THE LIBERAL PARTY AND THE 2022 ELECTION

With the Liberal/National Coalition losing government after nine years at the 2022 federal election, The Sydney Institute asked two of Sydney’s best known Liberal voices to offer their take on what went wrong. On Tuesday 21 June, Senator Hollie Hughes and former Member for Wentworth Dave Sharma offered their views on what happened at the 2022 federal election and what might need to be part of the Liberal Party rethink of party strategy and policy in the coming years.

THE LIBERAL PARTY AND THE 2022 ELECTION

Hollie Hughes

So, what went wrong? And what went right? Where do we need to examine and how can we move into the 2025 election positioned to make the Albanese Experiment a one term wonder?

I wasn’t up for election, so I had a very different vantage point from others, and as a senator, my view is also very different from those in a House of Representatives seat. However, before some of our members who lost their seats dismiss any criticism or commentary I may make here tonight – and there will be a bit – I have worked in every Campaign HQ since 2002, bar one having just had a baby in 2007. I have managed Dead Reds, key seats, ministerial visits, local campaigns, volunteer programs as well as managed entire CBD pre-poll efforts. And it was only writing this that I realised we lost in 2007 and 2022 – both non-central HQ campaigns for me. Perhaps we should re-assess my role at the next election!

If we are seriously going to examine this election campaign, we need to also consider the events leading up to it.

Covid was obviously a factor but, in a lot of ways, Barnaby Joyce was correct when he said the election itself wouldn’t be a Covid election. Unfortunately, the positive narrative of how Australia and Australians fared during the pandemic never really dominated the commentary. As our culture can be affected by a tall poppy syndrome, a little of the glass half empty thought process meant that so many of the successes we achieved were never acknowledged, let alone celebrated – and anything that was slow, or delayed, or was not as perfectly expected was highlighted as a significant failure – the vaccine rollout springs to mind. And was Scott’s language perfect? No. But the almost daily persecution for his saying, “It’s not a race”, was wild. Were there international supply issues? Yes. When the comment was made, was the context that other nations, with higher mortality rates and cases prioritised? Yes. But did that seem to matter? No!

Was there recognition or credit? You would struggle to find it. But this was compounded by the ALP’s calls to extend JobKeeper, saying we would fall off an economic cliff when JobKeeper ended. That didn’t happen. But there was no accountability around the ALP’s claims, let alone acknowledgement of the record low unemployment levels. They advocated over $6b additional spending on Covid management but zero accountability – $300 to everyone, including those who’d already been vaccinated. Nothing to see here. That just gives us a glimpse into how Shorten and the ALP would have managed the pandemic had they been successful. And that was on top of their promised and budgeted $387b of new taxes proposed in 2019.

I know we are here for the Liberal Party and 2022, but I did just want to set some of the scene of where we were on Covid. Despite Australia’s success, zero credit was given to the Morrison Government.

But let’s get to the election and the party. What went wrong and what will no doubt be clung to and reported on? What is the dirty linen that will no doubt be considered in the review but something most people don’t want to say or acknowledge; and can be potentially more fracturing to some already fractured relationships.

For those of you who know me, I come from the Bill Heffernan school. We call a spade a shovel and are fierce in debate and critique. It’s not personal, and then we move on to fix it.

A few years ago, the NSW Division introduced the Warringah Motion – something that purported to be about democracy. However, shock of all shocks, it was fundamentally about political gain. There was jockeying about who supported what. I am more than happy that, after decades in the party and seeing plenty of the politically motivated shrouded in goodness, I was never a convert.

The two biggest issues were that it became all about the branch and conference stack. It was all about numbers, not party members who were actively engaged. I get numbers – I also get campaigns. And when you have conferences filled to the brim with people who are at those conferences holding alleged State Council Delegate roles but when they are contacted to help out on a campaign send vile responses that they would never vote Liberal, it’s pretty indicative they’re not genuine members. So, the stack was one thing – probably one of the greatest things to fly in the face of so-called democratic reforms.

The second most egregious issue was the expansion of State Executive in NSW – a body I served on for 14 years and am grateful every day it was never in this structure. Anyone who has any serious governance or board experience will tell you a 27-person board with a 90 per cent threshold to pass a vote is a recipe for disaster. Now, as I wasn’t on that board, I can only speculate as to what I saw from outside, but it was a paralysis of decision making coupled with a small block of the executive with sufficient numbers to stop every vote and, when they didn’t like what they saw, they took the Division to court.

I have always had the view that if you take the party to court and lose, sayonara! You should resign from the party. You have brought it into disrepute, wasted resources and cost political capital. So, it’s always been a ciao from me. This sort of activity caused no end of damage and stalled so many activities such as pre-selections that should have been occurring.

In my view, ultimately, we need to review those so-called reforms that need to be wound back rather than try and further complicate the issue. It is in light of this that I have been bemused by one of my colleague’s efforts at a so-called Sydney Motion, focussed only on the nomination review process. I am many things, but a blatant hypocrite I am not.

So, let’s not allow a politically expedient search for relevancy cloud our judgements or allow what is clearly a personal attack on a current MP go unquestioned. This review/motion/attention seeking activity should be given the short shrift it so clearly deserves. It is completely silent surrounding a complete bypass of any party member involvement in the selection of a replacement MLC, let alone the dissolution of a number of previously Liberal held local government areas for blatant factional game. This had a real impact on the federal campaigns as we lost so much on-the-ground contact.

If time permitted, I would have liked to have examined senators’ roles – who managed what seats, and how some senators worked consistently for years, others rarely turned up in their duty seats, some moved the dial on seats we want to win in the future and began building new areas and others saw every seat they represented wiped out for the Liberal Party despite previously being considered safe seats. Perhaps another time.

So, I apologise to Dave upfront but, to the modern Liberals, as far as the no Liberal branding, the different colours, the abandonment of core Liberal Party members went, if modern Liberals want to be independent, they should run as one. And by claiming to be a modern Liberal, every other colleague by inference was old fashioned, outdated, a dinosaur.

All of these candidates and Members were preselected by party members, and they had previously been represented by proud Liberals, with the logo on their materials.

I know this will upset some people I call friends but, as I said on election night, you have to dance with the one that brought you. You have to have a point of difference and when you move away from being Liberal to some form of Liberal light, a light blue or whatever, you’re really just a Teal without the cult following.

Now, before we get to the Teals – and the cultish nature around them, there is the fact they are not Independents at all; they knocked off some fantastic Liberals and, with an Albanese majority, they will be a waste of space.

As I mentioned previously, this was not a Covid election. It wasn’t even really an election about our national security, the economy, border protection or, in actuality, the reality of energy. It was an election fought on what I am going to call luxury issues. I feel I may need to pause here to allow those from the ABC watching to have their heads explode and their Twitters logged in. When I say luxury issues, I mean when people are secure in their jobs, are optimistic about the future for their family, have confidence in what is happening, they think about other things. We used to call them the doctors’ wives syndrome. I now call it the luxury issues syndrome.

Now, I am going to say the trans issue was one of these. I am sure my TERF membership card is currently being boosted to Platinum, but I am prepared to go out on a limb and suggest if you lose a job and can’t pay your mortgage that’s likely a more top of mind and a driving issue for you.  But the focus the Trans issue got this election was disproportionate in so many ways – but where did it start?

It started with the Religious Discrimination Bill as the legacy of the same sex marriage plebiscite that the Turnbull acolytes have forgotten was his legacy. Malcolm Turnbull promised the RDB in order to secure the same sex marriage plebiscite. Now, before the speculation starts, I support same sex marriage, and always have. I thought the Religious Discrimination Bill was unnecessary, that it was a political promise and a bill that Michaelia Cash somehow turned into something that wasn’t perfect but was a far cry from the dog’s breakfast she started with.

But we all know that disunity is death in politics and I feel that this Bill put in place a disunity that didn’t need to exist. It was managed badly, and I am happy for Dave to correct me, but from what we in the Senate were told, it was fuelled by duplicity and out and out lies to the PM’s face of who was voting where. Regardless of who said what to whom, who correctly informed the whip or PM of their intent, and whether it cost or gained them votes, we may never know. What I can tell you is it reflected badly on all of us!

There was sloppy management of the vote on the bill. It created division and anger where there had been none. Potentially, people here will miss the point – I couldn’t have cared what the issue was, nor could the bulk of my colleagues. But the way it was handled, manipulated and mis-managed set up a negative narrative around the government as a whole and then generated an issue where there just shouldn’t have been one.

There is a lesson for MPs here. Yes, we do have a right to cross the floor. We also have an obligation to the party to ensure it can be managed – or whipped, in the right way. Personally, I have managed myself with votes where I didn’t want to support the government position, and quite frankly I am disgusted at the selfish behaviour of some of the people involved.

Katherine Deves certainly entered the political fray with her own flourish and some of her former comments were not productive – far from it. But was the constant intervention by NSW MP Matt Kean helpful in moving past this issue? Absolutely not. I did laugh when Matt Kean, after the election, claimed fringe issues interfered with substantial policy discussions – seriously? We didn’t even know then he’d tried to throw his alleged factional ally Nat Ward under a bus at a press conference. Self-awareness is a wonderful thing but I  am not sure it’s something being showcased here.

When I appeared on the Andrew Bolt show during the campaign, it was a very measured and respectful conversation. I did, however, relay conversations that had been had with some friends within the gay community – those of us old enough to remember when it was the LGB community – that perhaps the Trans movement needed its own cause in the sense that LGB is around sexuality and Trans is based around being born in the wrong body and gender dysphoria. It was then that I was accused of being a TERF who had been briefed by the gay community. The mind boggles!

I understand passion around an issue – I have a son with autism and I know emotions can come about when people make false and hurtful assertions around autistic people and their families. But at some stage we do need to be able to have a sensible and respectful conversation without shouting the other side down, not to be abused when simply asking a question or making an observation.

So, wherever you stand on the issue – it became a dominant issue. An issue that every column inch it took, every news segment, every debate minute, took away from the issues that federally we should always keep an eye on. We had an Opposition Leader whose team was beside themselves when he got Covid, giving them the space to try and reset after the first lot of gaffes, yet we allowed, or had pushed onto us by one of our own, issues that ultimately were not what people were focussed on.

The other issue was of course climate change – fuelled by Simon Holmes a Court and his troupe of wealthy, privileged candidates, all allegedly running as Independents – yet remarkably all branded and photographed together as a group.

So, you can all imagine how well it was received the morning after my appearance on ABC News Breakfast where I said that Climate Change is also a luxury issue. Do Australians think it’s important? Absolutely. Very few would dare say otherwise. But when asked how much they are prepared to pay for it, that’s another matter. And is altering Australia’s 1.3 per cent of global emissions going to be the most important thing to a family who can’t afford petrol in the car or struggle with the mortgage? Probably not.

I am not against renewables. If we could have 100 per cent renewables that provided affordable and reliable baseload power, that would be great. But the technology does not exist. We require baseload energy for our manufacturing sector, let alone to keep businesses and homes with lights on, and dishwashers working.  We need coal and gas in the mix. There isn’t a country on earth that doesn’t still have such a reliance as we are seeing all too clearly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We have China building traditional and HELE coal fired power stations at an incredible rate. We have awesome resources in this country and energy should be our competitive advantage. Yet, we have turned ourselves in knots over this issue.

Most renewable energy is not connected to the Grid. It requires a re-wiring for that to occur. Dispatchable energy does not equal supply. It’s what generators bid for. The NEG is only really on the east coast. The Victorian government has a moratorium on gas; the NSW government has itself wrapped up in red and green tape so that the Santos Narrabri project is now years behind where it should have been. We see almost daily state governments filled with ideological zealots who don’t or won’t work to ensure generators exit the market in a way that disruption would be minimised.

There are so many complexities yet all levels of government of every persuasion have failed to articulate the way ahead. Children are now known to have forms of climate change anxiety disorder as a result of being so ill-informed. The energy sector espouses their climate change mantra in fundamentally incorrect or just plain wrong simplistic ideas and solutions.

Yet, we let the Teals off the hook. We never questioned them as to what businesses they would shut down, how much every Australian should pay, why those who can’t afford EVs should carry the load of road excise. What pressure do renewables on roof tops put on prices when the sun isn’t shining, or wind isn’t blowing. Why should rural and regional communities bear the brunt of change? If Moree can host a solar farm, why not Centennial Park? It’s do as we say not as we do.

What do the Teals – Allegra, Monique, Alex, Zoe and Kylea – have to say about the current energy crisis? Simon Holmes A Court was out yesterday making commentary on the proposed capacity mechanism – nothing from his proxies I see.

I just want to finish with a comment more broadly on Liberal Party campaigns. I think we have lost the ability to truly understand market research and what it is actually telling us. Polling is not keeping up, and is highly unhelpful when commissioned and then leaked by unofficial parties. We do need to address issues that are not “our” natural landscape.

In campaigns past, messaging was always best when focussed on the economy, national security and borders.

In campaigns past, messaging was always best when focussed on the economy, national security and borders. The ALP wins on Health and Education. We have had issues over Climate policy, to be kind. There has been robust discussion over issues such as Child Care and the NDIS. But the old mantra of we lose if we talk about x, y or z is finished. Whether we like it or not, we have to address issues in a responsible way and talk about them in terms our supporters care about.

The NDIS for some 500,000 Australians and their families is a driving issue – and aside from media around Scott Morrison using the word “blessed” in a debate, we vacated the space. Bill Shorten is now having to deal with a group of people he has promised the world to but can in no way ever deliver on. I could go on, but you get my point.