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The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Coalition gives a masterclass on the dangers of overreach – and both sides of politics are warned
Towards the end of his at-capacity speech to the National Press Club this week, the architect of Labor's landslide victory, Paul Erickson, delivered a warning to both sides of parliament. Better versed in political history than most, the ALP's national secretary noted that Melbourne University was preparing a new history of Robert Menzies' life and career. Erickson observed that the second volume concludes Menzies had the good fortune of not being subject to a rightwing echo chamber during his nearly 20 years in The Lodge. The clear air helped him become the country's longest-serving prime minister and mostly avoid overreach, with the notable exception of his 1951 referendum on banning the Communist party. The speech was delivered on Wednesday afternoon, the point which might be looked back on as a historic bottoming-out of the political stocks of the Liberal and National parties. Smashed on 3 May by voters, the Nationals blew up the decades-long Coalition in an act of bovine stubbornness on Tuesday. Just 48 hours later, the Nationals awkwardly tried to put the show back together, after Sussan Ley made back-channel approaches to senior party figures. Journalists ran down the hallways of the press gallery as David Littleproud, his deputy, Kevin Hogan, and Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, announced the course correction. Both parties hit pause on plans to name frontbench line-ups to help the reconciliation along, amid consideration of four policy demands from the junior partner to Ley and her Liberal colleagues. While she had promised a full review of the policies rejected by voters, Littleproud, egged on by internal and media echo chambers, insisted the Coalition stick with the Peter Dutton plan for nuclear power, along with big-stick breakup powers to target supermarkets and other 'big box' retailers. He also wanted a $20bn regional Australia fund maintained and minimum service standards guaranteed for telecommunications in the bush. Liberals objected to the beefed up divestment policy, despite a similar plan being accepted under Dutton in the last parliament. Menzies himself believed it was better to keep the Nationals at the table, even when he didn't need their numbers. 'Better to keep them beside you where you can keep an eye on them,' he told one of his ministers. Luckily for the Nationals, an in-principle agreement was reached on Friday. Liberals had warned it was unprecedented that they would be required to accede to Nationals' demands, especially so soon after the election. In turn, Nationals accused Ley of her own overreach. 'She's not allowed to piss around in our pond,' one told this column. While McKenzie and the New South Wales senator Ross Cadell would have been at risk of losing their seats at the 2028 election because of the split, Littleproud himself could be the biggest loser from the spat. Challenged in a leadership vote by Queenslander Matt Canavan days before, Littleproud's leadership is always under pressure because of the presence of former leader Barnaby Joyce in the party room. Joyce and McKenzie are favourites of Sky News, a forum where nuclear power is right and net zero policy is wrong. Its commentators have advocated for the Coalition to go further to the right in defeat. Michael McCormack, another ex leader still in parliament, told ABC radio he was 'ambitious' for Littleproud after a messy week. Echoing Scott Morrison's hollow support for Malcolm Turnbull at the height of the 2018 leadership drama, the comments were viewed as a kiss of death. Talkback radio has been clearly baffled by Littleproud's timing. Ley's mother died days after she was elected opposition leader and a funeral is planned for 30 May. Instead of being able to grieve with her family, Ley was forced to try to hold off an existential threat to her leadership. Some Nationals privately acknowledge it was insensitive overreach to force the crisis on Ley when they did. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Littleproud might not have lost votes in the mess, but he has lost skin. He is likely to fall back on the fact MPs in the party room voted for a split. He has – unintentionally – managed to bring about a reunion between longtime rivals Joyce and McCormack. McKenzie also played a role in the breakup, demanding the Liberals hand over a senior economic portfolio and egging things along. Calmer heads prevailed once some of her colleagues realised just how unelectable both parties would be apart, with the Nationals relegated to crossbench status and unlikely to have much influence. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Nationals MPs would take pay cuts and sack staff, and just sit alongside the Greens, likely for at least two more terms as Labor cemented its policy goals and built a long term governing legacy. 'Never get between a National and a white car,' one observer said, a reference to the perks Nationals MPs will enjoy when they eventually make it back to government. The culture of the Nationals has been politically askew since Joyce was the leader, cheered on by the party's equivocation and denial of climate change by the rightwing media echo chamber. Joyce has maintained an outsized media profile and was prepared to fight internal fights in plain view of voters. Malcolm Turnbull viewed the Nationals as being all hat, no cattle during his time as leader, and sensationally split with Joyce over his affair with a ministerial staffer. Labor has watched the drama unfold, unable to believe its political luck. Anthony Albanese spent the week meeting with Pope Leo XIV and the leaders of Canada and the European Union while the Coalition tore itself to pieces. He made preparations for parliament to return on 22 July, the first time the full depth of Labor's dominance will be on show. Some crossbenchers are concerned Albanese could reduce their staffing allocations for the new parliament, potentially letting experienced employees go. Back at the Press Club, Erickson stressed the Coalition would continue to lose elections until it faced up to the lessons of defeat, including overreach. Labor wasn't spared his gentle warning either. Erickson said the party won big under John Curtin in 1943 and Ben Chifley in 1946, but its own overreach on government intervention into the economy let the Liberals back in 1949. Albanese was in the room for the speech, along with some of his most senior cabinet ministers. If the Coalition remained split, the main opposition to Labor's likely 94-seat majority would be the Liberals alone, with fewer than 30 MPs. Labor's dominance might fuel a little hubris in the long term ahead. Tom McIlroy is Guardian Australia's chief political correspondent
West Australian
21-05-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
Raymond Da Silva Rosa: ‘Excessive' vice-chancellor pay the least of unis' problems
In 1883, the New York Times editorialised: 'no professor worth his salt ever devoted himself to learning for any other reason than that he loved learning.' It remains a widely shared sentiment. In the hazy popular imagination, universities are an amalgam of knowledge factory and monastery, an image abetted by campus buildings reminiscent of cathedrals and academics dressing in medieval robes. The sense of unworldliness is sharpened by views such as that expressed in 1942 by Sir Robert Menzies in his The Forgotten People speech where he asks whether universities are 'mere technical schools, or have they as one of their functions the preservation of pure learning … leading to what we need so badly — the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary?' Mounting dissonance between the roles that the public expects universities to play and how they perform has brought a reckoning in the form of the 2025 Senate inquiry into 'quality of governance at Australian higher education providers.' The public's inchoate resentment needed a lightning rod to coalesce. In Australia, seemingly excessive pay to vice-chancellors has filled that role. The point is not the substantiveness of the issue but its visceral impact. As Stalin said: 'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.' There are many more important issues to fix at universities than what vice-chancellors are paid — an incomplete list includes the crisis of replication in research, student learning as opposed to credentialing and many would say parking. Unfortunately, contemplating them glazes the mind like so many statistics. Anyway, perhaps high vice-chancellors' pay is a problem even if not as significant as other pressing issues. Maybe, but it's odd that there is no equivalent public outcry that, as the Australia Institute has reported, some elite private school principals are paid as much as university vice-chancellors notwithstanding that the schools are massively subsidised. In 2024, the Federal Government spent more than half its schools' budget of $29.1 billion on private schools which only 36 per cent of students attend. My point isn't to whine 'please, sir, look over there, they're even worse' but rather to say that, unlike universities, private schools in Australia can marshal politically potent lobbies to shield them from inconvenient Senate inquiries because they deliver on teaching without the distraction of research. A large part of Australian universities' operating model is attracting fee-paying international students by striving to rank high on research-based metrics. The challenge with chasing rankings is the tension between teaching and research, a stress recognised in American poet John Ciardi's quip that 'a university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.' Normally, competition for domestic students ensures that teaching is given due attention. My guess is that Australian universities' enormous success in using research-based rankings to attract high fee-paying international students has not been accompanied by a commensurate increase in attention to education and community engagement. The universities have paid a price via a slow erosion of public support. The specific question whether vice-chancellors are paid too much is, I am glad to say, a problem well above my pay grade. Winthrop Professor Raymond Da Silva Rosa is an expert in finance from The University of Western Australia's Business School
West Australian
14-05-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
SUSSAN LEY: This isn't the end of the Liberal Party. We will learn from this adversity and come back stronger
It is an enormous privilege to have been elected the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party. I thank my Liberal colleagues for the trust that they have placed in me. I am humbled, I am honoured, and I am up for the job. 'We are going through a period of political adversity. It will be the best thing that ever happened to us. We shall fight back, we shall think back, get long views, summon our courage and stir our imagination. In that case we shall win.' These words could have been penned by any member of my Liberal team yesterday and yet they were used by Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, in 1944. I echo them today to underscore the fact that the Liberal Party has faced adversity before and we will again. Through our history our party has faced defeats, as we have today, but if we stay focused our political movement has the foundations to rebuild and once again guide Australians towards a better future. That starts with accepting the fact that Australians sent a clear message at the election. We must listen, change and develop a fresh approach. To all Australians, those who did vote for us and those who didn't, we will work day and night to earn your trust over the next three years. Now more than ever, the Federal Liberal Party must respect modern Australia, reflect modern Australia and represent modern Australia. Our party values are enduring and they are optimistic. We believe in the freedom of the individual, reward for hard work and strong families being at the centre of a successful society. The Australians that Robert Menzies called 'the forgotten people' and John Howard called his 'battlers' remain at the heart of our nation. They are the nurses, small business owners, tradies, teachers, farmers, parents and retirees who ask for little but contribute a lot. They're also now the young professionals and first-generation Australians in our major cities who are incredibly concerned about getting ahead and getting into their first home. They want to go about their lives knowing they have security, opportunity, and a say in their own future. The Liberal Party that I lead will always have these Australians, and their aspirations, front of mind. We accept that many Australian women felt neglected by the Liberal Party and that we must reconnect with them and rebuild trust. We will do so. We know that in three years time, as a result of Labor's policies, Australians will be worse off. But as we learned just days ago, that will not be enough to win an election. I also know that Australians want a real alternative. They deserve a real alternative. And we will give them a real alternative. This means standing for lower, simpler, and fairer taxes — not as an economic ideology, but because we trust people to spend their own money more than we do the government. It means taking education seriously, not for slogans or funding battles, but because knowledge and critical thinking are so important — especially for our children. It means supporting families not just with payments, but with policies that respect their choices — in child care, housing, education, and retirement. And it means building a strong, sovereign Australia — confident in its values, prepared to defend them, and clear-eyed about the global challenges we face. The Liberal Party will take the time to get it right. We will listen, we will step up, we will modernise and we will rebuild. We will be a strong alternative and win the trust of Australians once again. It is the honour of my life to lead the Liberal Party. A lot has been written about the significance of my election as the first woman to lead our great party. It is a significant moment and it sends a message to the electorate. While I note its significance, and we should recognise it, we cannot afford to dwell on symbolism. We need to act with urgency and unity. As Leader of the Opposition I will fight for the values that the Liberal Party believes in. When the Government makes decisions that contradict those values, expect fierce resistance. When they make decisions that we believe are in the national interest, my team will be supportive. Let's get to work. Sussan Ley is the Opposition Leader
Sydney Morning Herald
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Australia election results 2025: Labor now rules the centre right. Those remaining on the left must gather their forces
While the Greens harbour a romance of an alliance with Labor, that is ever less likely as Labor shifts further right and delights in its utter contempt for them. The Greens, though, like a spurned lover, keep seeking to be embraced by the ALP once more. As well as preferencing Labor in almost all electorates, the Greens went into the election sounding not like an environmental party but the unloved left of Labor – the same party that election after election uses the Greens for preference harvesting and then rejects its advances. Green-shaming is Labor's political equivalent of slut-shaming. Loading The only way out of this vicious dilemma that sees the two main parties continuing to decline as a popular force but dominate as an electoral force would seem to be some new alliance that seeks to create a closer working relationship between independents and Greens. With this kind of agreement, they would preference each other at elections rather than Labor, and work more closely together in parliament on the matters on which they are agreed. None of this would be easy: while voters have liked the crossbench co-operating on issues such as gambling reform and an integrity commission, they are less happy when they think an independent is electorally aligned with others. Despite the unremitting propaganda wheeled out through the election, independents are not Greens, and on many issues are far from the Greens' positions, while the Greens in turn find some independents' positions anathema. The problem for all is that the left is becoming an increasingly Balkanised landscape. The possibility of a new national ecology party forming to pursue the goals the Greens have abandoned only worsens the picture. Unless some way of coming together can be found, the alternative will be the spectre of the left's growing irrelevance. In an Australia where the vote for non-major parties is the size of the vote for Labor – and growing – the crossbench could begin reimagining its ranks as the place out of which governments of the future can be built. If independents could re-conceive their roles not just as individual representatives but as future national leaders, finding within themselves the ambition to ultimately aspire to create a government of allies, they may escape being condemned to the sidelines of history and show the larger, as yet unrealised, possibilities of Australian democracy. In some ways, the plight of the left today mirrors the crisis in which crushed conservatives found themselves in the 1940s when Robert Menzies united 18 anti-Labor groups into a new, single force of conservatism that would become the most electorally successful federal political party in Australia's history: the Liberals. Whether there is a comparable figure or figures on the left today who might bring together these disparate but important voices into some form of partnership or alliance that can hold Labor to account is a question only time can answer. But it is the question that must now be asked. Richard Flanagan won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North . In 2024, he won the Baillie Gifford Prize (for non-fiction) for his most recent book, Question 7 . He is the first writer to win both prizes. The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The lack of Liberal women isn't just a political liability – it's a structural failure. Of course we should consider quotas
The result of the federal election was shocking but it wasn't surprising. It was a resounding message from voters – and we would be foolish not to listen. The truth is, the Liberal party didn't lose because of campaign tactics or some leadership missteps alone. We lost because our policies failed to resonate. And they failed to resonate because, too often, they were built without the input of the very Australians we needed to win over – women, young people, multicultural communities and urban voters. Too many of our policies seemed disconnected from the daily realities of modern Australia. The cost of living, housing, secure jobs, climate and education are dominating the concerns of millions – yet when asked how we'd address them we gave voters little reason to believe we understood the scale of the problem, let alone have credible answers. To chart a credible path forward, we must return to first principles. The Liberal party was once defined by its broad reach – a party of the 'forgotten people', where aspiration met compassion and economic freedom was balanced by social responsibility. That legacy, championed by the party founder Robert Menzies, meant putting the concerns of ordinary Australians at the centre of political life. We have drifted far from that foundation. Too many Australians now see us as departed from the centre, and speaking to a narrowing segment of the population, not to them. The lack of women in our ranks is not just a political liability – it's a structural failure. Women make up more than half the population yet remain dramatically underrepresented in our party, from branch level to the parliament itself. Of course we should be considering quotas. This is not about ticking boxes – it's about removing entrenched barriers and making space for talent we have long overlooked. A necessary circuit breaker at a veritable crisis point where organic growth hasn't materialised. Quotas are not foreign to the Liberal party. We already use them. Every party branch and conference must elect both a male and a female delegate to vote in Senate and upper house preselections. We have quotas for metropolitan and regional members of our state executive. We have quotas for male and female vice-presidents. The Coalition itself operates as a quota-based model: ministerial and shadow ministerial positions are shared between the Liberals and Nationals according to negotiated agreements. The leader of the Liberal party is our prime minister in government and the leader of the National party is our deputy prime minister – a power-sharing arrangement by design. But improving representation isn't just about numbers. It's about culture. Women should feel that they belong in the Liberal party – not as a gesture or a fix, but because their perspectives are essential to how we govern. If women don't feel heard, valued or safe in our ranks they won't stay – and voters will continue to turn away from us, too. Rebuilding starts with humility. It starts … cultivating a culture that welcomes and elevates a wider range of voices The same is true for young Australians, multicultural Australians, and city dwellers. Too often they were dismissed as too hard to reach, when in fact, the message itself was the problem. Their concerns are real. They want secure work, a shot at buying a home, meaningful climate action and a system that doesn't leave them behind. These challenges can be solved through true adherence to Liberal values. But they won't be solved if we vacate the field. That is a recipe for disaster, where we offer no reason for frustrated Liberals to return; direct swing voters away and close the door to potential future cohorts of supporters. This election loss was not some kind of anomaly. It was a clear judgment on our relevance and resonance with the electorate. It's not just that we didn't win – it's that voters didn't see themselves reflected in our policies, our people or our priorities. Rebuilding starts with humility. It starts with broadening our base, modernising our policy agenda, and cultivating a culture that welcomes and elevates a wider range of voices. We don't need to become a different party. We need to become a better version of the party we were meant to be. Australians are asking for leadership that is competent, compassionate and connected to their lives. If we are serious about governing again we must rebuild trust – not with slogans or short-term campaign commitments, but with substance. That work must begin now. Maria Kovacic is a Liberal senator for New South Wales
