While their opposition to the Indigenous voice to parliament captured the headlines this week, the Liberal party’s meetings in Canberra were also focused on how to respond to the Aston loss.
The party’s first reaction was to not panic. To stand by Peter Dutton as leader and maybe start to think about the need for new policies on issues such as home ownership and the climate.
But there is a growing split between the party’s conservative and moderate faction about whether broader changes are needed. This depends on whether one views the once-in-a-century byelection defeat as the latest tumble in a long decline for the Liberals, or an aberration that will be rectified by the electoral pendulum inevitably swinging back their way.
Simon Birmingham, a leading moderate, argued this week that “perceptions of intolerance created by some hasn’t just cost the votes of those who feel judged, it has hurt the Liberal party with all who reject nastiness or divisiveness”.
This reminded me of what former minister Kelly O’Dwyer said after the 2018 Victorian state election wipeout: that the Liberal party is regarded as full of “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers”.
That warning went unheeded. Then, as Scott Morrison pulled off his miracle election victory against Bill Shorten’s tax agenda in 2019, the warning bell of Tony Abbott losing his inner-city seat of Warringah was also ignored.
While gains in suburban marginals such as Longman and Lindsay helped the Coalition stay in power in 2019, the next election delivered an inner-city bloodbath. There were six losses to teal independents, two to the Greens in Brisbane, and a swag more to Labor in Western Australia, Bennelong and Higgins.
Then came another Victorian election wipeout, the New South Wales loss, and Aston.
That’s the long decline that has to be reversed if the Liberals are to become “a credible alternative government”, which is what Bridget Archer says she is fighting for with the party “at a crossroads”.
Archer does not agree with the Liberal party’s opposition to the voice. She’s not alone; in the shadow cabinet Simon Birmingham, Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne also opposed locking in against constitutional recognition, as did a few more MPs in the party room.
Archer has been the bluntest about the party’s overall direction. “I don’t think we’ve learned the lessons from the 2022 election or the Aston byelection,” she told the ABC.
But there is an alternative school of thought on the Aston loss among Liberals – one that refuses to join the dots and instead focuses on one-off factors.
Luke Howarth, a Queensland conservative, told the Liberals’ shadow ministerial meeting that the key lesson from Aston was that the party needs to preselect a local candidate.
The Liberal candidate, Roshena Campbell, was a brilliant woman from a diverse background, but Labor’s Mary Doyle lived closer to the Aston electorate for longer, and drew stronger local support as a result.
Others argue that it’s just too early in the first term of the Albanese government to expect the opposition to hold on to a seat.
It couldn’t hurt to have a better pipeline of talent, so the Liberals aren’t having to pick between the best candidate on paper and someone who actually lives in or near an electorate.
But to ignore the broader decline in metro areas and treat Aston as an anomaly would be disastrous.
So which view does the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, subscribe to?
Well, on Tuesday he went to Albury, in deputy leader Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer, to say “we are the party of regional and rural Australia” and that too much of Labor’s effort is “concentrated on capital cities”.
That is not an encouraging sign. Rather than casting the Coalition as a broad church that encompasses moderates and conservatives, in the cities and the regions, he continued to narrow his messaging and in turn the party’s appeal.
Contrast this with a significant thing the Albanese government did this week: promise more funding to national collecting institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia.
This is the sort of thing that could be passed off as an inner-city concern; one for latte-sipping, art gallery-attending sophisticates.
But the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the arts minister, Tony Burke, framed the spending as an investment in national pride.
Albanese noted that Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles, purchased by the Whitlam government, is now worth 38,000 times what it cost to buy.
It was “absurd” to house a $500m artwork “in a building with buckets to collect leaks from a leaky roof”, he said.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, referred to the culture package as an example of “cleaning up the mess” in the Coalition’s budget, by not hiding costs or ignoring the need for ongoing funding.
These were arguments that were perfectly crafted for middle-of-the road voters. The sort of pitch that would stand up just as well in the front bar of a regional pub as it would at a wine and cheese night at an urban gallery.
The Albanese government is speaking to all Australians even as it enacts progressive policies, while the Liberal party is ignoring its most compelling internal voices of dissent who are urging it not to drive off the electoral cliff.
