“The Liberals are destined for the depths of political oblivion while they squabble about who has the biggest deckchair,” warns political columnist MICHAEL MOORE. 

Shifting the deckchairs will not stop the Liberal Party sinking.

Right across southern Australia the Liberal Party is wrestling with who they are. Winning government is way out of reach while the internal strife continues.

There has been an Australian tradition of putting women into leadership roles when things look disastrous for a political party – whether in government or not. Maybe this tradition will now be modified to place next generation women to lead a party out of trouble.

The ACT has bucked this trend to a certain extent. Being in opposition for almost a quarter of a century has allowed a revolving door of men and women who have not been able to drag the Liberal MLAs into a policy position that would give them a chance of being elected.

There is some hope that Tuggeranong MLA Mark Parton will be able to provide this leadership. However, even the Deputy Leader of the Canberra Liberals Deborah Morris is a conservative making the challenge of a co-ordinated approach a Herculean task. 

Across the border in NSW, Mark Speakman has fallen on his sword in favour of Kellie Anne Sloane as Leader of the Opposition. The former journalist and TV presenter will now have the unenviable task of uniting a fractured political party. Polling for the NSW Libs has driven the change and they see their only chance as backing a woman.

The Victorian Liberal Party MPs have ejected their “Peter Duttonesque” former police officer, Brad Battin in favour of first-time MP, 35-year-old Jess Wilson.

Battin was gracious in his concession speech, with Ms Wilson elected unopposed in the hope that a woman could seriously challenge the Labor government of Jacinta Allan.

Ms Wilson was able to defeat a teal challenge in her state seat of Kew by espousing moderate views on issues such as climate change. Following her election, she said her focus would be on repairing the budget, fighting crime, improving health and housing. 

She replaced Ballin after only 11 months in the job. Polling over that time for the Liberals dropped from 42 per cent to 33 per cent while Labor’s vote has increased.

The major concern for Victorians, like those of us in the ACT, is that the Standard and Poor’s rating has dropped to AA+ increasing the interest rates that have to be paid by the government. 

With a Victorian debt of more than $200 billion, there remains a significant challenge. Proportionally, this is not dissimilar to the challenge facing the ACT.

The Liberals should be in a good position to challenge Labor on financial matters. It is the rest of the policies that have swung so far to the right that makes them largely unelectable across NSW, Victoria, the ACT and SA.

Federally, the challenges are even more difficult. Sussan Ley has moved her own chair around on the deck of the Liberal Party. Although she has supporters such as former Senator Hollie Hughes, there are those who are stoking the engines of discontent.

Hughes lost her seat to the conservative Jessica Collins thanks to intervention in the preselection battle by Angus Taylor, who is one of the pretenders to the Liberal throne.

Hughes resigned from the Liberal Party saying it no longer reflects the vision of Robert Menzies and added: “I don’t think they reflect what a lot of Australians feel anymore”.

Sussan Ley is attempting to woo her conservatives. She has caved on “net zero” but argues the need to prepare for war. She recently told the Menzies Institute that Australia should focus on preparation for war in the case of failure of diplomacy.

Ms Ley presented a slightly more moderate approach than that of another would-be challenger, Andrew Hastie. She outlined the need to boost Australia’s fuel supply to store enough to last longer than 90 days, to invest in air and missile defence systems, and to rapidly build aerial and underwater drones.

A few weeks ago, I drew attention to South Australia. In that state, recent polling shows Labor incumbent Premier Peter Malinauskas winning an extraordinary landslide. It is possible on current polling that the Liberals would be reduced to less than six lower-house seats, with leader Vincent Tarzia failing to be elected.

The Liberals are destined for the depths of political oblivion while they squabble about who has the biggest deckchair. Rather than changing leaders, what is needed is a co-ordinated set of policies that are largely acceptable to middle Australia.

Michael Moore is a former member of the ACT Legislative Assembly and an independent minister for health. He has been a political columnist with “CityNews” since 2006.