PETER VAN ONSELEN: The Liberals have an uphill battle to win back the favour of Aussies after Dutton led them straight to rock bottom... but one politician could help them reach the summit
The Liberal Party have never been very good at orchestrating outcomes but now is the time they need to.
The party's best chance of electoral recovery from the mess it is now in is to parachute former Treasurer and Deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg back into the parliament.
But my suggestion for doing so is not to attempt to find him a lower house seat. That would require a re-elected Liberal MP to stand aside for Frydenberg to run at an ensuing by-election.
The likely result would be more carnage. Frydenberg losing either to an independent or Labor. The electorate angry and being forced back to the polls so soon.
Frydenberg would need to run somewhere he doesn't live or know. And where even would that be?
Liberals have been decimated in the cities. What would the former Treasurer do? Don an akubra and pretend the regions have always been his home? Because he's spent time at hobby farms with the kids or at a family rural retreat?
It's ridiculous
He also can't run for a vacated outer metropolitan seat because he would be seen as an interloper there too.
The only pathway to get Frydenberg back in the parliament is to put him in the senate and lead from there.
It's not constitutionally impossible and the Liberals could pledge that he will run for the lower house at the next election, if not before.
PM's must reside in the House of Representatives.
So a senator would need to step aside, ideally and probably necessarily in Frydenberg's home state of Victoria.
I won't name names here, but they know who they are. It's their duty to their party at this low ebb.
The benefit of replacing a senator rather than a lower house MP is that no by-election is required. No vote. A casual senate vacancy when a senator retires means the party that senator represented gets to pick the replacement.
This also means Frydenberg wouldn't need to go through a preselection, because the central party can impose senators at a time like this.
Sussan Ley as the current deputy leader can preside until the deal gets done.
Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor should announce he wants Frydenberg back because the party needs him.
So should next generation future leaders like Andrew Hastie and Julian Leeser, who represent the opposite conservative and moderate ends of the party respectively.
Liberals aren't likely to do what I suggest. More likely personal ambition will rein alongside a lament that the above battle plan is 'too hard to make happen'.
It's hard, but it's also necessary and the best way forward.
Frydenberg is no political messiah, but he is the Liberal Party's best option: for a fight back and to help ensure unity going forward.
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