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June 24, 2026
Anthony Albanese may have been accused of exacerbating mistrust in the political system by breaking election promises, but James Paterson has urged colleagues not to blame the government for the Liberal Party’s dwindling support and accept “we are the authors of our own destiny”.
As traditional Coalition voters flock to One Nation and throw into doubt the future of the Liberal Party, Senator Paterson said the time had come for Liberals to “remember our purpose” rather than allow populism to “lead us down pathways not consistent with who we are”.
The 38-year-old made his pitch for the renewal of the party ahead of being named the McKinnon Institute’s federal political leader of the year, an award usually reserved for ministers and leaders who have overseen significant policy change or won elections.
“I’m accepting the award on the basis that it’s partly an encouragement award for opposition,” Senator Paterson told The Australian.
“It’s about encouraging us to be better, recognising that you can do good things for your country from opposition.”
Senator Paterson urged colleagues not to approach opposition by “feeling sorry for themselves” or “being desperate to get back into government”, but rather focus on doing the work of rebuilding the party to become the vehicle for change that Australians were evidently desperate for.
“People want our country to change, but what they’re not convinced about at the moment is that the Liberal Party is the vehicle for that change. The task is to demonstrate that the change people seek in Australia, we can best deliver,” he said.
Debate over the future of the party has raged for more than a year, following the devastating loss of more than a dozen seats at the last election, including Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson.
But while Coalition leader Angus Taylor blamed worsening results in the polls on the Prime Minister’s broken budget promises, Senator Paterson said the Liberal Party was responsible for the existential crisis it currently faced.
“We are primarily responsible for where we find ourselves, and we are the authors of our own destiny,” he said.
“I note though that in a moment of distrust in the political system, a Prime Minister choosing to break fundamental and repeated election commitments was a very unwise thing to do.”
Despite the Liberals’ declining support and unprecedented boom in One Nation’s popularity, Senator Paterson said a drastic change in the party’s worldview would be the nail in the coffin for centre-right political movement.
“There are some people who are more keen to radically renovate our worldview to accommodate this moment, but my view is that that would be inauthentic and it would be unsuccessful,” he said.
Senator Paterson adopted those core Liberal principles following years of dinner table debate with his family, who he described as “traditionally left wing”.
While his progressive parents were critical of Australia following the US into the War on Terror, Senator Paterson was more sympathetic to the American cause after attending school in Washington for many years.
“I remember after 9/11, a minority of voices on the Left saying things like, ‘Well, America’s brought this upon themselves, it’s their fault, what should they expect given their foreign policy?’ and I just had this very strong reaction against it,” he said.
Senator Paterson’s belief in the need to protect liberal democracy drove his interest in politics at just 13 years old and remains at the core of his political career today.
“I’m genuinely concerned that the sovereign liberal democracy that our generation has inherited from a previous generation is not guaranteed to be passed on to the next generation,” he said.
“It’s such a dangerous world, we need to be doing so much more to prepare for it … and so that that’s very motivating, that gets me out of bed every day. I still feel like I can have an impact.”