Don't just stand there, do something!

One of my number one rules of politics is that when you think that things can’t get any worse, they can – and often do.

After the 2025 Federal election, with then Opposition Leader Peter Dutton humiliated, losing both the election and his own seat, and the Federal Liberals wiped out in Tasmania, the Federal Liberal Party would be forgiven for thinking that they had reached their electoral nadir, and the only way was up.

Few would have imagined that only eight months later, the Liberal-National Coalition would have collapsed, and the Liberals would be relegated to third on primary vote in most opinion polls, behind One Nation who are now polling in the low to mid-20s.

Make no mistake, the threat facing the Federal Liberal Party as we have known in since its formation by Robert Menzies in 1944 is not just very real, it is existential.

No political party has a right to represent any particular group in the community, and just because the Liberal Party has long been the party of choice on the centre right, doesn’t mean it will forever remain that way.

The Federal Liberal party has increasingly been suffering an identity crisis since the Covid years, when the party was in government and implemented a whole range of actions regarded by many Liberal members and traditional supporters as the antithesis of Liberal values, such as lockdowns, “no vax, no entry” policies, and the spraying around of cash through policies such as JobKeeper.

Since the 2025 election defeat, however, the problem has rapidly spiralled.

In part, the increased voter support for One Nation is a symptom of the Federal Coalition’s dysfunction for much of last year. Disunity is always death in politics. This is a problem which is theoretically at least, is relatively easy to fix.

More fundamentally, as a result of the Party’s identity crisis and the push-pull between the pressures on the left from the “teal” movement, and from the right from One Nation (and their Coalition partners, the National Party), the Liberals have failed to adequately respond to the pressing political issue of our time - the cost of living, and its perceived driver: immigration.

Today, when voters say “cost of living”, it is really a proxy for their concerns about the broader economy – not just the literal cost of buying food, but also housing affordability and availability, pressures on access to health and education, and increasingly crowded transport infrastructure.

In recent opinion polls, upwards of 60 per cent of Australians now see immigration as being too high. With voters drawing a direct link between immigration levels and economic problems, and with both the Labor Government and Liberal opposition seen by many to have failed them on the issue, this is giving permission for voters to support the one party who are seen as having a clear, consistent and strong position – One Nation.

The Liberal’s decision to “normalise” One Nation by highly preferencing them on how-to-votes in last year’s election didn’t help, either.

As a result of all this, in absolute terms the greatest increase in One Nation’s vote is not coming from the right or the far right – it is actually coming from the centre, straight off the Liberal Party’s bottom line.

The solution to this isn’t to try and “out right the right”, as it seems is the approach of the Liberals now-former coalition partners, the Nationals. As we have seen, all such attempts do is legitimatise the voices of the extremes.

Instead, the Coalition needs to develop a political and policy response which addresses these issues in a sensible and measured way. 

When, for example, was the last time you heard the Federal Liberal Party talk seriously about the economy? About lowering taxes (not “tax reform” which is the left’s euphemism for higher taxes); about seriously reducing regulation; about genuinely freeing up business and enterprise rather than stifling it – remember the silly, populist policy they took to the 2025 election to threaten to split up supermarkets?

On the vexed issue of immigration, the Liberals need to frame this an economic issue (which is how most voters see it), rather than a social issue (which serves only to feed the extremes) – and develop immigration policies accordingly.

At the same time, I see the break with the Nationals as a good thing, it will give the party breathing space to rediscover their own identity and create and flesh out a mainstream policy and political response to the challenges of immigration and the economy. 

In Tasmania, the Liberals are relatively insulated against One Nation by the much lower rate of international migration, and the strong State Liberal brand under Jeremy Rockliff (there is of course no cogent National Party here, either).

However, on current projections this will not be enough to stop Pauline Hanson’s daughter Lee Hanson from winning a “right” Senate seat here at the next election, likely at the expense of Tammy Tyrell. If the Labor vote holds up, the Liberals even face the very real possibility of being reduced to just one Senate seat (out of six) in the election.

In the Lower House, even a One Nation vote in “just” the mid-teens in the traditional swing seats of Bass, Braddon and Lyons will likely be enough to cruel Liberal chances. Remember, you never get back through preferences every primary vote you lose – retaining 80 per cent would be a very good result.

To my friends in the Liberal Party: pretending that something isn’t happening won’t make it go away. Wishful thinking that One Nation will implode or explode is just that – wishful thinking. In the immortal words of legendary AFL coach John Kennedy Snr: “Don’t just stand there, do something!”.

• Brad Stansfield is the owner of polling firm Enterprise Marketing and Research Services, and a part-owner of this newspaper. He was former Liberal Premier Will Hodman’s Chief of Staff from 2010-2018.