The wash-up from the 2025 election is a disaster for the Liberal Party, they were within striking distance of booting the one term Albernese Government out of The Lodge to electoral wipeout. Could this have been avoided? You bet, this was one of the poorest federal election campaigns in living memory. Instead we watched this trainwreck of an election campaign unfold right in front of us.

Clearly the Liberal Party under performed, to blame this election defeat alone on the Trump factor will set the Liberal Party back a decade. Yes, I do concede there was an anti-Trump sediment for conservatives, but this factor alone could not secure the election rout brought about by the tight Labor Party messaging and ad hoc Liberal Party promotions. The Liberal Party under Dutton’s leadership even knocked back a tax break for wage earners, even whilst a relatively small tax reduction in the scheme of things, seriously?

The first disaster was to try to force federal government workers off of work from home arrangements and send them back into the office full-time. Whilst this policy was dropped in the first week of the election campaign, the damage was already done from spruiking this ridiculous policy. Then, closely following was the announcement of wanting to lay off 42,000 federal government workers, this was just pure lunacy. These people are voters, their family votes and they have friends that vote. This also ties the Liberal Party into Trump style DOGE policies at a time when any astute politician would be seeking to distance themselves from such policies.

The defeat had to stand at the feet of Peter Dutton, as Opposition Leader he ran a terrible campaign. No doubt buoyed by the success of The Voice to Parliament campaign to stop the change to the constitution based on racial grounds, Dutton thought he could replicate this groundswell in the following election. There was no real policy formation, the media releases came across as disjointed and misaligned.

I am not against nuclear energy, but once again, a cohesive marketing strategy failed the electorate, now we are shackled to higher energy costs and availability. I am certainly not against renewables, but we need to educate people that sun and wind energy is not free energy, it comes at a considerable cost. Renewable energy should be in the mix, but proper accounting practices used to educate users. I certainly believe in research, this is where a government spends money to provide the funds for studies, small experimental plants, and analytical driven data.

Policies and costings were released in the final week of the campaign, just days before we headed to the polls. Postal voting was well under way, up to a third of punters had pre-voted so that was a lost opportunity. The Liberal Party has a women problem, Sussan Ley was not wheeled out, nor were any of the female shadow ministers. Then in the final week Dutton got embroiled in the “Welcome to Country” debate, a complete misdirection pushed by the “Trumpet of Patriots” party, just leave it alone Peter, these issues are divisive and just a distraction.

Clearly internal polling was flawed, whilst it was well known Dutton’s seat of Dickson was under threat, the Liberal Party believed it to be safe, instead of shoring the seat up, they redirected funds to outer city seats they thought they could win from Labor. Ultimately, with Peter Dutton losing his seat, this is a positive insofar as his personal failures are gone, the Liberal Party can reset with less right-wing conservatives and promote more centre-left, and centre-right moderates who are more liberal and not conservative. This election loss must be dissected and recommendations implemented, the Liberal Party can turn this around but are unlikely to be competitive at the next election. This will take the Liberal Party at least two elections to be swept into government.