Liberals recycling: the short future to political oblivion

By Jack Arnold

The Liberal Party presidency is up for election and two former party leaders are swapping barbs (paywalled) ahead of the contest.

In one corner is Tony Abbott, whose path to becoming Liberal Prime Minister was paved by the decisions of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott. The two Independent MPs from northern NSW held the balance of power in the House of Representatives after the tied 2010 election and ultimately supported Labor, gifting government to the Gillard-led team.

Abbott was energised by this setback and dedicated himself to loud public opposition to almost everything the Labor government proposed, with significant assistance from mainstream media mastheads.

Perhaps the highlight of his career came on 9 October 2012 when Prime Minister Julia Gillard responded to Abbott’s repeated hypocrisy, sexism, misogyny and name-calling with the famous rebuke: “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not…”

The speech resonated around the world, drawing approving coverage in foreign media. On YouTube it reached one million views within a week, and by April 2026 the ABC News video had accumulated four million views.

In the other corner is the underwhelming Alexander Downer, the now-retired long-serving Member for the South Australian electorate of Mayo. He is almost unknown for his brief term as Liberal leader between May 1994 and January 1995, but better remembered as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007 throughout the Howard years.

Downer is best known for the fish-net stockings incident and for his post-politics career as a consultant with Woodside, after that corporation secured the North West Shelf Agreement through Parliament — an arrangement that excluded hydrogen gas from the Timor-Leste side of the deal.

Since the halcyon days of reforming Labor governments (2007–2013), the Liberal Party has slipped into self-serving irrelevance. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government achieved very little for voters between 2013 and 2022.

Now, after two crushing defeats in 2022 and 2026, Federal Director Andrew Hirst has announced his retirement. Pollsters for the Farrer by-election report that the Community Independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe is facing the PHONey retiree candidate, with all other major parties shunned by voters on 9 May 2026.

The few remaining rusted-on 113 members of the federal council recognise that the Liberal Party is in its death throes unless something drastic is done to stem the loss of voters and electorates. Even once-safe seats like Wentworth in Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs have fallen to well-educated independent women candidates concerned about human-induced climate change and sustainable environmental management. These candidates have been supported by Climate 200. As a result, there is now only one Liberal electorate left in metropolitan Sydney, and it hangs by a slim thread.

WHY WOULD LIBERAL PARTY MEMBERS SUPPORT ABBOTT?

Abbott is seen by supporters as the strongest campaigner the party has had in two decades – a tireless servant with the experience, discipline and drive needed to return the organisation to winning elections. The current Liberal leader Angus Taylor also supports his candidacy.

His opponents within the party are less certain. They fear Abbott is too polarising, has links to the Advance organisation, and will likely push the party further to the right in a bid to chase voters lost to PHONey (Pauline Hanson’s One Nation). Others worry he will become a de facto “Shadow Opposition Leader”, supplanting Angus Taylor, whose insipid performance so far has been mediocre at best.

Indeed, there are foreboding shades of “Et tu, Scottie?” in Abbott’s remark: “I want the Liberal Party to be the best version of itself and in any capacity at all will be striving to make Angus Taylor Australia’s 32nd Prime Minister.”

WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?

The Liberal Party is best remembered by the Baby Boomer generation for the 27 years of economic growth after World War II under the Menzies government (1949–1966). But this now-dwindling generation also remembers the imperialistic adventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – government-sponsored deployments supporting American policy. Consequently, many have strong anti-war sentiments and see military spending as a misuse of resources that would be better directed to Australian electorates.

Meanwhile, post-Boomer generations are better educated and expect the same financial benefits their parents enjoyed. Yet neoliberal economic policies adopted since the early 1990s have left them saddled with huge HECS debts, making it nearly impossible to enter the self-inflating residential housing market and attain the “good life” once expected in a strong economy.

These voters under 35 are looking for other political alignments – particularly parties and candidates focused on environmental protection and human-induced climate change. The Liberals remain loud climate deniers, with Abbott one of the loudest voices.

Perhaps the optimal solution is for the Liberals to remember when the party stood for the “Forgotten Battlers” rather than foreign-owned multinational corporations; when growing Australian industries was a national priority and excellence was expected well beyond the football field.

Certainly, installing the self-proclaimed suppository of all political wisdom as leader would be a sure path to joining the Australian Democrats in political oblivion.

* * * *’*

Jack Arnold is a retired academic polymath who commenced his professional career as a research scientist and ended as a lawyer, with too many decades of education between. To stay busy he has taken an active interest in all levels of local New England politics for the past 50 years, assisting in the election of three progressive candidates, the latter two being very busy Independent representatives for their communities.

Since the retirement of these politicians in 2013, New England has stagnated economically and socially with pre-selected Nationals being elected to Parliaments in the strange local belief that voting for 19th century ideals would yield the new government infrastructure projects that our kids will need to live in the electorates in this 21st century.

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