What the Liberal leadership change means for the party and policy

Angus Taylor’s elevation to the Liberal leadership is a victory for the party’s Conservative faction.

That faction’s policies might shore up the position of its MPs and Senators against a resurgent One Nation, but they will cruel the electoral chances of Moderate Liberal candidates in the big cities, where federal elections are won and lost.

Incumbent Conservative Liberal politicians have voted for their own survival.

That’s understandable – they know they can’t save their party from the electoral sidelines, especially when they hold less than one quarter of the House of Representative seats.

But as the new Conservative Liberal leadership announces policies they hope will make them competitive with One Nation and stabilise the Coalition with the Nationals, they will infuriate Liberal-leaning city voters.

Already the Teals hold six formerly safe Liberal seats. And at the 2025 election Labor won 12 urban seats from the Liberals.

As the Parliamentary Liberal Party seeks to compete with One Nation in regional Australia, it will cruel its chances of regaining these urban seats.

So, the Liberal Party’s shift to the right makes no sense. Or does it?

The Conservative faction of the Liberal Party has around 31 MPs and Senators, the Moderates only 16, with around four non-aligned.

Numerous Liberal MPs and Senators have said publicly the Liberal Party is under existential threat – in a fight for survival. When the Conservatives outnumber the Moderates by a ratio of two to one, it was not hard to predict which faction would win in a ballot for the party leadership.

Obviously, Taylor’s victory cannot be a case of Conservative winner takes all. Many Moderates will be included in the shadow ministry. But Conservatives compromising on policy with the Moderates won’t be easy.

After all, One Nation does not compromise. Yet seeking to compete with One Nation on the right would threaten the survival of Moderate Liberals – and politicians don’t take threats to their political survival lightly.

Replacing the Liberal Party’s first female leader with a male isn’t a Conservative isn’t a great start.

Malcolm Turnbull wisely observed that federal elections are decided by a large voting group called “the sensible centre,” a phrase he acknowledged was coined by his predecessor, Tony Abbott.

Sometimes that group leans to the centre-right and elects a Coalition government. Other times it leans a little left and elects a Labor government.

But the sensible centre does not seek to form a majority in the House of Representatives of Australian Greens or One Nation MPs.

Yet Taylor and his faction seem to have been spooked by One Nation and have chosen to compete with them. 

Or is there a second question of survival that they are seeking to address?

Former Liberal MP, Craig Laundy, then Member for Sydney’s inner-west seat of Reid, very much a Moderate, explained that his branch members routinely watched Sky After Dark, the pulpit for Conservative Liberal preaching.

So, he and his colleagues watched it too. He did that, he explained, to be better prepared for conversations with his branch members, ensuring his ongoing preselection.

These Liberal branch members are overwhelmingly Baby Boomers, the one age cohort that still voted Liberal at the 2025 election. Sky After Dark reflects and reinforces their views.

But Baby Boomers comprised only one quarter of the voting population at the 2025 federal election, a share which will continue to decline.

Low-income Gen X voters in regional Australia are shifting mainly from the Coalition to One Nation too. But there is no compelling evidence that Millennial and Gen Z voters become more conservative as they get older.

Leading Moderates such as Alex Hawke and Andrew Bragg understand these dynamics but following the success of the Teals and Labor at the last two elections, their views are in the minority.

New Liberal leader Angus Taylor will be inclined to campaign on tax cuts and reduced spending.

Yet the final parliamentary manoeuvre of the Liberals before the 2025 election campaign, when Taylor was Shadow Treasurer, was to vote against Labor’s bill to provide tax cuts – and promise to repeal them.

Further, the Taylor-led Liberal Party’s promise to cut government spending will open it up again to an effective Labor campaign that it will cut Medicare.

An analysis of the drivers of increased government spending confirms that it is in the areas of health and aged care as our population ages – as foreshadowed in the first Intergenerational Report released by Treasurer Peter Costello way back in 2002 and in all subsequent editions.

Who strongly supports spending on health and aged care? Baby Boomers!

Confronted by these political risks associated with campaigning on spending cuts, the Taylor-led Liberals, strongly supported by the Nationals, will inevitably campaign against what Conservative Liberals describe as “mass migration.”

That would place the Coalition on the same political playing field as One Nation – a long way from the sensible centre.

Australia’s biggest cities have large migrant populations. Regardless of how the Liberals dress up an anti-immigration campaign, it will be poorly received in these communities.

And it will be ugly, just when we need stronger community cohesion.