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The Liberals need to return to Menzies’ values

This is a lightly edited interview between Arthur Sinodinos, a former Liberal Minister and Chief of Staff to Prime Minister, John Howard, and ABC Radio National’s Sally Sara.


Sally Sara: You know from many levels how campaigns work. Where do you think this Liberal campaign has gone wrong? Is it from the leadership, the campaign manager? What's your assessment of what's happened?

Arthur Sinodinos: The easy answer is, all of the above. Clearly, there were issues between the leaders’ office and the campaign headquarters. There were clearly issues with the polling, of the veracity of some of the polling from the stories now coming out and from other stuff that I've heard.

But look more fundamentally, this is a structural issue for the Liberal Party. We've shown a tendency not to … reform or pick up the vibes over a long period of time, and often success has meant that you don't have to do that. You feel, well, we're going ok, what do we need to change? The reality is that you need to change because the world is changing around you.

And that doesn't mean ditching liberal values as they're no longer relevant. They're very relevant, but it's how you apply them to a changing world, and it also goes to how you engage with the community around you, and that means being representative of the community as much as possible. And there are clearly still some issues in that regard.

In New South Wales, I thought we always at the state level had a very good understanding and relationship with the ethnic communities, both from my own experience and what I saw in New South Wales - that's important.

Gender issues are important. This is not about wokeness or political correctness. It's about when we look in the mirror, do we represent the community that we aspire to represent, and that is the challenge going forward.

And Liberal values, the Menzian sort of values, many of those values are as relevant today as they ever were, and they go to things like the tolerance for each other, the respect for difference, how we approach actually solving problems.

It's not about culture wars. Culture wars are an artifact of a very fragmented social media landscape that we face now, but the culture wars will not win you government alone.

Yes, you have to stand up for values, but you have to do it in a way that relates to people and their needs now, and what the Labor Party did was to put together a policy offering that came good at the right time towards the end of the term, that clearly was better pitched at some of the needs of Australians. And we looked as if we were doing this in an ad hoc and reactive way. The grievance politics was not enough. We had to have our own coherent plan, and we didn't.

SS: What's driving this inertia? If there have been lessons there to be learned in the past, and there are certainly plenty from this election as well, why is that not happening in your view?

AS: I think part of it is because there are too many people in the Liberal Party who have fiefdoms that they want to protect. And so we have this old issue that the faction or the fiefdom comes first, rather than what is the central party interest.

We don't also have, as we did in the so-called old days, party grandees. These were the sort of people behind the scenes who could knock heads together, get people to be sensible, but who were taking a corporate view, a whole of party view of situations, rather than the situation today, where too often between factions, it's been winner take all.

I hear people today saying we should have gone more to the right, or we should have done this or done that. The reality is Australian politics is firmly grounded because of compulsory voting and preferential voting in the centre. So you have to pitch a broad tent, and that means you have to go to people where they are, rather than shove your own ideology down their neck. And Menzian Liberals are not ideologists. They're practical. They're pragmatic.

SS: How do you manage that, meeting voters where they are and going to the centre when in some cases, it's those who are closer to the centre who've been defeated in this election because the policies weren't right for that?

AS: Well, that tells you there's a disjunction between the policies and where people are, and the way to fix that is to actually listen to the voters - that's part of it - and then sit down and say, well, in accordance with our values, how do we address the issues people have got.

Housing is an example that is now a generational crisis in Australia. Young people facing the prospect of never being able to own their own home, that has to be a number one priority of any government. Clearly, we've got to do more than is being done now because we're not creating sufficient momentum to solve the problem, and young people are very concerned about that. At the moment, if you come out of university, you've got a HECS debt, you have a superannuation guarantee of at least 10% plus you want to try and save for a home - how's that going to work? So these are the challenges.

We've got to treat some of these things as crises, as urgent crises, just as we've got to treat defence and national security as a geopolitical issue that needs a lot more attention in Australia. Yes, there will be debates about how much we spend on defence, but the world around us is changing very quickly and in ways which are not necessarily in Australia's interests, and we have to address that.

There's a whole slew of these issues, economic reform, all of that has to be accelerated, and these are all things that can be done in accordance with long standing Liberal values. But we have to argue the case.

And we can't fatten the pig on market day. You've got to put in the work beforehand, and that requires, ultimately, leadership. It is leadership that will drive the party to do this, the Liberal Party group of individualists. You have to have people at the top who can herd the cats and basically set that direction. We've had those leaders in the past. We can have them again.

I mean, the situation the Liberal Party is dire, but it is not terminal. The Liberal party is one of the great election winning machines in Australia, and it can win again, but only if we do the hard work because that's how we've done it in the past.

SS: Arthur, what sort of role do you think Donald Trump's second presidency, tariffs and culture wars and the language of the Trump presidency has played in this election for the Liberal Party.

AS: To the extent that the world is now more uncertain place, if there are questions around our relationship with the US in economic terms, as other countries are questioning, and one of the most effective lines in the campaign, I thought, was Americanization of policies. That was clearly code for some of what is going on in the US and in Australia. I think in the end, they [the Australian voters] opted for a version of relaxed and comfortable over a leap into the unknown.

 

Arthur Sinodinos is a former Liberal Minister, Chief of Staff to Prime Minister, John Howard, and Australian Ambassador to the US.

 

17 Comments
Chris
May 16, 2025

Prediction!!!! You will not see the LNP in government for at least 10 years....with the rise of independents and the decline of baby boomers as a percentage of the electorate the whole landscape of elections has changed FOREVER!!!

Woko
May 15, 2025

Return to fundamental values? I think not. That would mean a return to invading south east Asian countries at the drop of an American dollar & continuing to hold up the monarchy of a country far, far away.

Dudley
May 13, 2025

Liberals need to de-Trump-ify, find some original votable ideas and "Liberalise" not "Conservatise" in hope that if it put Trump in power it just might put them in power.

Darmah
May 14, 2025

I’m with you Dudley,
How dare an opposition party go to the electorate with such unimaginative policy’s, offering the same old daft alternatives; Nuclear power, first home buyers raiding their super, more fossil fuel extraction at the expense of renewables, sidelining women, the environment, multiculturalism and the disadvantaged.
With so called experts predicting a narrow win for LNP or a Labor hung parliament, I was not looking forward to election night.

Thank god, my fellow Australian’s BS detector was working after all.

It wasn’t so much a landslide for labor as a repudiation against the LNP for being totally out of touch with the electorate.
It may not last, but this time a majority voted against far right divisiveness.

Dudley
May 14, 2025

"Nuclear power": Needed to have better proof that it would deliver better outcomes than the alternative.
"first home buyers": A savings policy to deliver FHBuyers from the financial drag of rent and mort-gage.
"fossil fuel extraction": gas is currently the best complement to intermittents. Batteries not so much.
"sidelining women, the environment, multiculturalism and the disadvantaged": Savings to increase capital formation and productivity.

Dianne
May 14, 2025

Quite an interesting interview with Arthur Sinodinos. As a swinging voter, I am sick of the conservatives hijacking the LIBERAL party. Throw them out, tell them to start their own party. The recent election should have taught them a lesson on where the voting public stand. As a middle of the road voter, I have had very little choice of who to vote for, as the Liberals are no longer Liberal, the Greens are Marxist and Labor is Labor,. I’m sure Robert Menzies would be the most disappointed man in Australia if he could see what had become of a once great party, that stood up for women, the disadvantaged and encouraged small business.

Marty Breen
May 15, 2025

Sinidinos is the embodiment of Liberal Values of superiority and born to rule. It is self evident in his unconscious remark that to be Liberal is to embrace “things like the tolerance for each other.” ‘Tolerance’ is the lowest form of acceptance. It is the kind of attitude that the Ruling Class have toward the pitiful disadvantaged and the boat people. “Come on Libs, let’s rally around the Boat people. They’ve had it tough. We need to be more tolerant of them.”

And this is why the Liberals don’t appeal to GenZ and Millenials - the very future of politics in this nation. Until the old factional hypocrites like Sinidinos find something else to do with their lives, the Liberals irrelevance is fast closing in on completeness. And if they don’t Lead, then good riddance.

PS. Have a chat with GenZ about Nuclear Power since it is them who will inherit it, you arrogant elite captured Neanderthals. Within two terms of Labor we will be 100% Renewables, so if you say Menzies values embrace pragmatism, then you would outcompete Labor in the race to support home owners to participate in the energy revolution and clean energy economy that is all encompassing. How the hell can you not see this as the greatest economic opportunity for Australia out to 2050 and beyond. Utter fools. You truly deserve to be the rump.

Dudley
May 15, 2025

"100% Renewables": until just about midnight to midday.

"greatest economic opportunity": to supply materials; inventions are serendipitous.

Peter Z
May 12, 2025

I'd like to add to the discussion the issue of 'ownership' of the Liberal Party both in terms of who exactly and also quantum in terms of numbers and population percentage. It's this group that should to my mind both drive the definition of current beliefs and future goals and objectives along with the holding accountable of those charged with achieving defined outcomes. I suspect that right now there seems to be a lack of clarity in this area and as for accountability that too seems to have fallen by the wayside. Another thing that that seems to be lacking recently is high level business nous on the one hand and on the other high academic achievement and brains. So much that appears to me in need of fixing. Suspect some real leader or leaders will have to choose to seize the opportunity for the future to change significantly for the better.

Roger Kilham
May 11, 2025

David Wilson nailed it. Parties win when they hold the centre.

Davidy
May 09, 2025

LNP now hold 9 off the 88 metropolitan seats so they really are the Nationals with a few regional Liberals on the side. How does any of this appeal to the city voters ?

S2H
May 09, 2025

If the Federal Coalition doesn't change it'll have the same fate as the ACT Liberal Party; permanent opposition. And that's not a great outcome regardless of your political views as people need genuine choice at the ballot box. As others have said, hard to see the party changing when a lot of the moderates are gone and the party apparatus seems to a complete mess (based on their inaccurate internal polling, poor campaign, getting flogged on the ground by Labor and the teals). They did seem to preselect more women this time so perhaps they aren't entirely incapable of change.

David Wilson
May 09, 2025

Arthur Sinodinos expresses some noble sentiments in this article. A case of wishful thinking. Don't expect things to change anytime soon, given the dearth of talent remaining in their ranks. As long as the Coalition remain beholden to far right self-interested backers like Gina Rinehart and the Murdoch family they will remain an irrelevant force in Australian politics, deservedly destined to continue to go backwards and will spend many years in opposition.

Mark Schwartz
May 12, 2025

Please don't forget the adage that oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them. Labor have two terms to bugger things up with their brand of centrism and class warfare, which they will inevitably do. It's in their DNA. This gives the Coalition time and space to examine who they really want to be and propose a cohesive set of policies to take us forward.
Labor will legislate a raft of anti-business, new taxation policies that will cause successful people a lot of pain. These are the people we need to encourage as they provide private sector jobs. Whatever the deficiencies of the Coalition, and there are many, I feel a crisis of confidence and an economic crisis are imminent. And if this comes to pass, you will suddenly find that no one actually voted Labor, the votes appeared via a miracle.

Jennifer Capel
May 13, 2025

Absolutely right, Mark. A cohesive set of policies, clearly and simply enunciated is what the Liberal Party needs. The "ad hockery" evident in the party's woeful campaign must not be repeated.

Jum
May 13, 2025

If the Angus Taylor ticket gets up in the party room, I predict a minimum of another 6 years in the wilderness, regardless of whomever comes after them. The ACT is a perfect example, party flip-flopping like a beached salmon.

Its the Churchill thing....Democracy ain't great but...., or Lincoln at Gettysburg...of, for, and by the people.

If you don't bring the people with you, you are going to spend a whole lot of time out in the cold, whinging, whining, and complaining how unfair the people's system is ! And about the cold !

Peter
May 09, 2025

Current Libs would never agree on what Menzies' values were?

 

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