The Liberal Party’s on life support. Time for a deathbed conversion

In the five months since the Liberal Party lost the 2025 election, the Coalition has gone through four of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

The Nationals have cornered the market in denial – it wasn’t them, they haven’t lost a thing. In fact, the seats they hold remain held. Perhaps they should go their own way; asserting their successful model in new electorates. Bring agrarian politics to urban electorates. Paddock to plate, as it were, for Prahran or Paddington. A delicious proposition, if completely delusional.

Anger has raged within their Liberal coalition partner. The factions blame each other for the disastrous election wipeout. The (mostly former) members for urban areas deplore Dutton’s strategy of focusing on non-urban seats, many of which were lost as well.

Conservatives within the party, egged on by the anti-elitist elite on the cultural right, have been encouraged to believe the loss came down to overly moderate policies. Their solution is to foreground issues with which they’ve previously failed to inspire the bulk of Australians.

Meanwhile, moderates have embraced the populism they normally decry. They want to chase net zero by 2050 – regardless of whether it’s feasible or wise – just because it’s what voters have said they want (despite polling showing most don’t believe it’s possible). The election campaign just gone was so ideologically disjointed as to provide the whole demoralised mob with a few crumbs of vindication and no one grouping with a satisfying spread of conclusive data to win the argument.

As tempers flare, the Liberal Party has moved into the bargaining phase of grief. Some, at least, are bargaining with one another to prevent a complete collapse of the institution. Despite endless columns about Liberal Party disharmony, it is striking how many factional rivals have agreed that the party as a whole is more important than individual preference or grievance. James Massola documented this well in this masthead, in a piece which was, I thought, somewhat misleadingly titled “the split in the right”.

But there are those in the Liberal Party who are skipping over their colleagues to bargain instead with a higher power. Western Australian senator Andrew Hastie wants to emulate the UK’s politically ascendent Reform UK Party. Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is enamoured with MAGA concerns.

In seeking guidance from icons of the overseas right, they are fundamentally misunderstanding the differences of history and culture. We have no trouble understanding the words spoken in other anglophone countries, but the problem in each country is significantly different in nature. MAGA and Reform rallying points don’t have the right prongs to seamlessly plug into our politics here.

Depression is the inevitable result of the disorganised clash of conflicting emotions. Perhaps, some now say, the party is over. The darkness has descended, and it’s impossible there’ll ever again be afternoon light.

To kick his colleagues out of their funk, Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson gave a speech on Tuesday which emphasised the final stage of the grieving process: acceptance. And from acceptance, growth. He reminded his colleagues of what the Liberal Party is – “a political party designed to win and hold government” with a “special obligation” to ensure that Australia remains a democracy, by presenting an opposition which is capable of governing again.

He also chided the party to remember what it is not: “A think tank. Or an activist group. Or a debating society.”

These points were well-made and timely. Because while it is true that the Liberal Party has needed to have a deep discussion about what it stands for since the John Howard era was ended by Kevin Rudd, a political party does not have the infrastructure or wherewithal to do all the tasks that lead to renewal. That would be the equivalent of a business getting frontline customer service staff to do organisational strategy. It’s not necessarily that they couldn’t, it’s just that they have an important job to do already.

For those in the Liberal Party set on learning from the US, a recent visit convinced me that having strong think tanks which are capable of producing well-reasoned, evidence-based and practical policy are crucial. The second Trump administration has not signed up to all the ideas in the 900-odd pages developed by the US Heritage Foundation in Project 2025, but it has been more organised and methodical than the first time around thanks to the work of the think tank. Heritage did the work to come up with and provide strong arguments for a range of policy ideas, as well as offering recommendations on how to implement them. The result is a plug-and-play prescription for the policies Trump chooses to adopt.

The US right has built a movement which includes these think tanks, third-party campaign groups, and alternative media which can rival the unions, think tanks, special interest groups and influencers of the left.

Similarly, UK Reform was built on decades of Euro-critical thinking and debate over Britain’s failing immigration system.

In Australia, the Labor Party has the unions which train organisers and run campaigns, half a dozen productive and resourced think tanks, and a slew of third-party groups funded by billionaires, such as the Twiggy Forrest-funded Thrive by Five foundation spruiking universal childcare.

The teal movement has climate tanks and action groups, as well as sophisticated community systems which it franchises out under the Voices of mantle.

And the Liberal Party has Andrew Hastie, who’s gone off to have a ponder.

Slightly unfair, perhaps, but the point is the same as Paterson’s: the party of the individual needs to understand that it takes a movement to fight for freedom.

The death of the Liberal Party is, as always, much exaggerated. But it is on life support. What the party needs to move forward isn’t a party eyes-deep in policy. It’s time to focus on birth: the birth of a movement supported by people who believe in backing aspiration.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

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