Months of poor Liberal Party polling are not entirely at the feet of the first female leader, nor is a shift to One Nation just a “protest vote”, say analysts.
Some say it was remarkable what new leader Angus Taylor talked about supporting lower immigration in his victory speech after winning a party room vote on Friday, referring to a favorite topic for One Nation.
As the wheels of the leadership spill were set in motion on Thursday, several Liberals cited the 2.1 million Australians who had left the party as a reason for changing course.
In the latest Newspoll, Redbridge and Morgan polls, One Nation are all in second place, while the recently reunited Coalition is in third place with around 18 per cent.
However, Redbridge chief executive Simon Welsh says the poll reflects long-term problems that cannot be easily solved by simply replacing former leader Sussan Ley.
“This is not a Sussan Ley problem. This is the result of a very long build-up and a consequence of the consequences of the last elections,” he told SBS News on Friday.
The core of the eroded mood? A belief that the Liberal Party is no longer the answer to economic management.
“The voters who are now abandoning the Liberals en masse are voters that Howard bought into the party,” Welsh said.
“Those kinds of working and middle class families who came to the Liberals (from Labor) with this promise of individual economic ambition.”
It’s an issue that the party’s brand new leadership team – opposition leader Angus Taylor and his deputy Jane Hume – appear to be aware of.
In his first comments as leader, Taylor stressed that the party stands for “lower inflation, lower interest rates and lower taxes”.
Taylor acknowledged his mistake when he opposed Labour’s lower tax policy at the last election in an attempt to neutralize the issue.
However, Welsh said it was immigration that “broke the camel’s back”, arguing that “resorting to a culture war type approach” without strong policies to back it up was driving voters towards One Nation.
“The Liberal Party is still tied to that centrist kind of flank that it has… so that they can never immigrate to the kind of places that One Nation can go to,” he said.
On immigration, Taylor said: “It’s clear that the numbers have been too high and the standards have been too low. And our policy will be for lower numbers and for higher standards.”
Welsh added that for a party struggling to retain female voters, the ouster of its first female leader will hurt its centrist and moderate flank, many of whom have switched to Labor or the teal independents.
What’s the way forward for Taylor?
Welsh said it doesn’t matter who occupies the top position, Ley or Taylor, unless they can address the key economic issues and policy spaces they are “trying to avoid.”
“You can’t tackle this problem unless you talk about big business, unless you talk about taxes, unless you talk about housing, unless you talk about climate,” he said.
“There are a number of policy issues that are quite tough and problematic for the Liberal Party to deal with because of the way it is constituted and constituted as an organization.”
Zareh Ghazarian, associate professor of politics and international relations at Monash University, says the shift to conservative offers Taylor “an opportunity” to debate these issues.
“I would expect that discussions and debates that have not been prominent, such as debates on immigration and energy policy, would really come to the forefront of what the Liberal Party is starting to talk about,” he told SBS News.
He said they are “current and prominent issues” not just in Australia, but around the world.
Farrer by-election ‘feasible’ for One Nation
Taylor’s first test will come in the Farrer by-election, a seat Ley has held since 2001.
Welsh claims the NSW national seat is “feasible for One Nation” as it demographically favors those voters.
He said it will be important to demonstrate how deep the shift in voting is, predicting the trend away from the Liberals “will continue.”
“It seems like it’s more than just a protest vote,” he said.
“It has a kind of deep aspect tool, which is about what the Liberal Party stands for as a brand.”
A significant portion of the increase in support for One Nation comes from traditional Liberal voters, mainly Generation X and baby boomers, Welsh said.
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