How the Liberals' loss at the 2025 federal election shows a failure to learn from WA

Australia Broadcast Center

03-05-2025

The scale of Labor's victory — or maybe more accurately, the scale of the Liberals' failure — surprised many last night.
But it shouldn't have, especially not for Western Australian Liberals.
Because at the last three elections, the WA branch delivered its three worst ever results.
Each was meant to be a lesson to learn. Listen more. Develop solid policies with wide appeal. Rid factional influence from every level of the party.
Election essentials:
The numbers speak for themselves.
According to retiring ABC election analyst Antony Green, more than a quarter of WA voters switched from supporting the Liberals and Nationals to Labor between 2013 and 2021.
Labor Tangney candidate Sam Lim embraces a supporter after comfortably winning a seat the Liberals desperately wanted back.
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ABC News: Keane Bourke
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As the Coalition comes to terms with its devastating result overnight, some supporters in WA will no doubt be wishing they had tuned their ears to the alarm bells that were ringing out west in 2017, then 2021 — and all over again just two months ago.
Post-mortem lessons
The Liberals' problems were spelled out in the state party's most recent full post-mortem that came after the nightmare 2021 poll.
That report found policy development "appeared to rest entirely with the leader" and criticised "ill thought-out policies".
Similar criticisms have already been levelled at Peter Dutton.
Dejected supporters of Tangney Liberal candidate Howard Ong listen to Peter Dutton conceding the election.
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ABC News: Keane Bourke
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"There's been a lack of policy, and the ones they have produced haven't filled out the gaps, like on nuclear, on gas, or they've left it too late, like defence,"
The Liberals chose to
Some seats have yet to be confirmed, including Bullwinkel where the Liberals' Matt Moran says he's confident of victory.
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ABC News: Keane Bourke
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Labor
But perhaps most concerning for the Liberals was the conclusion that: "There seemed to be a policy disconnect from the party's traditional base."
"While the message was understood, it had no impact or effect on electors' voting intentions," the review noted.
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Failure in Curtin, Tangney
That disconnect between the party and its traditional base has been clear in the three demolitions at a state level.
In 2017 and 2021, the party's traditional strongholds slipped away with little resistance, and many haven't returned.
The Liberals' Tom White failed in his attempt to win the seat of Curtin from teal independent Kate Chaney.
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ABC News: Courtney Withers
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Curtin, which is blue-ribbon heartland, looks to have drifted further away from the Liberals as a result of Climate 200-backed independent Kate Chaney, despite textbook Liberal candidate Tom White campaigning for more than a year.
In Tangney, Labor's most marginal seat in the state and another traditional Liberal stronghold, the Liberals went backwards by three per cent.
Moore, which the Liberals had held for nearly three decades, couldn't be prevented from falling into Labor's hands by former Federal Liberal MP Vince Connelly.
Labor's Tom French snatched the formerly Liberal held seat of Moore on Saturday, in Perth's outer northern suburbs.
The main bright spot for the party was in Canning where Andrew Hastie — who was accused of keeping a low profile on the federal campaign while working on his seat — boosted his margin by 3.6 per cent.
If former Malcolm Turnbull-staffer Matt Moran can swing Bullwinkel — a new seat straddling Perth's urban fringe and stretching out into regional WA — it will be another glimmer of hope for the party, although one which had been expected as a bare minimum result.
That two of the state's three regional seats in O'Connor and Durack swung significantly to the Liberals was merely what would have been expected, given Labor's unpopularity in the regions over issues like ending the live sheep trade.
Rock bottom?
It's an understatement to say the night's results leave the Liberals with some significant soul-searching to do.
"We will rebuild," pledged Mr Dutton in his concession speech.
But the lessons of the WA branch show that even truly diabolical results aren't always enough to turn the party around in a meaningful way.
It was not much of a party at Tom White's election night function after he failed to win the seat of Curtin from teal independent Kate Chaney.
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ABC News: Courtney Withers
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"It's like a drug addict finally realising they have to change," was how the state's Nationals leader, Shane Love, described the conservatives' third consecutive abysmal state election result.
It will be up to the Liberals to decide if this result is their rock bottom or ignore the lessons and face further electoral pain next time around.
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