May 5, 2025 • 15 mins
As the results from Saturday’s federal election continue to roll in, it’s clear that Labor will govern with a significant majority, and that the Liberal Party has endured one of its worst electoral defeats in modern history.
There are many reasons and 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’ll break down some of the reasons why experts are saying the Coalition lost.
Hosts: Billi FitzSimons and Zara Seidler
Producer: Orla Maher
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Tuesday,
the sixth of May. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Billy fit Simon's.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
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
(00:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Go into a blur.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
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
(01:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
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?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
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,
(02:40):
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,
(03:03):
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
(03:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
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.
(04:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
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
(04:43):
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,
(05:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
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?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
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,
(06:14):
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
(06:35):
to in the kind of metropolitan urban city seats.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Do you want to explain why did he think that
those kind of policies would be more popular in the
outer suburban seats.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:27):
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
(07:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Sounds like they're having an identity crisis.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Genuinely, which is quite really. I mean, say, do you.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Want to just explain then, who do the Liberal Party
see that they are representing?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
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
(08:30):
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
(08:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So, just to explain if I'm understanding it, right, is
he saying that they went too right correct?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So they're saying that their policies were too conservative. Yep,
too right wing and they need to move back to
the center.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
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
(09:49):
traditional liberal policies and ideals that made the party who
it was.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
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
(10:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
One thing we haven't spoken about is the personal popularity
of Peter Dudden as the leader of the coalition.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:32):
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
(11:55):
about the campaign was just not as effective as they
wanted it to be.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
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,
(12:33):
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
(12:54):
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
(13:17):
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
(13:38):
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
(13:58):
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
(14:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
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
(15:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
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.
(15:38):
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
Already and this is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Tuesday,
the sixth of May. I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Billy fit Simon's.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
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
(00:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Go into a blur.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
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
(01:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
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?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
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,
(02:40):
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,
(03:03):
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
(03:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
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.
(04:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
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
(04:43):
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,
(05:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
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?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
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,
(06:14):
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
(06:35):
to in the kind of metropolitan urban city seats.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Do you want to explain why did he think that
those kind of policies would be more popular in the
outer suburban seats.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:27):
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
(07:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Sounds like they're having an identity crisis.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Genuinely, which is quite really. I mean, say, do you.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Want to just explain then, who do the Liberal Party
see that they are representing?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
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
(08:30):
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
(08:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So, just to explain if I'm understanding it, right, is
he saying that they went too right correct?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So they're saying that their policies were too conservative. Yep,
too right wing and they need to move back to
the center.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
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
(09:49):
traditional liberal policies and ideals that made the party who
it was.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
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
(10:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
One thing we haven't spoken about is the personal popularity
of Peter Dudden as the leader of the coalition.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:32):
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
(11:55):
about the campaign was just not as effective as they
wanted it to be.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
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,
(12:33):
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
(12:54):
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
(13:17):
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
(13:38):
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
(13:58):
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
(14:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
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
(15:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
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.
(15:38):
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
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