Where to now for conservative politics in Australia?

Between 1996 and 2022, for all but a brief and tumultuous six-year hiatus, the Coalition has governed Australia. Over this period, not only did the Liberal and National parties dominate federal politics, they defined the terrain upon which the political contest itself would be fought. On any number of policy fronts — from border security and immigration through to taxation, fiscal management and the US alliance — the Coalition staked out what would constitute the new political “centre”.

But over the last two federal elections, the Coalition has seen its numbers in Parliament dramatically reduced — losing more than 30 seats to Labor and Teal independents, nearly all of them from Liberal ranks.

It was hardly surprising, then, that the Coalition would find itself in jeopardy. After a brief separation, the Liberals and Nationals decided to carry on together. But the underlying tensions between the Parties remain. And yet these tensions are perhaps not as significant as those within the Liberal Party itself:

• between Liberal members/preselectors and the majority of Liberal voters;
• between the ideologically liberal and philosophically conservative forces;
• between the political moderates and aspirational multiculturalists, on the one hand, and those wanting to emulate the more extreme, divisive politics of the likes of Donald Trump, on the other.

A divorce from the Nationals could have presented a welcome opportunity to resolve the Liberal Party’s own internal tensions, its lack of identity, its philosophical incoherence. Has the mended political relationship now made that impossible? During an extended period in opposition, can the Liberal Party fashion a truly Australian version of conservatism — one that eschews the more divisive, atavistic, bellicose traits that define it elsewhere?