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October 15, 2025
Wednesday 15 October 2025
Clare Armstrong
The Herald Sun
A senior Liberal has rejected the idea the party must either lurch to the left like the Teals or chase populist conservatism to win back Australian voters, warning disaffected colleagues these are “false choices”.
Coalition finance spokesman James Paterson delivered his most frank comments on the party’s devastating federal election defeat in a speech in Sydney on Tuesday night, urging Liberals to “call time on the apology tour” and get to work resolving internal differences, holding Labor to account and developing credible alternative policies.
A day after Opposition leader Sussan Ley unveiled the second reshuffle of her frontbench in two months, Mr Paterson said Liberals cannot continue debating whether to look after its “base” or pursue the “centre” of Australian politics.
“If we pursue swinging voters before we have locked in our core support, our right flank will be unstable and sap energy and attention from the contest with Labor,” he said.
“But if we obsess over our base and no one else, we will consign ourselves to permanent opposition.”
He also said the party should neither become a “free market version of the Teals” or chase a Nigel Farage “lite” populist conservative party model promising significant increases in government spending and abandoning free trade like Reform in the UK.
Mr Paterson said there was no evidence this approach would work in Australian context, particularly given the compulsory preferential voting system.
He said the alternative to these “false choices” was to maintain the classic liberal conservative “fusion” built by former prime minister Robert Menzies and making it “relevant for the modern world”.
Mr Paterson pointed to the consensus between moderates and the right in the party on issues like immigration being too high, the housing affordability crisis, Labor’s emissions reduction approach “smashing” the energy sector and unsustainably high government spending.
“There would be few Liberals today that would disagree with Tony Abbott’s invocation that we should be ‘the freedom party, the tradition party, and the patriot party’,” he said.
“It should not be beyond us to unite around these simple principles.”
Reflecting on the Coalition’s wipe-out in the federal election in May, Mr Paterson said their policy agenda and the “message it conveyed” was the “single biggest factor which contributed to our defeat”.
“We have all agreed that one of the lessons of the last term is we put off too many debates and prized unity and discipline above almost all else,” he said.
Mr Paterson said while the Liberals can’t afford to make the same mistake this term, it didn’t mean unity and discipline were unimportant.
“That means there is a time limit on this soul-searching process,” he said.
“We must do it now at the start of the term so it does not drag on forever.”
He said his colleagues “solemn task” was to get themselves into a state where they’re “capable of governing again”.
“The consequences if we fail are dire,” he said.