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