Speaker 1: Already and this is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the sixth of May. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 1: I'm Billy fit Simon's.
Speaker 2: As the results from Saturday's federal election continue to roll in,
Speaker 2: it's clear that Labor will govern with a significant majority.
Speaker 2: It's also clear that the Liberal Party has endured one
Speaker 2: of its worst electoral defeats in modern history. There are
Speaker 2: many reasons and many critiques being thrown around when it
Speaker 2: comes to explaining what happened to the Liberal Party, some
Speaker 2: from inside the party and others from outside the party.
Speaker 2: On today's podcast, we're going to talk through some of
Speaker 2: the features of the Liberal Party's campaign that have been
Speaker 2: focused on since their loss.
Speaker 1: So Zara, we're going to get into all of the
Speaker 1: reasons that are kind of being thrown around about why
Speaker 1: the coalition lost this election so substantially. We did briefly
Speaker 1: touch on it on yesterday's podcast, but we think we should.
Speaker 2: Go into a blur.
Speaker 1: We should go into more detail today. But before we
Speaker 1: get to that, do you want to just set out
Speaker 1: the state of play as to where things are at
Speaker 1: with accounting for the election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at the time of recording, the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: has picked up just thirty nine seats in the next parliament,
Speaker 2: as we spoke about yesterday. That's down from fifty eight seats.
Speaker 2: The coalition's primary vote fell more than five percent, and
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party and certainly the Coalition lost votes universally.
Speaker 2: And by that, I just mean there wasn't one key
Speaker 2: demographic that they lost. You know, last election, the fact
Speaker 2: that they lost women was focused on a lot. It's
Speaker 2: not really the same thing here. They kind of lost
Speaker 2: everybody across the board. All in all, I'd say one sentence,
Speaker 2: the state of play is very dire for the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to talk about kind of of
Speaker 1: the domestic and internal reasons as to why some experts
Speaker 1: are saying that was. But first let's look at the
Speaker 1: potential influence that US President Donald Trump had, because some
Speaker 1: are saying that that is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: they lost as much as they did. Yeah, what are
Speaker 1: people saying about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really interesting one because you're right,
Speaker 2: it is an external factor. It is international news, but
Speaker 2: it does have quite a tangible effect locally, and I
Speaker 2: think that's for two reasons. The first is that at
Speaker 2: a time where I don't think it's contentious to say
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump there's quite a lot of unpredictability in
Speaker 2: his politics at a time like that, voters wanted stability,
Speaker 2: and so we are seeing, as we spoke about yesterday,
Speaker 2: a real turn back to the incumbent and sticking with
Speaker 2: basically a safe pair of hands. But the second part
Speaker 2: of this is that analysts are saying that the Liberal
Speaker 2: Party didn't separate themselves enough from Donald Trump. So just
Speaker 2: to explain that a bit more, a couple of months
Speaker 2: Agonald Trump and his policies were fairly popular. I mean,
Speaker 2: he won the US election, he's inauguration, he did a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of things, and at that time Peter Dudden
Speaker 2: seemed to reflect quite a few of those features here
Speaker 2: in Australia. So we've spoken about before the fact that
Speaker 2: he announced a shadow portfolio that was the Department of
Speaker 2: Government Efficiency that was understood to be related to the
Speaker 2: same thing that is led by Elon Musk in the US.
Speaker 2: He announced plans to cut the public service similar to
Speaker 2: the way that Donald Trump did, and he announced plans
Speaker 2: to end working from home for the public service. Again
Speaker 2: similar to what we were seeing in the US.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: While he backflipped on those policies, at the end they
Speaker 2: were largely seen to be influenced by the US and
Speaker 2: so when public sentiment turned away from Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: when the tariffs were announced and there was a lot
Speaker 2: of instability, analysts are saying Peter Dudden didn't do enough
Speaker 2: to separate himself and say no, we are very different.
Speaker 2: That also wasn't helped when members of his party of
Speaker 2: the Coalition were seen wearing Make America Great Again hats.
Speaker 2: That was just enterprise a senator, and so taken together,
Speaker 2: there was this idea that Peter Dudden had not done
Speaker 2: enough to say we are different to Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: to the Trump administration, and that that had quite a
Speaker 2: big effect when it came to this election.
Speaker 1: I also think their messaging was quite confusing because you
Speaker 1: mentioned the Department of Government Efficiency that exists under Trump's administration,
Speaker 1: and then Peter Dudden announced that if he was elected
Speaker 1: to government, there would be a Minister for Government Efficiency.
Speaker 1: And we spoke to the Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and said, clearly,
Speaker 1: those two things are related. It's not a coincidence that
Speaker 1: you guys have something that is named exactly the same
Speaker 1: as what is under Trump's administration, and they said, no,
Speaker 1: they're not related. And I think that was quite confusing.
Speaker 1: Like if you, I think a lot of people said,
Speaker 1: if you're going to replicate something from Trump's administration own
Speaker 1: and then set yeah, and then say, but they're not related,
Speaker 1: that's really confusing. And so I think it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't distance themselves enough, but I think they kind
Speaker 1: of weren't clear on how they wanted it to be
Speaker 1: related between the two, and that's why it came across
Speaker 1: as so confusing.
Speaker 2: Well, I think this goes to a bigger issue, which
Speaker 2: we'll talk about, which is that I don't think the
Speaker 2: party itself had settled on whether or not they wanted
Speaker 2: to be emulating the Trump presidency or not. And you know,
Speaker 2: there are lots of different perspectives in modern political parties,
Speaker 2: and I don't know that they necessarily communicated that in
Speaker 2: the most effective way possible.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's move on to what happened domestically now. In
Speaker 1: the lead up to this election, part of the electorates
Speaker 1: that Peter Dudden was trying to win were the outer
Speaker 1: suburban areas of Australia. Now we've seen in the results
Speaker 1: that they have not picked up those seats, they've actually
Speaker 1: lost pretty much all of them. Yeah, do you want
Speaker 1: to take us through that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. So it was very clear in Peter
Speaker 2: Duddan's strategy that, as you said, he was really trying
Speaker 2: to focus on those out suburban seats, and like you
Speaker 2: just said, not only did he not win those, but
Speaker 2: because he wasn't focusing on those inner city seats, they
Speaker 2: actually lost those seats as well. So when you look
Speaker 2: one way and don't look the other, that ends up,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of with nothing. And that's what happened here.
Speaker 2: So Peter Dudden's strategy was to appeal to those outer
Speaker 2: suburban voters by focusing on what he labeled the cost
Speaker 2: of living failures of the Albanese government, and also by
Speaker 2: pitching more i guess, socially conservative policy ideas, So those
Speaker 2: ideas that might stick more in those suburbs as opposed
Speaker 2: to in the kind of metropolitan urban city seats.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain why did he think that
Speaker 1: those kind of policies would be more popular in the
Speaker 1: outer suburban seats.
Speaker 2: It's hard to generalize because you know, no two seats
Speaker 2: are the same, no two people are the same. But
Speaker 2: generally he was looking away from the more affluent areas
Speaker 2: that the Liberal Party had typically always held and he
Speaker 2: was trying to win back new seat and he was
Speaker 2: trying to appeal to them with cost of living related
Speaker 2: stuff and that's why the pitch was that he thought
Speaker 2: he could get those seats that way, but it didn't work.
Speaker 2: One Liberal MP, Keith Wallahan, who looks like he's going
Speaker 2: to lose his seat in Victoria, he's been doing a
Speaker 2: lot of media. He was on ABC's Insiders on Sunday.
Speaker 2: He said, ever since election night on twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: it was clear that our party had an issue in
Speaker 2: urban Australia, which is where most people live. Most people
Speaker 2: live in cities. He said, we need to really dig
Speaker 2: deep and think about who we are and who we
Speaker 2: fight for and who makes up Australia professional people, professional women,
Speaker 2: younger people. He said that regional and rural party members
Speaker 2: need to consider what metropolitan based Aussies are thinking and
Speaker 2: doing when it comes to the big issues. So basically
Speaker 2: he's saying we took our eye off the Liberal base
Speaker 2: by trying to get these outer suburban voters and that
Speaker 2: that backfired and that the party needs to rethink the
Speaker 2: way that they're going to keep their base moving forward.
Speaker 1: Sounds like they're having an identity crisis.
Speaker 2: Genuinely, which is quite really. I mean, say, do you.
Speaker 1: Want to just explain then, who do the Liberal Party
Speaker 1: see that they are representing?
Speaker 2: I mean, if I could answer that, then I think
Speaker 2: I would solve all of the Liberal Party's problems. Again,
Speaker 2: I think that all we can draw on is what
Speaker 2: Liberal Party members themselves are saying, like they're kind of
Speaker 2: self diagnosing the problem. Here we heard from Simon Birmingham.
Speaker 2: He was a very long time serving Liberal senator who
Speaker 2: posted a very long post to LinkedIn over the weekend
Speaker 2: where he said the problem was that the party was
Speaker 2: trying to court both kind of the centrist economic liberals
Speaker 2: but then also the ideologically conservative right wing liberals, and
Speaker 2: that tension was getting very hard to reconcile. That someone
Speaker 2: like Peter Dunden, who was more conservative, wasn't appealing to
Speaker 2: those kind of centrist old school liberals, and that as
Speaker 2: a result, they weren't kind of speaking to anyone. He said,
Speaker 2: the broad Church model of a party that successfully melds
Speaker 2: liberal and conservative thinking is clearly broken. The Liberal Party
Speaker 2: is not seen as remotely liberal, and the brand of
Speaker 2: conservatism projected is clearly perceived as too harsh and out
Speaker 2: of touch.
Speaker 1: So, just to explain if I'm understanding it, right, is
Speaker 1: he saying that they went too right correct?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So they're saying that their policies were too conservative. Yep,
Speaker 1: too right wing and they need to move back to
Speaker 1: the center.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this has been repeated by a lot of
Speaker 2: different people. The fact that the Liberal Party, for example,
Speaker 2: were against the tax cuts that labor put on the table,
Speaker 2: Like traditional liberal thinking is that taxes need to be
Speaker 2: as low as possible. And so what Simon Birmingham is saying,
Speaker 2: what others are saying is by focusing on kind of
Speaker 2: that culture war stuff, that they are abandoning the very
Speaker 2: traditional liberal policies and ideals that made the party who
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: I think that's also particularly interesting based on the fact
Speaker 1: that they lost the last election. They were learnings from
Speaker 1: that election, although I guess it's up for debate whether
Speaker 1: they actually took on those learnings exactly.
Speaker 2: Again, one of the learnings was about how to reach
Speaker 2: more professional women. One of those things was about getting
Speaker 2: more women pre selected in winnable seats. The Liberal Party
Speaker 2: did not do that this time. And so what Ti'm
Speaker 2: in Birmingham saying is we aren't learning our lesson, we
Speaker 2: aren't changing. But I do think now there is kind
Speaker 2: of this existential crisis of identity, as you said, for
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party, and something is going to have to change.
Speaker 2: To have their lowest primary vote on record, you can't
Speaker 2: really just move forward the same way you've done it
Speaker 2: and expect any kind of different outcome there.
Speaker 1: One thing we haven't spoken about is the personal popularity
Speaker 1: of Peter Dudden as the leader of the coalition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting because this podcast I focused on
Speaker 2: what Liberal Party members are saying. And obviously they're not
Speaker 2: going to say that their leader was unpopular or that
Speaker 2: they didn't back their leader, because you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, they are a party. But it's
Speaker 2: impossible to ignore the swing that Peter Dudden saw in
Speaker 2: his own personal seat of Dixon. Of course, we know
Speaker 2: he lost that seat and by quite a lot, and
Speaker 2: so I think it would be remiss of us not
Speaker 2: to highlight the fact that Peter Dudden was not a
Speaker 2: popular leader, and certainly if the lessons that the Liberal
Speaker 2: Party are talking about, you know, about coming closer to
Speaker 2: the center, about including more women, those sorts of things,
Speaker 2: then Peter Dudden is not the leader that they would
Speaker 2: have chosen moving forward. On the flip side, though, on
Speaker 2: election night, just Enterprice was saying that she thinks part
Speaker 2: of the Liberal Party's loss was actually the result of
Speaker 2: a smear campaign by Labor against the character of Peter Dudden.
Speaker 2: So she was saying that the reason that they lost
Speaker 2: was that Peter Dudden's character was basically decimated by these
Speaker 2: negative campaigns by Labor. But I'm not really seeing many
Speaker 2: people talking about this. It does seem to be more
Speaker 2: about the campaign was just not as effective as they
Speaker 2: wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: And we briefly touched on yesterday who will replace Peter
Speaker 1: Duncan now as the leader of the Liberal Party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to explain a little bit more who
Speaker 1: the contenders are and kind of what their politics are? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean all we can go off is media reporting,
Speaker 2: because no one's explicitly put their hand up and said
Speaker 2: I'm going to run for this. And before I go
Speaker 2: through who is actually in contention, it's important to say
Speaker 2: that the vote for who becomes leader won't happen until
Speaker 2: a bit more of the counting is done, because we
Speaker 2: still don't know who's basically going to be in contention,
Speaker 2: because we don't know who's going to be in Parliament.
Speaker 2: But when that does happen. The people that have emerged
Speaker 2: as front runners are Angus Taylor, who you sat down
Speaker 2: with and interviewed. He was the shadow treasurer. He's part
Speaker 2: of the conservative faction of the Liberal Party. He's deemed
Speaker 2: a front runner just because the treasurer is pretty much
Speaker 2: a two ic to the leader. One of the kind
Speaker 2: of downsides I guess for him is that people are
Speaker 2: saying he was in charge of the economic narrative this
Speaker 2: campaign and that there was a pretty big rejection of
Speaker 2: that narrative by the people. And could he be seen
Speaker 2: as too close to Dudden's campaign, who he's failed campaign
Speaker 2: to be successful. I know that Holly Hughes, who is
Speaker 2: one of Angus Taylor's colleagues, was very clear speaking to
Speaker 2: media saying she does not think it should be him
Speaker 2: because of how badly the Liberal Party did when it
Speaker 2: came to their economic policies. But he is considered a
Speaker 2: front runner so who knows. Another person is Susan Lee.
Speaker 2: She is a moderate. She is also a woman, and
Speaker 2: given the fact that a lot of the post mortem
Speaker 2: seems to be that the Liberal Party has lost its
Speaker 2: female base, this could be an interesting way to try
Speaker 2: win women back over. Susan Lee was serving as the
Speaker 2: deputy leader of the Liberal Party, so she has held
Speaker 2: senior positions before, so she is definitely one of the
Speaker 2: ones to keep an eye on. And then, lastly, the
Speaker 2: contender that has emerged, which perhaps most unexpectedly is Dan Tian,
Speaker 2: and I say unexpectedly only because he was kind of
Speaker 2: expected to lose his seat. Alex Dyson, who has spoken about,
Speaker 2: was expected to get very close to unseating him and
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. Dantin did maintain his seat, and he's
Speaker 2: been one of the few people of the list I
Speaker 2: just spoke about who's been out in front of the
Speaker 2: media talking about the Liberal Party loss and he's really
Speaker 2: kind of gotten ahead of the news cycle there. So
Speaker 2: he is seen as kind of a safe pair of hands.
Speaker 2: He's been in Parliament for a long time, he's not
Speaker 2: very extreme in either direction, so he's also an option
Speaker 2: for the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1: So interesting we'll definitely keep everyone updated once we know
Speaker 1: who the leader is. Last election, I think it took
Speaker 1: just over a week for us to know that Peter
Speaker 1: Dunnan would be the next opposition leader.
Speaker 2: And he was unopposed. Like the voting is a lot
Speaker 2: easier when it's unopposed. You just need a majority of
Speaker 2: the party room. But if whoever it is isn't unopposed,
Speaker 2: then it gets a bit more complicated and it could
Speaker 2: take quite a bit longer. I think interestingly, Peter Duddan
Speaker 2: last time was the very clear next step, like he'd
Speaker 2: tried to do it before it was clear it was
Speaker 2: going to be him this time. I don't think anyone
Speaker 2: really stands out as the clear next choice, perhaps only
Speaker 2: Angus Taylor, but as I said, there are some downsides
Speaker 2: to that for the party.
Speaker 1: Will be very interesting to watch. Thanks for taking us
Speaker 1: through at Zara, Thanks Billy, and thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode of The Daily OS. We'll be back
Speaker 1: again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then,
Speaker 1: have a great day. My name is Lily Madden and
Speaker 1: I'm a proud Arunda bunge lung Kalkutin woman from gadighl country.
Speaker 1: The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 1: the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
Speaker 1: all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay
Speaker 1: our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both
Speaker 1: past and present