‘Haven't seen a worse one': Jeff Kennett lashes Coalition's failed election campaign and endorses Sussan Ley for Liberal leader
Former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett has lashed the Coalition's chaotic election campaign, revealing he 'hadn't seen a worse one' as he officially endorsed Sussan Ley as his desired pick for Liberal leader.
Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor have begun counting their numbers ahead of the upcoming leadership contest next Tuesday, following Peter Dutton's shock loss in the seat of Dickson.
The contest has, however, turned ugly, with new claims emerging about supporters from both camps anonymously attacking their rivals.
The Liberals suffered a catastrophic election result on Saturday night, receiving their lowest primary vote since the party's formation in the 1940s while barely securing 40 seats in the nation's parliament.
Mr Kennett said that throughout his entire political career he 'hadn't seen a worse' election campaign whether it be 'state or federal' and blasted his own party for neglecting common sense policies and advancing contradictory messages.
'Oppositions don't win governance, governments lose it. In this case once only the opposition lost the election and gave the Labor Party a free kick' Mr Kennett said.
The former premier, who served from 1992 to 1999, said the most profound 'mistake' made by the Coalition was when Angus Taylor announced it would not vote in favour of Labor's top up tax cuts as he condemned the Liberal Party for supporting higher taxes.
'Whenever has the Liberal Party supported higher taxes? We lost the election because we failed and when you make mistakes there are consequences,' he said.
'It had nothing to do with the left or the right. It was just the way in which we presented ourselves to the public.'
The eminent party elder was also dumbfounded by the Coalition's decision to announce a ban on work from home provisions for federal bureaucrats and to sack thousands of Canberra based civil servants.
'Obviously working from home, obviously the decision to sack 41,000 public servants without knowing where they're going to come from etc, etc and then the tax break. No it was not a good campaign,' Mr Kennett said.
When asked which direction the Liberal Party needed to take to rehabilitate its brand and expand its diminishing voting base, Mr Kennett said the Coalition must unify itself around a central figure and backed Ms Ley as his desired choice for leader.
'I'm not interested in supporting or indicating who I'd support based on left or right. That doesn't interest me at all. I am looking for the person who will bring the party together in a disciplined way," he said.
'Sussan to me is that candidate. I think she has the capacity to bring the party together, I think she has a capacity to present a different image of the Liberal Party to the public and I think, and I know, that as a woman, she will listen better than a man will listen. So, to me she's the obvious choice.'
Ms Ley is backed by the increasingly depleted moderate wing of the party and is seen as someone who could potentially enact sweeping structural reform, whilst Mr Taylor has the support of the dominant conservative branch and is viewed as the status quo candidate.
Mr Kennett also vehemently rejected the notion the Coalition should abandon its controversial nuclear energy policy and firmly backed in the plan moving forward.
'That was the one thing amongst our policies that was futuristic. Announcing it was right, that was a good policy, and it should not be dropped, and we should continue to articulate it and to advocate for it," he said.
'The moment it was announced, we should have had people prepared to come out and support it from a scientific point of view. Our spokesman did a good job, but there wasn't enough of it.'
In the aftermath of the election loss the Coalition has engaged in a heated debate about the future of nuclear energy, with some arguing the plan was emphatically repudiated by the wider electorate while others used the relative success of the Nationals as an indicator the policy was well received by rural voters.
'I would be very, very distressed if the Liberal Party dropped that component and those who argue for dropping the advocacy for nuclear power are totally ignoring the fundamental errors that were committed in the campaign' Mr Kennett said.
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