bowalley Road blog:
“The footpaths laid down by Labour in the direction of co-governance, the curbing of free speech, and the erasure of biological sex differences were not, however, trod by the masses. Indeed, they appeared to most New Zealanders to be leading them into wild and unknown territory. Not only did they not want to go there, but they became increasingly suspicious of the motives of those who kept insisting that they should.
Had the economy been in tip-top condition and the citizens’ standard-of-living rising steadily, then perhaps these other initiatives could have been tolerated. Labour’s problem was that all these radical departures from familiar termini were being demanded by people who did not seem to be up to the job of running the country. Why go haring-off into the ideological Badlands at the behest of politicians who could not keep inflation under control – or bring just one major project to fruition on time and on budget?”
The right controls mass media in Australia. There are few independent media. Also, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart supports Dutton. She recently paid to fly him to the Pilbara, where he gave a speech informing parents that they, and school teachers, should tell children how beneficial mining is. Hmmm
The swing from Yes to No in the recent referendum was engineered largely by the right-wing media. One story that had a big effect was that, if Australians voted Yes, the United Nations would be in a position quickly to take over the nation.
Watch for the scare stories in the next election campaign. Read the Murdoch press and learn how it is done.
What are you talking about? Is the ABC right wing, the Sydney Morning Herald? You honestly think people voted no because they thought the UN would take it over if they voted yes? Wow
Yes the ABC is right wing and has been shown to be so by several investigations done at the behest of the right trying to prove left-wing bias. It’s not huge but it’s there and getting bigger.
Since Nine has taken over the old Fairfax papers, they have become much more right wing and ran cover for the Morrison shit-show and continue to stoke up anti-Chinese rhetoric.
The right seem to think that straight reporting of facts is a communist plot.
Almost all the media in Australia is left wing. Newscorp papers might seem “right wing” to a Canberra public servant but they are centrist at most and feature diverse viewpoints.
Rupert Murdoch and sons are “left wing”? Gosh
What swung the referendum to No despite the whole corporate and media machine pushing for Yes , *including a large part of the so-called “Murdoch press”* (hello, 1985) was the passionate and tireless advocacy of indigenous campaigners like Jacinta Price.
Dutton was sitting on his hands until Price and Mundine lit a fire under him.
True, Jacinta Price impressed a lot of people. Our media was largely in the Yes camp. There were snippets in the No camp. Our no vote was one of reflected common sense. Many people I spoke to just did not understand the need, and this included Aboriginals.
The bulk of Australian media is certainly left wing. The easiest way to tell is to see how long certain stories last on the main page.
There might have been an election but the Right are still in charge. Labor have been disappointing and little has changed despite the new government and the desires of the electorate. That is why the Liberals imagine that they are in the hunt. They’re not, as they have done nothing to win back the blue ribbon heartland seats they lost to the teal independents at the last election and can’t form government without them.
Labor will most probably lose seats at the next election but should be able to form a minority government with progressive elements which might be a good thing.
Dutton has been stoking culture-wars left right and centre contrary to what this article states. It is all he and the Right have as there isn’t a single positive item in their agenda that would attract votes from anyone who didn’t already vote for them.
This is a very poor analysis of Australian politics.
No lessons will be learned.
They’re Tories.
Remember everything, learn nothing.
The fact that Cameron was parachuted back into government is a sure sign they have learned nothing.
‘They’ are not a homogeneous bunch. That’s the problem. Get rid of the covert Liberals, gender-benders, climate hysterics and Europhiles, and the proper Tory Party would romp home.
The Australian Liberal Party will be very unlikely to achieve electoral success under Dutton’s leadership. He does not connect with the majority of voters and appears to have had a charisma by-pass operation.
The Australian Di called progressives hate Peter Dutton with a passion. Insults like Mr Potato Head are like water off a ducks head.
He only had to sit on his hands and watch the economic incompetence and progressive agenda continue to piss off the Electorate. If had been suggested in their next term they can only govern with the support of the Greens. You are going to see some seriously crazy policies to upset every one.
Look no further than the disaster that is the ACT under a labour/Greens government