The past week David Littleproud competed with Donald Trump for the worst of media headlines.
Who could burn the most bridges with friends? Who wins for thuggery? Donald Trump demanding Europe hand him a ‘Big Piece of Ice’? Or David Littleproud announcing another Coalition split on the day of mourning victims of the Bondi massacre?
The main difference is Donald Trump is leader of the free world.
The LNP’s task is to hold the Albanese government to account. They have failed our parliament by proving incapable of serving as an effective opposition.
It has been unedifying to watch the Nationals stomping all over their Liberal colleagues. They have shown zero respect for their Coalition partners. The Liberals share the blame for this because they lack the strength and authority required to control even the most mundane Nationals tantrum.
In fact the Liberals are courting even greater humiliation by caving into Littleproud’s demand to dump their leader Sussan Ley. Politics really isn’t fair is it? The only thing stopping them is they cannot agree on her replacement. They are split between Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie – for now at least Sussan Ley may survive a little longer.
If and when the Libs and Nats reform the Coalition for the third time in 11 months, it will ensure they mathematically have enough MPs for a full Shadow Ministry.
But it won’t repair the self-inflicted damage. Nor will Coalition 3.0 inspire voters to love them when they so clearly hate each other.
The fundamental problem stays unchanged – the absence of moderates who give the centre-right an actual centre, ensuring policy and candidates are palatable, even attractive, to normal people.
Fuelled by special interests, the Liberals’ hard right have purged their party of Liberal moderates. Some ‘moderates’ have survived in name only by accepting the hegemony of the hard-right and complying with their agenda.
The highly organised hard-right campaign to destroy moderate membership in the Liberals included recruiting new members from anti-gay marriage petitions; enlisting the aid of Christian lobby groups; and even signing up patients in nursing homes.
Liberal moderates have been vilified as ‘Labor lite’. The success of the campaign can be measured in the dramatic decline in Liberal membership.
Following the 1983 defeat of the Fraser government the Liberals’ review ‘Facing the Facts’ reported NSW Liberal membership had slumped from a 1975 peak of 40,000 members to 10,000. Today NSW Liberal membership totals less than 5,000. This compares to say Ballina RSL’s 27,000 members.
This broken party is choosing all the Liberal MPs who represent 8.2 million citizens of NSW in state and federal parliament – can you begin to see the problem here?
The Liberal moderates are all but extinct.
When Peter Dutton’s Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Julian Leser took a principled position supporting the Voice, the so-called moderates abandoned him.
‘Liberal moderates’ surrendered on climate action and agreed to dump renewables and champion nuclear. They have just voted against new gun control laws even though 92 per cent of Australians wanted reform.
I cringed to see that Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson is still crusading against the ABC, over a 2021 ABC Four Corners report on the 6 January US Capitol riots. She feels Aunty was unfair to Mr Trump.
In the space of three months the LNP in Victoria, NSW, South Australia and (probably) federally will have replaced their opposition leaders. What does this achieve?
Splitting, reshuffling, and reassembling the same cards does not yield better policies. We know this because it’s all happened before.
The ‘anti-Labor’ parties first combined after Federation when the ‘Free Trade’ party and ‘Protectionist’ party combined into the ‘Fusion’ party. Then, as today, it worked well when they were attacking Labor. The problems started when they had to agree on positive policies. Eventually they split and in time a new anti-Labor coalition was formed.
The centre right has surged and fallen many times, until Sir Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party. Its longetivity has masked this process. Even though it has lasted longer, the Liberal-Nationals dominance has finally run its course.
I am not despondent – in fact I am optimistic.
Democracy can and does recalibrate and heal itself. Moderate Australian voters are finding alternatives by electing teals to federal and state parliament and independents like ACT Senator David Pocock. In Calare, former Nationals MP Andrew Gee quit to support the Voice and was then reelected as an independent.
There will be a lot of work to rebuild a credible political centre capable of winning. In the meantime Labor is in a fortunate position.
It is up to minor parties, independents, media, and citizens to fill the vacuum created by the broken LNP and keep them honest as best we can.
Lennox Head-based Catherine Cusack is a former NSW Liberal MLC.
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