Crikey sums up the viewpoints:
Conservatives around the country are licking their wounds and trying to figure out how best to detoxify the Liberal Party brand as they reckon with the defeat of their last remaining government on the Australian mainland. Liberal Party insiders cited by The Australian have blamed Dominic Perrottet for not doing enough to prevent cross-contamination with the former Morrison government after the federal election last year.
Elsewhere, Liberal Party frontbencher Natalie Ward laid blame with the conservative faction of her party and the distraction of impropriety across the party. “It’s most of the conservative candidates who have lost their seats to start with. Secondly we’ve had … the Barilaro gift that keeps on giving. That’s been a huge problem,” Ward told Sky News. Former NSW premier Mike Baird echoed that sentiment on Nine, saying factional wars distracted the party from offering Perrottet the support he needed, while Liberal Party Senator Andrew Bragg told the ABC that the party will need to move its focus away from the margins and stop obsessing over “culture war” issues. No doubt we’ll hear further prognoses through the week.
My own view is the problem for the LNP is threefold. The polity has shifted decisively to symbols that favour:
- Progressive over Conservative;
- toward action on climate change, and
- away from profits and toward wages.
Meanwhile, the LNP has become more troglodyte socially, more hostile to science, and more corrupt. It is a long way back under Peter Dutton, whose very depilated melon is a symbol of atavism.
As for actual policy differences, there are some but they are probably a matter of timing (that is, who is in power) rather than the result of party political differences.
Given this need to shift symbolism, the LNP may not see power until Matt Kean is elected PM in 2040.
