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October 18, 2025
It is hard to believe, but this has been a good week for the Liberal Party.
The vandals did more bloodletting but it didn’t matter.
The big story of the week was that the true conservatives stood up – the ever impressive James Paterson and the likely alternative leader, Angus Taylor.
They engaged in the big ideas that will determine whether the Liberal Party lives or extinguishes itself.
In separate contributions Taylor and Paterson injected some intellectual steel, common sense and political nous into a third-rate shambles about the future of the Liberal Party that was inviting the possibility that it didn’t have a future.
While they used different language and have different styles, Taylor and Paterson delivered a remarkably similar series of messages – to the party as a whole, to its conservatives, to its moderates and, ultimately, to its leader, Sussan Ley.
On display was a quality in short supply since the May election – true conservatism as opposed to the recent outbreak of cheapjack populist conservatism.
Paterson’s Tom Hughes Oration on Tuesday night exposed the maze of illusions that have tormented the party since its defeat.
In the finest speech so far on the Liberal trauma, Paterson was constructive, unifying and avoided aggravating the colleagues. He provided the clarity that has been in desperately short supply as he punctured a series of false choices.
Taylor’s exclusive interview and oped in this paper on Saturday constitute a strategic vision for the future of the party coming from its senior conservative and still the likeliest candidate to replace Ley if she succumbs under pressure.
Taylor, who lost the leadership 29-25 votes to Ley in May, has addressed the Liberal trauma and offered a way forward.
The core message from both conservatives was the indispensable need for the party to honour and uphold its two traditions – classic liberalism and conservative faiths.
They emphatically repudiated recent wild, highly publicised, comments from inside and outside the party that unity was now impossible, that the Liberals should split into two parties or Liberal MPs should defect to the Nationals.
Such talk is the guaranteed road to doom.
Both Taylor and Paterson said they supported Ley’s leadership. That assurance is vital.
Yet Taylor and Paterson have done what Ley has failed to do: as senior conservatives they have outlined a strategic vision for the Liberal Party’s future, the basis for unity and the core principles that should constitute their attack on Labor.
They are saying what the leader should be saying.
In this sense their remarks – not about leadership as such – pose a direct test for Ley.
Is Ley up to the job? Can Ley successfully navigate a way out of the current Liberal crisis?
The Taylor and Paterson efforts represent powerful realities around four themes.
First, abandon the collective nonsense that the current crisis should lead to a restructuring of centre-right politics and a split or fracture in the Liberal Party.
Taylor warns this would consign Australia to the Labor Party for the duration. Paterson made the devastating comment that a split would represent a Liberal version of the disastrous Labor split of the 1950s.
Second, in ideological terms, speaking as conservatives, they warn the only future for the Liberal Party is to maintain its fusion of two traditions, classic liberalism and conservative faiths.
Taylor said: “As John Howard has long argued, our strength rests on a balance between two great traditions. The first is the classical liberal tradition: individual freedom, enterprise rewarded, and government as enabler, not overlord, driving a resilient, growing economy. The second is the conservative tradition: family as the foundation of society, local institutions that hold communities together, and respect for the lessons of history.”
They see these traditions not as some weak-kneed centrist compromise but as instruments to weaponise their sharp policy differences from Labor.
Taylor warned of the consequences, saying: “If we don’t get this right, we lose the real contest, which is for the Australian people.” He made clear the issue at stake was Liberal Party identity. Asked how important it was for the Liberals to retain its two traditions, Taylor said: “It’s not the Liberal Party if we don’t.”
Third, Taylor and Paterson came with wise advice for their conservative friends, particularly those on the populist fringe: forget your false prescriptions about reinventing the Liberals as a populist conservative party influenced by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, understand Australia’s uniqueness, appreciate that such a reinvention will never be embraced by the party and will never fly with the Australian public.
Both denied their remarks were directed to prominent conservative Andrew Hastie, who has resigned to the backbench.
They are friends with Hastie and want to play down personality tensions.
Yet their comments are an obvious rejection of the speculation rife among a section of conservatives who call for an untenable shift to the right that would only marginalise the party.
Fourth, Taylor and Paterson have a powerful warning to the moderates whom they also see as a distinctive, potential threat to Liberal unity and success. Their decoded message is: don’t ever think this party will ditch the conservative faith of Robert Menzies and Howard and become a free-market version of the teals.
Paterson offered a deadly and correct diagnosis of the argument put by some moderates – that the Liberals must abandon the “culture wars”, a line beloved by much of the press gallery.
He made clear that selling out to the left’s campaign to remake Australian values would render the Liberals soulless, hollow and unelectable.
Any such step by the Liberals would corrupt their identity as a party of liberalism that opposes identity politics (witness the voice campaign) and that believes in the flag, anthem, the constitution, the Anzac tradition and Australia Day. This is tied to a rising sense of Australian patriotism.
If the Liberals are selective and smarter in culture war campaigns inevitably triggered by the left, they can expect to win since such campaigns are usually at odds with mainstream opinion.
In his summary, Paterson nailed the two false choices for the party: succumbing to a pro-market economic agenda while selling out to the progressive cultural Zeitgeist and, on the other side, retreating to a populist, economic nationalism, state power version of Reform UK that would ditch the party’s economic tradition.
Both Taylor and Paterson insist the party must avoid the Labor-lite trap. Taylor said: “We must reject a Labor-lite approach but equally reject becoming a pale imitation of any other political brands.”
They repudiate possibly the most ludicrous claim of the far right – that the Liberals must become populist conservatives as the only way to avoid the Labor-lite trap. This is the worst form of propaganda.
Taylor and Paterson want Australian solutions to Australian problems – this nation should have no role as a pathetic mimic of Farage from Britain or Trump from the US.
Taylor said Australia’s genius had always been to take the best from other countries but recognise our uniqueness.
He said: “The Liberal Party is different from the Tory party and the Republican Party. Our political cultures and political environments are different across these countries. So we have to find our own way, and do it in a way that reflects our own history. Obviously, US politics is very different from Australia, I think just cloning one or another of those countries is a really serious error.”
Paterson said: “We are told that our future lies in a Farage-lite populist conservative party which abandons our traditions on free markets and fiscal discipline in favour of a new nationalism of picking winners and turning our backs on free trade. But I am personally unconvinced a platform of significantly increasing government spending in a country where it is already 44 per cent of GDP and has a large budget deficit is fiscally sustainable. Or, for that matter, particularly conservative.
“But even if it would work politically in the UK, that does not mean it would work in Australia. Reform is currently averaging about 30 per cent in the polls. But it’s less than the primary vote we just secured in our worst ever election defeat.”
Both Taylor and Patterson recognise that after the worst defeat in Liberal history there had to be period of soul-searching. But they argue it is time to get to the main game. Taylor said the focus had to become an agenda to run “against a bad Labor government”. Patterson said “we must call time on the apology tour.”
What is required is the enunciation of core policy principles as the instruments against Labor. It is too early to outline detailed policies for the 2028 election.
But the principles are vital and it seems the party, under Ley, doesn’t yet have them. That’s damaging for the Liberals and for her leadership.
It doesn’t make sense. In the interim the media is having a field day with repeated questions: “What is your policy?”
“I can understand the frustration and anger people are feeling,” Taylor said in the interview. “There are always people who have a contrary point of view, at a time when we’ve had a cathartic loss. It’s understandable that people want to explore alternatives. But I am very confident that the vast majority of the party room believes in the importance of these two traditions and the importance of a policy agenda that reflects that.”
There was much common ground in the actual policy agendas that Taylor and Paterson put forward. Taylor said the priority must be economic growth to fund opportunity.
That meant competitive, enterprise-driven investment, lower personal income taxes and less regulation along with lower deficits and less debt to reduce the burden on future generations. Taylor said he was “dead against” automated personal tax increases via bracket creep – signalling support for a Liberal policy of tax indexation during the current term.
He said Australians wanted “affordable, reliable power”.
They didn’t want carbon taxes or “renewables-only policies that drive up bills and send industry offshore”. Taylor said gas, hydro, coal and nuclear should be the basis for “choice and technology” to replace taxes and subsidies. He said rent-seeking and perpetual taxpayer bailouts cannot be the basis for successful industry policy. The Liberals would champion affordable energy, streamlined approvals and more agile workplaces.
Taylor said Australia had been enriched by migration but the rate needed to be lowered, with a renewed focus on skills and migrants who could adopt our values. Childcare policy, contrary to Labor’s mindset, “must give parents confidence and choice” as opposed to undervaluing early family life, given Labor’s strong resistance to choice in types of childcare.
He highlighted education, calling for a return of “rigour to the curriculum” lifting literacy and numeracy, stronger vocational pathways and removing “ideological indoctrination”.
Paterson reminded that the party’s economic debates in the 1970s and 80s between the “wets” and the “dries” had been “won comprehensively by the right of the party in favour of free markets”.
That debate had been part of a wider national debate settled to Australia’s immense benefit but opposed by the left as part of its assault on so-called neo-liberalism.
A Liberal Party that abandoned free markets “would consign Australia to a poorer future”. The way forward was limited government, free markets and lower taxes.
Social fragmentation had now become a problem in the West.
The alarm some conservatives felt about the issues of family, faith, nation and community were “sincere” and “legitimate”. Paterson said Australia’s social cohesion was being tested and “at times has failed us” during the past two years.
But some events, like the decline in religious observance, “are simply out of reach of politicians and the state”.
On climate, Paterson said “our energy market is utterly broken by the pursuit of unrealistic targets, and it is hurting families and businesses”.
Post-pandemic migration has been “unplanned, uncontrolled and too high”, a major contributor to the housing crisis, and must be reduced to sustainable levels.
While manufacturing had been in decline, false arguments needed to be avoided: there was no threat to national security because the nation no longer made fridges, washing machines or TVs.
Paterson said the biggest recent problem facing the party was the voter perception it had abandoned its values. Too often in the past Liberals had adopted policies inconsistent with its publicly stated values.
In her speech this week recognising the 81st anniversary of the formation of the Liberal Party, Ley said: “We are the party that built modern Australia and we must be a party for modern Australia.
Menzies talked about the Forgotten People, we need to talk about a Forgotten Generation.” She invoked the history of the party, saying the Liberals had dismantled the White Australia policy, fought racism, championed immigration and multiculturalism, an obvious reminder to the conservative wing.
Ley has already delivered a strong economic speech consistent with party tradition.
Reflecting the argument taken by Taylor and Paterson, Ley said the Liberals’ devastating election defeat this year was not because “of our values” but “because we failed to heed them”. That is largely true.
But Ley leads a divided party.
Her backbench includes Hastie, senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senator Jane Hume and senator Sarah Henderson – all of whom are able and willing to speak up.
Ley’s future depends on her securing internal unity around core principles and, unless she achieves that, a polling recovery is a daunting task.