By its own admission, for the Liberal party it’s a case of change or die, but on the current trajectory outlined by its “everything old is new again” leadership team, it may well be change and die anyway.
In “chasing the noise”, as the veteran Liberal strategist Tony Barry describes it, the party has convinced itself that the only way to survive is to lean further to the right.
We’re talking Trump-style nationalism, Farage-style protectionism, One Nation-style populism.
Drenched in xenophobia and division, this is the ultimate representation of political selfishness, designed purely to save the skin of the party by fomenting outrage to the broader detriment of our multicultural society.
The Coalition did a preference deal with One Nation at the last election and voted with One Nation in the Senate about 80% of the time under both Morrison and Dutton.
So, the erosion of values has been creeping for a while but has been less overt than in the northern hemisphere, with good reason.
When you fly over the United States, as I did many times in my years as a foreign correspondent there, you will see the lights of major population centres across the inland.
This is Trump’s heartland. He took his initial ground in rural areas and the populated fringes of inland cities, many of which were negatively affected by open-world trade rules and immigration. In 2024, he extended that impact into the fringes of Democrat strongholds, even along the coasts.
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This was Scott Morrison’s election strategy in 2022, and Peter Dutton’s in 2025, and this is where the Taylor-Hume Liberals are still trying to go.
But the flyover-state rhetoric that translates from America’s midwest and Appalachia to Queensland lands differently in our big, culturally rich and diverse coastal cities.
Targeting voters drifting to One Nation, therefore, will further alienate urban seats, especially in the face of Pauline Hanson’s disgusting attacks on Muslim Australians.
On the basis that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, the first test will be whether the Liberals respond to her comments by preferencing One Nation last in forthcoming byelections – as John Howard did so many years ago.
It will not be lost on voters in metropolitan Australia that one of Taylor’s first steps was to dog whistle on immigration just as Hanson was disgracefully pontificating that there is no such person as a “good Muslim”.
To survive, Barry says the Liberal party must differentiate itself with bold policy and economic hope.
But if Labor has minimal definitive policy framework to provide a fair, safe, happy, prosperous future for our kids, the Coalition is a vacuum.
There is nothing bold or hopeful to inspire the younger voters who are looking for it.
One of Tim Wilson’s first pronouncements as shadow treasurer was to try to walk away from his previous support for an end to preferential taxation of capital gains on investment property, acknowledged by most reputable economists as a way to help younger voters join the home owning class.
And with real wages declining for the first time in two years, Wilson suggested the Reserve Bank should pay less attention to its full employment mandate and more to inflation, effectively endorsing more interest rate rises and cost-of-living pressure.
He was later reported as walking back those comments, but repeated: “They’re clearly not putting enough emphasis on inflation.”
It’s enough to send a shudder through households struggling with mortgage repayments and other expenses.
There is no credible policy on climate change and renewable energy, with the new opposition leader, Angus Taylor, saying definitively: “We are rejecting Labor’s net zero ideology.” (Reminder, this follows support from big coal and big mining for the Coalition at the 2025 election.)
There is nothing on housing supply, or empowering women (even inside their own party); nothing on government integrity and accountability; nothing on health and education and nothing on AI and technology.
As Tom McIlroy wrote in these pages after Taylor’s appointment as Liberal leader: “Taylor flagged he won’t move quickly to announce new policies, falling back on motherhood statements and principles on key issues including tax reform and immigration.”
Business as usual then?
Charlotte Mortlock, the founder of Liberal women’s organisation Hilma’s Network, resigned from her leadership role there and from the Liberal party itself after Sussan Ley was dumped as the party’s first female leader.
She accused Liberals of being “algorithmed”.
In other words, they are so influenced by social media that they’re “creating public policy for that virtual reality”. This is the “noise” that Barry also points to.
It’s being fed by the Liberals own proxy, Advance. The conservative influence factory is flooding social media with anti-immigration content, for example, to amp up the resentment.
We “mount significant nation-changing campaigns”, Advance’s executive director Matthew Sheahan told a conservative conference recently.
It appears the Liberals are living in that echo chamber.
But the young voters they need to find are not.
Wilson’s flippant dismissal of tax reform to alleviate pressure on housing supply is a case in point. So is Taylor’s apparent opposition to a universal early childhood education system.
These are initiatives geared to intergenerational equity, and that is where the bold policy hope has to come from.
The Coalition likes to talk a lot about Australian values, leaning to American-style anthem, flag and country vibes.
I would suggest that our core value is fairness.
For migrants who outperform in business, for women who can boost our economic productivity, for children who can use their education to take us forward, for young people who deserve a level playing field to participate in the economy.
That means a “fair go” – for everyone.
Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein
