Liberal insiders say Voice triumph confused Coalition's election priorities

Australia Broadcast Center

27-05-2025

Was the "no" result in the Voice referendum a pyrrhic victory for the Liberal party?
Our Four Corners story on the fight inside the Coalition over its future direction revealed something I didn't expect to. Even those who strongly advocated against the Voice believe it gave the party all the wrong messages about how Australians felt about a broader range of issues and established a sense of complacency that ultimately led to its historic belting.
From the conservative to the moderate side of the Liberal Party room there is a growing consensus that the "no" vote fought for by the conservatives created the wrong impression for the party.
Rising conservative star Andrew Hastie told me the Voice gave the Coalition "a false sense of confidence".
"I think Australians are naturally, we're incrementalists," he said.
"So the Voice was a massive change to our constitution, which is why I think it was defeated. But that's very different to who do you want to govern this country? And in order to win people over, you've got to demonstrate that you're fighting for them. And I just don't think we landed that argument."
Asked if fighting against the Voice could have been damaging for Peter Dutton, Hastie answered: "Yes, perhaps. But I think we probably lingered over the voice for too long. Like I said, it was a tactical victory. Things can change very quickly in politics."
That view is shared by former shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser, who resigned from his opposition portfolio in 2023 in order to campaign for the referendum.
He argued on Afternoon Briefing yesterday that the Coalition's success in defeating the Voice to parliament referendum gave the Liberal party "a false sense of confidence" about its chances of victory in the federal election. Leeser says that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese "seemed to lose his way" after the Voice referendum was defeated and this, combined with what he says was Albanese's poor handling of the local antisemitism crisis, "gave so many in our party a false sense of confidence".
Leeser says he was "shocked" that the internal polling conducted for the Coalition used the number of Labor voters who voted "no" in the referendum in his calculations of a swing against the government, which was instead returned in a landslide.
The government's victory is so big it mirrors John Howard's 1996 election landslide.
"Part of the reason my colleagues were successfully defeating the referendum was in 2023 the issue did not seem to be one of top priority for Australian voters," Leeser said.
"Certainly, in 2025, it was completely irrelevant and I had no idea why the issue kept reappearing in our campaign."
While Dutton regularly raised the Voice as one of several examples to demonstrate that Labor was out of touch, he campaigned in the last week of the campaign on what he said was a "secret plan to legislate the Voice" after Foreign Minister Penny Wong told a podcast "we'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality".
"It indicated we were not in touch with the concerns of ordinary Australians," Leeser said.
"People were not talking to me about those issues until we raised them; they were concerned about paying the electricity bills, their mortgage, about the future of their children and what sort of jobs they would have in a world where AI will present both threats and opportunities.
"We were not talking about any of those enough, and instead focused on esoteric issues and I think it indicated a lack of discipline and real focus."
Despite a deep schism over the future of the party and how to deal with vexed questions including whether to stay committed to net zero by 2050 — many in the party acknowledge that the Voice set them on a path which created false positives that didn't materialise in votes on election day.
That revelation — if listened to carefully — provides warnings on how to rebuild. It is a cautionary tale on what to focus on and where Australians expect their political parties to be focused.
The Liberals are now in negotiations to bring the Nationals back into the Coalition — with Nationals leader David Littleproud denying that his party "flip flopped" on its split with the Liberals.
"There's no flip flopping from the National Party. We did not blink," he told Sky News.
But it's Littleproud whose leadership is under pressure over the shambolic incident and he is on borrowed time according to key members of his own party room.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley may have a monumental task before her in settling issues that are red lines for many inside her party but her leadership has been strengthened by the recalcitrant junior Coalition partner's overreach.
Her next job is to manage the divergence in her own party room. The Nationals may end up seeming like the easier job compared with managing some of the policy differences inside her own party.
Watch Four Corners's Decimated, reported by Patricia Karvelas, on ABC iview.
Patricia Karvelas is presenter of ABC TV's Q+A, host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.