The Liberal Party say they want to rebuild; that they’re cognisant of the mistakes they’ve made and why their popularity has sank to the depths of Gwalia Gold mine.
Since its bruising election defeat under former leader Peter Dutton, followed by the relatively quick demise of the party’s first female leader, Sussan Ley, senior Liberals have spent months talking about renewal. They’ve acknowledged they need to reconnect with women (there’s even some small talk about quotas), strengthen support in metropolitan Australia and present a version of the party that feels relevant to a changing country.
Naturally, soul-searching is what you’d expect after such a significant loss.
But, not all in the party are up for reinvention. They don’t see the reason. They think their more moderate colleagues are missing the point, and at every point the party appears to take a step towards renewal, certain forces pull it back. The biggest culprit of course, is former Liberal PM Tony Abbott, who was recently appointed the party’s president.
He sparked headlines over the weekend, when he declared on social media that multiculturalism had “failed” Australia, and that diversity was “not a strength”. Sounding more like Pauline Hanson than Pauline Hanson herself, he questioned whether aspects of Islam were compatible with liberal democracy.
The response from his colleague Liberal senator Andrew Bragg was swift and unusually direct.
“He’s a former prime minister, he is entitled to his views, but I strongly disagree with them,” Bragg said on ABC’s Insiders. And he went further.
“Liberalism has actually created multiculturalism because it creates a framework for people to have freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience,” he said, pointing to the Liberal governments that dismantled the White Australia Policy and helped build modern multicultural Australia.
On the surface, it looked like a disagreement over immigration and national identity. But this tussle points to something far more significant playing out: The Liberal Party is still wrestling with the most basic question in politics of who they actually are.
There are clearly two competing instincts at play.
One recognises the electoral reality. Women deserted the Coalition at the last election. Professional voters in metropolitan seats shifted to Labor or the teals. Younger Australians have become increasingly difficult for the party to reach. If the Liberals are serious about returning to government, rebuilding those relationships isn’t optional.
The other instinct sees the path back through conservative voters who have drifted to One Nation and other parties on the right. It argues the Liberals have become too cautious on issues like immigration, national identity and culture, and that reclaiming those voters means leaning harder into those debates.
The problem is that these strategies don’t easily coexist.
Trying to outflank Pauline Hanson risks validating the very politics that helped create space for her in the first place. Every move in that direction also makes it harder to persuade moderate voters, particularly women and those in metropolitan Australia, that the party has genuinely changed.
Put more plainly: the Liberals are currently a walking contradiction.
The party cannot claim it wants to modernise with its federal president suggesting the very opposite. Whether MPs like Bragg agree with him or not, his words inevitably carry weight. They meddle in the exact way he wants them to.
Most Australians don’t separate the organisational wing from the parliamentary wing. They simply hear “the Liberal Party”.
And that’s where the challenge lies. Is the Liberal Party looking forward or looking back? Is it truly capable of change with those currently in the fold?
Until it answers that question, every conversation about renewal risks being overshadowed by another debate about identity.
And for voters watching on, particularly the women the party has repeatedly acknowledged it needs to win back, mixed messages are unlikely to inspire much confidence.