Costed energy policy, real cost of living relief: What Sussan Ley must offer voters to haul the Coalition back from pitiful 40-year polling low

Sky News AU

3 days ago

The 2025 Federal Election was a landslide victory to Labor and a massive blow to the Liberal Party.
Compounding that, data released this week, revealed support for the Coalition has sunk to a 40-year low, although Labor has failed to capitalise on the exodus.
Despite the uphill battle the Liberal Party now face, there is no assurance that Labor will secure a next-term win, and in fact, it is now anyone's game.
The biggest lesson that can be taken from the Federal Election is that when any party strays from its core values, they will be punished at the polls.
The 2025 primary vote for Labor was 34.6 per cent while the LNP primary vote was 31.8 per cent.
Contrast that to the 2019 Morrison versus Shorten election, with Labor's primary at 33 per cent while the Morrison-led coalition achieved a primary of 41 per cent.
The 2019 LNP result looks like a dream compared to the nightmare they just endured.
The Liberals in particular, have been dealt the worst hand, with previous supporters voting for minor parties and independents, and the preferences heavily in favour of Labor.
The Greens are another party who are paying the price for jumping into issues without a clear agenda.
The group remain a force in the Senate but lost three out of four of their Lower House seats, including that of Greens leader, Adam Bandt.
On the other hand, One Nation has doubled their numbers in the Senate, increasing to four Senators.
People know what they are voting for and the renewed numbers for One Nation is the outcome delivered from disgruntled voters who look towards alternate parties who show their cards and stick to the values that voters align with.
Parties are also defined by their action or inaction in opposition.
In 2007, Kevin Rudd easily took down a stale Howard-Costello government who had been in power for a decade and had begun messing with Industrial Relations laws to the detriment of the average Aussie battler.
Mr Rudd was a clean slate, and announced he would abolish Howard's 'unfair dismissal' laws, which affected everyone employed by small and medium businesses with under 100, employees, and on the flipside, promised climate change action, laptops in classrooms and a faster internet.
Then, when Tony Abbott became opposition leader, he was so effective and aggressive in his relentless attacks on a chaotic and dysfunctional Rudd-led Labor Party, that he was credited for the internal toppling of Rudd, who was replace by Julia Gillard.
Mr Abbott outlined everything that was different between the Liberal's path compared to the disastrous paths Mr Rudd had led Australia down.
Mr Abbott pledged to "stop the boats", and get rid of the carbon and mining taxes.
It should have been an easy task for Peter Dutton, as opposition leader, to show the public the contrast between the Liberal outlook compared to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's failures as Labor leader.
But with policy on the fly, such as the not-so-well-thought-out nuclear power stations (without costings), the appeal of the Liberals remained flat in the recent election with a lower primary vote even to Labor's.
The Liberals have the most to lose – and the most to gain over the next three years as they navigate a new path forward.
They will need to prove to a skeptical voting public that they have the better policies to help make Australia's economy stronger, cost of living cheaper, and its social values uncompromised.
New Liberal opposition leader Sussan Ley and her deputy Ted O'Brien are off to a shaky start with a messy split between the Liberals and Nationals after a breakdown in talks between Ms Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud, before the parties made amends.
Then, during her first major address as opposition leader at the National Press Club, Ms Ley touted the possibility of quotas for higher female participation within the party as her first big idea.
It was the only take away from that all-important first address.
Ms Ley looks like a leader without a clear direction.
She does have some grace of a new leader of a party facing a massive slump in numbers, which have been halved to their potential size.
But that window will close by the end of the year and those who look to the Liberals as a plausible alternative to Labor will judge whether they are on track in finding their true north.
The Liberals will need to have a coherent energy policy and renewables agenda while putting forward their ideas to provide baseload power to support manufacturing while bringing down power prices, rather than a nuclear policy without any costings.
They will need to explain exactly how they will drive down inflation and cost of living expenses, stabilise housing and rental prices, and show that they have been better at bulk billing and Medicare than Labor.
Slogans will no longer do, and strong policy direction will need to be coupled with reliable costings before the next election – so the work starts now.
Robert Weir is a freelance journalist whose work has also been published in The Spectator Australia. He enjoys writing political, lifestyle, and environmental stories as well as film reviews