COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, SATURDAY 16 MAY 2026

It says something about the Liberal Party of Australia that 40 per cent of former leaders in the last 50 years have either quit or become publicly disillusioned with the organisation which made it possible for them to play a prominent role in public life.

Robert Menzies, the Liberal Party founder and Australia’s longest serving prime minister, let it be known to the anti-communist activist B.A. Santamaria in the early 1970s that he no longer voted Liberal. This is sometimes interpreted as Menzies voting Labor. Not so. What it meant was that he had voted for the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party and then preferenced Liberal ahead of Labor.

Menzies had become disappointed in his successors as Liberal leader – particularly William McMahon and Billy Snedden. But when Fraser replaced Snedden in March 1975, Menzies went back to voting Liberal. The DLP wound up in 1976.

In the error-ridden Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (MUP, 2010), which he co-wrote with left-of-centre academic Margaret Simons, Fraser presented himself as a small “l” Liberal. However, that is not how he was regarded before becoming prime minister in December 1975. Fraser was then depicted as a political conservative – along the lines of Menzies, who supported him.

It was not long after Fraser was defeated by Labor’s Bob Hawke in March 1983, that he publicly turned on his old party. Fraser supported Andrew Peacock over John Howard to become his successor and was relatively quiet. But when Howard replaced Peacock in September 1985, Fraser commenced criticising the Liberal Party leadership. He let it be known in 2010 that he had resigned from the party.

Without the Liberal Party, Fraser would have been a successful grazier and businessman. But he turned on the organisation which made it possible for him to become Australia’s fourth longest serving prime minister who had a significant impact on both national politics and international affairs.

Peacock was Liberal leader on two occasions and failed to win the 1987 election. He competed with Howard for the leadership over some years. But when Howard prevailed, Peacock remained loyal to the Liberal Party. Howard appointed him Australia’s ambassador to the United States. The same is true of two other Liberal leaders – Alexander Downer and Brendan Nelson. Neither took out their frustrations on being replaced as Liberal leader on their party.

But not John Hewson who led the Liberals to defeat in what was classified as the unloseable election against Labor’s Paul Keating in 1993. Hewson followed in Fraser’s footsteps in becoming a vehement critic of the Liberal Party in general and Howard in particular.

A lot of the criticism made by Fraser and Hewson of John Howard (Australia’s second longest serving prime minister) turned on personal dislike. Fraser and Hewson were also critical of Tony Abbott who narrowly lost the 2010 election due to rural independents supporting the Julia Gillard-led Labor government.

But Abbott, who replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader in 2009, went on to achieve a landslide victory in 2013. He was overthrown by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. Abbott’s attitude at the time was that he did not intend to let one event ruin his life. Despite disappointment, Abbott did not campaign against Turnbull in the 2016 election – in which his successor lost 14 seats to Labor.

The Liberal Party has never recovered from Turnbull’s disastrous campaign in 2016. Perhaps only overshadowed by Peter Dutton’s campaign in 2025. But, unlike Dutton, Turnbull had the advantage of incumbency. Moreover, Scott Morrison achieved an unexpected win in 2019 – without Turnbull’s support.

Despite his disappointment, Dutton accepted defeat graciously and attended the recent Liberal Party celebration of Howard’s victory in 1996. Former Liberal Party deputy leader Peter Costello spoke at the occasion – despite his disappointment that Howard did not step down in his favour before the 2007 election. For his part, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a life outside the Lodge and has not criticised the party that made it possible for him to be prime minister.

And then there is Turnbull and, perhaps now, Sussan Ley. Turnbull’s criticism of the Liberal Party since he ceased being prime minister has been relentless. Despite having declared, soon after leaving office that he would not become a “miserable ghost” intervening in politics from out of office.

Turnbull has played this role for close to a decade. Partly in his Malcolm Turnbull: A Bigger Picture (Hardie Grant, 2020). Unlike Fraser and Hewson, Turnbull has not resigned from the Liberal Party – possibly because he is much more likely to get a run on the ABC if he is criticising the Liberal Party as a Liberal. Turnbull’s main targets have been Abbott, Morrison and Dutton – all of whom were involved in his replacement as Liberal leader in either 2009 or 2018.

Turnbull was reported in The Nightly on May 11 as addressing a recent conference in London in which he stated that the Liberal Party has been in decline “pretty much since [he] was defenestrated in 2018”. Others would put the time back to 2015.

And now Ley seems to have entered the miserable ghosts club to make up a gang-of-four. After the Liberal Party’s defeat to One Nation in the Farrer by-election on May 9, Ley issued a statement which concluded: “The day the leadership spilled in February, the new leader said the Liberal Party needed to ‘change or die’. Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was.”

This was an ungracious statement. I never publicly criticised Ley. But she had been in politics for over two decades without stating any significant policy positions. Journalist Niki Savva is no fan of the contemporary Liberal Party but she said that no politician, male or female, could have survived Ley’s numbers. Once Ley resigned her seat, it was evident that the Liberal Party could not win the resultant by-election.

New Liberal leader Angus Taylor has an extremely difficult job to restore support for the Liberals. But the likes of Hewson and Turnbull and perhaps now Ley along with members of the Malcolm Fraser fan club could at least lay-off the criticism. Most former Labor Party leaders have refrained from publicly criticising the party that made them.

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Gerard Henderson is Executive Director of The Sydney Institute.

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