Life on the West Island - From bad to worse

Last week, Life on the West Island looked at the decline of the Liberal Party after it lost government in the Premier State. There was an assumption that its fall might have bottomed out, and that its fortunes would turn when it retained the federal seat of Aston at a byelection a week later. After all, an opposition had not lost a seat to a sitting government at a byelection in 103 years, so history was assumed to be on its side. Federal leader Peter Dutton flew to Melbourne for the celebration party and intended to announce that the Liberals had begun their electoral recovery. Unfortunately for him, history was no guide and his party lost the “unloseable” seat with a swing of 6.4% to Labor.

Speaking after the poll result was known, Dutton ploughed ahead with his prepared speech, vowing that his party had learned its lessons from voters and that he was rebuilding the Liberals into “an election winning machine” to triumph at the next federal poll. But many of his colleagues were less optimistic. Speaking on live national television coverage of the byelection, key Liberal adviser Tony Barry said that the result was “cataclysmically bad” and that “it’s going to get worse before it gets worse.” By that, he meant that the party had sunk to a low ebb but had not yet reached rock bottom.

As if to confirm this, a few days later Dutton made his announcement that his party would campaign vigorously for a “No” vote on the Voice constitutional referendum, adding to the common commentary that the opposition parties were firmly locked into a “noalition” and would vote against every proposal put forward by the Albanese Labor government. They have already voted in parliament against power price relief; a national industry reconstruction fund; a national integrity commission; and mild reforms to high-end superannuation taxes. They have also indicated that they will oppose the government’s plan to build more affordable housing.

Mr Dutton’s party seems to have overlooked that they have lost six mainland elections in a row, suffering huge swings against them in most cases. The opposition leader maintained that the Liberals had remained true to their core values and were expressing the views of the vast majority of quiet voters on issues such as transgender rights and the need for regional Voices for Indigenous citizens, not a direct line to the federal parliament – despite the fact that they put forward detailed policies on such matters at the last federal poll, and were soundly defeated.

Most surprisingly, although Mr Dutton said that the Liberals had learned their lessons from voters, they had no intention of changing policies on anything – not even climate change, integrity in politics and treatment of women – where the voters have turned in droves to Teal independents, the Greens and Labor.

Commentary on the demise of the Liberal vote has come thick and fast, and most of it is highly critical. For instance, in The Monthly, Rachel Withers wrote:

Coalition MPs have continued to blame Labor’s “negative campaign” for the byelection loss, suggesting the Liberals needed to get better at marketing their leader. When is the Liberal Party going to accept that this is serious, a “crippling, perhaps mortal, crisis” for a party that focus groups increasingly identify as “nasty”? Not just yet, apparently. Despite the efforts of pollsters Tony Barry and Kos Samaras to warn the party that it is walking off an electoral cliff, it just keeps walking, insisting that Dutton is really nice once you get to know him, and that the people just don’t know what’s good for them.

On Saturday’s Aston panel, Barry said the party was coming across as “nasty” in focus groups. Unfortunately for the Libs, pride will not allow them to admit that they’ve got not just an ugly baby, but an irredeemably nasty one in need of “a personality transplant”, and held hostage to an unelectable right-wing fringe that is as stupid as it is cruel.

In a longer reflective piece, well regarded commentator Tim Colebatch wrote:

Peter Dutton’s focus, we’re told, is not on taking back formerly safe Liberal seats the Morrison government lost to independents, Labor or Greens. No, he sees the Liberal Party’s road back to power in outer-suburban seats like his own electorate of Dickson, where his kind of cultural conservatism appeals.

If so, he should have been playing on his home ground in Aston. These were the outer suburbs of a generation or two ago, in Melbourne’s respectable southeast. Today it’s middle-income by Melbourne standards, but with fewer young university graduates than in the rest of town, and more older married couples. Yet this normally safe Liberal seat, against expectations, rejected Dutton’s party and became the first seat in a hundred years to use a byelection to swing from opposition to government. Aston wasn’t a defeat, it was a rout. Every single polling booth swung to Labor. It was no show of support for Dutton’s strategy of defeating Labor by taking back the outer suburbs.

Dutton’s approach seems to be that there’s no need for him or the Coalition to change its brand; they just have to wait for voters to come around to their point of view. Last year’s election loss was a golden opportunity for him, as leader of the Liberal right, to unite the Coalition in facing up to all the key policy failures that cost it office: climate change, integrity, alienation of women, and a wide range of social justice issues.

And yet, on every significant issue that has come before parliament, or is about to, Dutton has chosen to be the voice of reaction: - he doesn’t want the Liberals and Nationals to move back into the Australian mainstream.

Many other commentators, including some Liberal backbenchers, have expressed similar views, to no avail. Unless the Liberals change course and become a party with positive policies dealing with the actual issues raised by voters, they could be headed into electoral oblivion. Is it really possible that its fortunes could get worse before they get even worse?