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OTTAWA Although three weeks remain in the Conservative partys leadership race, the talk in political circles has already shifted to whats next.

Pierre Poilievres victory is being treated as a foregone conclusion by his rivals and allies alike. He has upwards of $5 million in the bank, more than 300,000 party members signed up behind his cause, and the crowds turning up at get-out-the-vote events are assuaging earlier fears that all of the new members hes recruited wouldnt turn out to vote.

So, whether its planning House of Commons strategy or hashing out who might have which jobs, Tories and Liberals are already thinking about how Poilievre will reshape the countrys politics once the leadership race concludes on Sept. 10.

Between that day and the resumption of the House of Commons, hed have nine days to pull together at least a skeleton crew to kick off the fall sitting of Parliament.

His team is nixing all public discussion of transition planning, fearful of jinxing his victory.

With 62 sitting MPs endorsing him, Poilievre would have no shortage of names to select from for his front bench team of critics, who would lead the charge on the dominant files come fall.

Meanwhile, those who chose to support leadership rival Jean Charest are already contemplating their political futures after a highly charged campaign that has seen Poilievre attack the former Quebec premier mercilessly.

As a result, Jol Godin, one of the MPs who supported Charest, is telling reporters hes not sure hell stick around, and its expected there will be others who quietly decide not to run again.

Also eyeing their next steps are the staff. The ranks in the Official Opposition Leaders office thinned considerably in recent months as many opted to jump ship early instead of potentially being marched out the door several are now working in Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Fords government.

Conservative MPs grouse in a joking way that now it is their own offices that will be left bare as eager staffers make the jump to the opposition leaders office.

Poilievres entire inner circle isnt expected to move to Ottawa. Instead, like leaders before him, his campaign team would more likely pivot to start planning for the next general election, whenever that might be.

On paper, it could be at least 2025 thats the year the clock will run out on the agreement between the minority Liberals and New Democrats that has the latter propping up the government in exchange for implementation of some key NDP priorities.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has already signalled hes willing to pull the plug sooner though, and at least one Conservative MP is publicly arguing that the next election could come as early as this fall.

Long-time Tory Michelle Rempel Garner penned an essay this week laying out her argument that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will either call an election this fall or step down as Liberal leader in two years time.

Liberals dispute the idea of a fall election, but there is no doubt tongues are wagging in their circles about how much longer Trudeau will stay on by 2025, hell have been in power as long as his predecessor, Stephen Harper.

Where they agree with Rempel Garner is that a Poilievre-led Conservative party would be a much different Official Opposition than theyve faced off against since coming to power in 2015.

In her essay, Rempel Garner called it the coming end of the war of succession thats plagued the party since Harper stepped down in 2015.

The two leaders who followed him Andrew Scheer and Erin OToole only won their jobs after multiple rounds of ballot counting, and so never had a solid mandate, she argued.

This meant that neither of them could really escape the gravity of Stephen Harpers influence within the party or the aspirations and grudges of malcontents. The result of this was that the Conservative party never truly coagulated after Harpers defeat, she wrote.

However, all signs are pointing to a decisive first or at most, second ballot Poilievre victory in September. Poilievre will have the clear mandate Scheer or OToole never really were viewed as having.

Scheer and OToole also had to grapple with people waiting in the wings to take their jobs, and who ultimately ousted them as leader, she wrote and those people are all now gone.

Any behind-the-scenes agitators that facilitated the Scheer and OToole ousters might, having vanquished all other opponents, finally be satiated with the influence and policy direction that a Poilievre-led Conservative party will offer them, she wrote.

There is a good chance that swords will be put down and everyone will take a breather.

Not the Liberals.

How theyd handle Poilievre will be on the agenda at the governments cabinet retreat in early September just before the Tories wrap up their race and their caucus retreat right after.

One logistical concern is the fact that Parliament will still be hybrid, so MPs will be able to either attend in person or log-in from home.

Having a packed opposition bench facing off against a handful of Liberals will just add more fire to Poilievres narrative that the Liberals are out of touch, and debate is now underway in Liberal circles around how to neutralize that.

But thats a small thing in the face of a bigger issue: how to best counter Poilievres argument that it is the Liberals fault that inflation is so high and the cost of living seems to grow by the month.

In less than a month, the Conservative party will choose their new leader, and if youve heard some of the facts that their leadership candidates have been flipping, youll know that we need to work together to set the record straight this BBQ season, Liberal party headquarters wrote in an email to members this week, with talking points to counter the Tory narrative including a lighthearted list of puns.

But with polls suggesting they are losing support, one Liberal told the Star this week that the party knows facing off against Poilievre is no joke.

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Pierre Poilievres looming ascension to Tory leader has Liberals and some Conservatives wary about what comes next - Toronto Star

(Photo by Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images)

One of the loftiest decisions that a president can make is the choice of an individual to nominate to the Supreme Court. On average, a new appointment to the Supreme Court is made every 2.5 years. President Trump lucked out in this respect with three nominations. Four presidents Andrew Johnson, Harrison, Taylor, and Carter never had a justice confirmed to the Court, while the president with the most confirmed justices aside from George Washington was FDR with eight.

With the nomination and confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden had his first opportunity of making a dent on the Court. It is unlikely that Justice Brown Jackson will have a significant effect on the Court in the short term due to the Courts composition. The picks that tend to have a substantial impact are ones where there is a distinct ideological shift due to the transition. Examples of this include when Justice Barrett took Justice Ginsburgs seat on the Court and when Justice Thomas took Justice Marshalls seat. To a lesser degree, the shifts from Justice OConnor to Justice Alito and Justice Kennedy to Justice Kavanaugh had this type of impact as well.

An important question often asked during the nomination process is how well can we predict a justices future behavior when they join the Court. Surely not through the confirmation hearings. Presidents want to know a prospective justices voting behaviors to ensure they can make informed decisions about their nominees. The nominations of Justices Warren, Souter, and Stevens are examples of failures in this respect. A wider circle of litigators and interested parties also want to know what to expect with the transition of justices.

Exactly pegging a justices voting positions prior to their joining the Court can be a tricky business. This is due to the fact that judging on the Supreme Court is so unique. The most similar judicial position is as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Court of appeals judges are bound by stare decisis, however, while justices on the Supreme Court are not. Appeals court judges also decide the vast majority of cases on random assignments of three judge panels. This means they dont often decide cases with the same judges and a three judge panel is vastly different from a nine justice one where you always vote with the same judges. These differing variables make inferring positions based off a judges votes on courts of appeals to ones he or she will make on the Supreme Court a difficult enterprise.

Beyond these limitations, scholars such as those involved in theSupreme Court Database(including myself) have compiled detailed information of all Supreme Court cases. Due to the vastly more significant number of court of appeals cases and the different variables that such an analysis would require, there is not a similar dataset for these courts. The most proximate example of this is the Songer Appeals Court Databasewhich looks at random samples of court of appeals cases each year. This does not aggregate enough information to generate ideology scores for all judges based on their votes though.

Some have tried to generate ideology scores of appeals court judges on which to categorize judges positions and to predict how they will vote in the future.One waythat they have done this is by sampling a smaller set of votes. Another way is throughJudicial Common Space Scores(JCS) which are based on the judges appointing presidents and home state senators ideological positions. Athird measurelooks at the campaign finance donations of a judges clerks to gather a judges policy positions.

The second and third measures allow for vague comparisons to be made between a court of appeals judges judicial behavior and how they may vote on the Supreme Court. For the reasons mentioned above though, court of appeals judges positions do not necessarily translate well to how judges will vote if they are elevated to the Supreme Court.

Five Thirty Eightran a piece about Justice Brown Jacksons potential ideological position relative to the rest of the Court which showcased the hurdles of making any accurate predictions. The Five Thirty Eight article uses the campaign finance scores and the JCS scores to predict judges positions on the court of appeals and on the Supreme Court. In the JCS model Justice Brown Jackson comes up as the most moderate liberal justice while the campaign finance scores place the justice further to the left than any of the justices including Sotomayor who is currently the most liberal justice on the Court. This shows that while Justice Brown Jackson is not likely to make a substantial impact on the justices overall decisions, her position on the left of the Court is still quite unclear.

Justice Brown Jackson only sat on the D.C. Court of Appeals from June 2021 to June 2022, and since she was nominated to the Court in February 2022 she did not sit on any panels after that time. This left her with a very small number of panels on the D.C. Circuit and far too few to help infer her policy positions.

She was also a judge on the District Court for D.C. from 2013 to 2021. Another way to define her positions and the one that I chose to use was studying a sample of her district court decisions that were later appealed to the D.C. Circuit. We can gather a sense of Brown Jacksons decision making by observing which appeals court judges voted to affirm and to reverse her district court decisions. This too is an incomplete method, but it has several advantages over the other methods and most importantly, it is based on votes and is focused on a set of cases in which Brown Jackson participated.

I examined 33 published appeals decisions from cases where Brown Jackson was the district court judge below. Thirty-one of these were three-judge panel decisions and two were en banc decisions. The number of cases involving each appeals court judge is as follows:

While most of the cases on a district court judges slate are criminal matters, those that later become published appeals decisions come from a wider variety of matters. The issues tackled in this set of cases include the following:

The appeals panels included 11 judges appointed by Republicans and eight judges appointed by Democrats. The next graph shows the appointing presidents of each of the appeals court judges.

One way that has been used to predict votes of court of appeals judges is by looking at the party of appointing president of the appeals court judge and comparing that with the district court judges party of appointing president. If the majority of the panel is composed of judges that were appointed by presidents of the same party that appointed the district court judge, then the expectation is that they will side with the district court judges position. If the majority composition is from a different party than the district court judges party, then the expectation is that they will vote to reverse more frequently. The majority of all (not only published) appeals court decisions affirm district court judgments.

For the purpose of this exercise, votes to affirm and reverse in part were treated as reversals if at least a substantial portion of the decision was to reverse. Fifteen of the three-judge panels voted to affirm Brown Jacksons decisions and 16 panels voted to reverse.

The panel compositions based on parties of appointing presidents in cases where there are no split votes are shown below:

Surprisingly, all four decisions from panels with three judges appointed by all Democrats voted to reverse (at least in part) Brown Jacksons decisions. These cases were Crawford v. Duke(with Judges Millett, Rogers, and Pillard),Sickle v. Torres Advanced(with Judges Rogers, Srinivasan, and Millett),Pavement Coatings v. USGS(with Judges Millett, Wilkins, and Rogers), andUnited States v. Johnson (with Judges Srinivasan, Edwards, and Rogers). There were also no cases with all Republican judge panels, two en banc decisions, and four cases with split votes on the panels. One split vote was DR/R with a Republican and Democrat voting for Jacksons position and a republican voting against, one panel was D/RR with the Republicans voting against and two panels were R/DD with Democrats voting against.

Aside from the DRR non split panels the data do not show a particular bias of court of appeals Democratic nominees in favor of Jackson. This is one indication that Brown Jackson is perhaps not as liberal as President Biden had hoped or expected. When we look at the appeals court judges votes to reverse, the pattern is consistent with this more moderate formulation. The judges rates of voting to reverse Brown Jacksons district court decisions for judges on at least four of these panels are as follows:

The overall picture from these data conform more to the picture painted by the JCS Scores than to that painted by the campaign finance scores. The picture is of a liberal judge, not as liberal as Justice Sotomayor, and more likely a moderate with a similar ideological position to that of Justice Kagan. Even though we lack complete information on which to formulate accurate predictions of how future justices will vote when on the Court, this more refined way of viewing Brown Jacksons lower court record should give a more complete picture than other available methods.

Read more at Empirical SCOTUS

Adam Feldman runs the litigation consulting company Optimized Legal Solutions LLC. For more information write Adam atadam@feldmannet.com.Find him on Twitter:@AdamSFeldman.

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Justice Brown Jackson Won't Shift The Court, But Will She Shake Up The Liberals? - Above the Law

Liberal Senator Alex Antic has spent the last 18 months working to stem the leftward drift of Australias traditionally centre-right Liberal Party.

The South Australian senator is fighting at the grassroots level to grow the partys membership and steadily steer the party back to its roots.

They are people who are concerned about the direction of the state and the nation, and who believe in the partys founding principles such as freedom of speech, religion, and association, and the freedom to choose their own way of living and of life, he told The Epoch Times.

These people are now having a say in the election of party office bearers, the formulation of future policy positions, and ultimately, will have a say in the selection of strong principled candidates for parliamentary elections at both state and federal level.

Trying to right the ship of a political party is no small task.

The work begins at the grassroots with the recruitment of members to local party branches.

Generally, members are given the right to vote at Annual General Meetings, join the pre-selection process of candidates to contest upcoming elections, and vote for the position of office bearersthe president, the vice-president, treasurer, and secretary of the state party.

Having enough votes from a particular bloc can have a major influence on the direction of the party.

For example, having more right-leaning voters in a local branch will generally ensure that a candidate with similar values is selected for upcoming elections. Meanwhile, having enough office bearers can influence the partys operation and direction via voting at the State Council, which also votes for the State Executiveequivalent to a board of directors.

However, over the years, the influence of left-leaning or moderate factions has become more prevalent across the Liberal Party, which has had an impact on the type of policies the party adopts.

Some commentators have argued that the trend is pulling the Liberal party further away from the vision of founder Robert Menzies, who espoused a party built on the values of classical liberalism, anti-communism, and upward mobility of the middle-class via private enterprise.

In South Australia, policies under former Premier Steven Marshall have galvanised religious voters to join the party, including support foreuthanasia and late-term abortion laws.

Thus far, the campaign by Antic has paid off with over 1,000 new right-leaning members joining the Liberal Party organisation in the state, bringing the total membership base to over 5,000.

Last year, Antics campaign hit a hurdle when the partys state executive tried to stonewall the onboarding of 500 new Christian members.

The individuals had to undergo an audit and agree to support the objectives of the Liberal Party and ensure they were not aligned with any alternative political entities,' according to a letter seen by The Advertiser newspaper.

The state President, Legh Davis,responded to the incident by saying: Those who clearly support the partys constitutional objectives and endorsed candidates will be welcome as members.

Antics campaign to encourage classical liberals and conservatives into the partys ranks would not have been welcomed by the then-dominant moderate faction of the Liberal Party.

In fact, for 30 years now, the state branch has been headlined by leading moderate political figures, including former Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, former Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, and recently defeated South Australian Premier Marshall.

For a long time, the South Australian division of the party has been controlled by the partys left-wing faction, and of course, any period of change brings with it a degree of resistance, Antic said.

Having said that, we are now seeing the many new members actively participating in events and meetings, and the influx has revitalised sections of the party which were struggling for enthusiasm, Antic said.

In the Australian context, moderatesgenerally advocate for free market economicsNew South Wales Senator Andrew Bragg (a moderate) has been a vocal supporter of dismantling the compulsory superannuation systembut are socially progressive on issues such as legalising same-sex marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.

Meanwhile, those in the right faction (like Antic) have focused more on social policy, including individual freedom, religious rights protection, and opposing the onset of progressive leftist causes such as gender fluidity and climate change.

Climate change has also been a major flashpoint between the right and moderate factions, which played out during the May 2022 federal election.

Moderates were concerned that failing to push for more ambitious climate change targets would lose the Liberal Party several inner-city electorates. In contrast, right faction members have criticised the climate change movement pointing out the lack of consensus around climate science, as well as the feasibility and enormous cost of transitioning to net-zero.

In a move to try to appease both factions and their voting blocs, the centre-right Prime Minister Scott Morrison adopted a net-zero by 2050 target in October 2021, and stuck to a 26-28 percent emissions reduction target for 2030.

The move was interpreted by some as neither here nor there and confusing to the electorate. As a result, the election saw the Liberal Party bleed votes on its left and right political flanks, with the party recording its lowest primary vote in recent times at 35.7 percent (the then-opposition Australian Labor Party won just 32.58 percent).

On its left flank, the Liberal Party lost several inner-city seats to Teal and Greens candidates who promised major climate change initiatives, including more ambitious emissions reduction targets. It also lost votes to the Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance. Then on its right, the party continued to bleed votes to One Nation and new freedom parties like the United Australia Party, and Liberal Democrats.

One senior Liberal Party staffer told The Epoch Timeson condition of anonymitythat the election result was a wake-up call and that the former party of Robert Menzies needed an urgent rebuild.

Theres still very influential factional elementsresponsible for the recent past and where we found ourselves todaythat are still trying to cling to power and reshape things in a way that will suit them, the staffer said.

He revealed that members of branches in New South Wales have been restricted from being able to vote, a situation holding back better candidates.

Weve become less and less reflective of the people we are representing, and that comes down to not being democraticit is an elitist type of approach, he said.

Its a real fight to democratise and create transparency, he added. [As for] the public, they see it translating into people they dont really relate to or trust. We have to produce more grassroots community-driven people and get them through the process.

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Daniel Y. Teng is based in Sydney. He focuses on national affairs including federal politics, COVID-19 response, and Australia-China relations. Got a tip? Contact him at daniel.teng@epochtimes.com.au.

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Senator's Grassroots Campaign to Revive Founding Values of Australia's Liberal Party - The Epoch Times

Liberal frontbencher Karen Andrews wouldnt be alone among her colleagues in believing Scott Morrison should quit parliament.

Andrews, home affairs minister in the former government, on Tuesday declared the Australian people were betrayed by Morrisons installing himself in five portfolios, including hers, in secret arrangements.

She was one of the ministers not told hed moved in. Nor, most remarkably, was treasurer Josh Frydenberg (who a few months later stayed at The Lodge) informed he had a ministerial bedfellow. Likewise finance minister Mathias Cormann.

Andrews has another reason for a heightened sensitivity to Morrisons willingness to flout conventions and propriety.

When an asylum seeker boat was intercepted on election day, Morrison was determined to try to exploit it politically. The pressure coming from his office onto Andrews office to urgently publicise the incident has been documented in a recent inquiry.

While Andrews defended her actions after the report was released, she lost skin.

Without doubt the parliamentary Liberal Party would be better off if Morrison quit.

Even before this weeks revelations, there was nothing he could contribute he sits as a failure from the past in a party that will have immense trouble adjusting to the future. Now he presents a live target for Labor. Anthony Albanese on Tuesday wouldnt rule out Labor moving a censure against him.

He enjoys minimal respect among his colleagues. As long as he hangs around, hell be a distraction.

Former prime minister John Howard advanced the one pragmatic argument against Morrison quitting it would create an unwanted and expensive by-election for the Liberals.

Apart from anything else it is not in the interests of the Liberal Party to have a by-election at the moment in a very safe seat, particularly as in the state of New South Wales we will face a state election in the early part of next year, Howard said bluntly, interviewed on the ABC on Tuesday night.

Some would add that in these volatile political times no seat is absolutely safe.

Morrison hasnt been expected to see out the parliamentary term. But presumably he needs a job to go to. This weeks stories will have done nothing for his employability.

The disclosure of Morrisons behaviour has put heat on Governor-General David Hurley.

Hurley was quick to issue a Monday statement setting out how he had acted in accordance with the Constitution. He said it was up to the government whether the arrangements were made public.

To suggest Hurley should not have done what he was asked totally misunderstands his role. He must act according to government advice, assuming what it proposes is legal. (It might be added, however, that a wise governor-general also questions and counsels when circumstances require.)

University of NSW law professor and constitutional specialist George Williams suggests the convention should be put into law that all ministerial appointments be announced to parliament.

On Tuesday Morrison made a belated effort to explain himself. He began on 2GB his favourite radio roost but it was a fiasco. He didnt recall any portfolios other than those initially mentioned (health, finance, resources) into which hed inserted himself.

It fell to Albanese to add home affairs and treasury. To have apparently forgotten you have made yourself treasurer is really something.

Later Morrison issued a long Facebook post, in which he invoked the extraordinary times of COVID that required extraordinary measures to justify his actions.

I took the precaution of being given authority to administer various departments of state should the need arise due to incapacity of a minister or in the national interest. This was where ministers had specific powers under legislation not subject to cabinet oversight. Health was the major example.

Morrison said treasury and home affairs were added as a belts and braces precaution in May 2021.

He explained his lack of memory of key portfolios by saying there was a lot going on at the time and the powers hadnt had to be used.

Why not inform all the relevant ministers, the cabinet, the public? (Health Minister Greg Hunt knew and Morrison did think Cormann had been told, but there was some glitch.) Morrison said he didnt want ministers second guessing themselves, or for their authority to be diminished.

The one area where Morrison used the power hed acquired was in the resources portfolio, and this had nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with votes. There he became minister so he could overrule the publicly designated minister, Keith Pitt, on the issue of gas exploration off the NSW coast.

Once having been given the authority to consider this matter I advised the minister of my intention to do so, Morrison said. This was the only matter I involved myself directly with in this or any other department.

Morrison ended his post with an apology for any offence to my colleagues. But he showed little sign he comprehended why they would be so deeply offended by his lack of respect, represented by his unwillingness to take them into his confidence.

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View from The Hill: The Liberals would be better off with Morrison out of parliament - The Conversation Indonesia

Search for talent

On Mirabellas analysis, social media is near the core of the problem. It wasnt that MPs needed necessarily to create TikTok accounts. Rather, he posited that social media and its creation of information silos had accelerated the pace of attitudinal changes more quickly than the Liberal Party could adapt to them.

The ALP and Liberal parties posting the same joke format on Facebook at the Federal election.Credit:Facebook

It had allowed progressive movements to harness new platforms to mobilise support and sway opinion, while the Liberals used [social media] as a tool to try and win elections, in a reactive fashion, without really dealing with the strategic dimension.

The major public issues being enculturated by social media are finding no policy solutions in the Liberal Party, he wrote.

Presciently, another problem foreshadowed in the Mirabella document before Zali Stegall or Monique Ryan became national figures was the threat of independents.

This process has been happening for a while, Mirabella says. His wife, Sophie Mirabella, lost to the mother of the community independents movement, Cathy McGowan, in 2013.

The Mirabella family in 2016.Credit:Meredith OShea

Elections are largely publicly funded in Victoria. And with a strong flow of funds from the Cormack Foundation, a Liberal-affiliated investment company permitted to transfer cash to the party, it means its problems centre around personnel rather than money.

Victorias last Liberal premier, Denis Napthine, who spent 27 years in Parliament, believes Australians are unfairly discouraged and abused for supporting major parties. These days you wouldnt dare say you were a member of a political party, he said, adding that, as a consequence, the partys membership base has been narrowed, making it more difficult to represent its diverse voter base.

Part of the advantage the teals had was being able to choose the most impressive people from the community to become candidates. Conversely, major parties are picking from a shrinking pool of party members, where factional skulduggery is rewarded ahead of experience and achievement outside politics.

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As a solution, Napthine believes the Liberal Partys administrative committee should consider supplementing preselections with high achievers in circumstances where there is a narrow field. In recent weeks the party has picked three religious conservatives to top Victorian Liberal Party upper house tickets.

Unless there is 200 to 500 members selected, it becomes too easy for narrow interest groups and factions to pick candidates that are less effective at representing broad interests, he says.

Mirabella explains that many membership-based organisations, such as Rotary clubs and even the Labor Party, are struggling for members in the digital age. Movements that still attract followers tend to be focussed on climate and social justice. The Greens and Labor at least have the support of environmental groups and unions respectively, while the Liberal Party does not. According to Mirabella, it therefore needs to be malleable and find new causes to attract members and voters.

We are the everyman party, he says. The Liberal brand isnt travelling very well because it isnt clear what we are selling.

Mirabella grasps the talent problem and says all parties are struggling to lure talented people with life experience to run. The incoming president wants more women in parliament and thinks the party must assess options that make it more likely a woman would be preselected.

Matthew Guy with his supporters when he took the leadership of the Liberal Party last September.Credit:Justin McManus

Internally, some senior Liberal MPs and officials who have long opposed quotas as a way of boosting female representation are now open to new ways to manipulate the preselection process to improve the chances of women winning.

We have driven women out of the party and we need to do something drastic to fix it, one former Liberal MP said.

A senior party source who spoke anonymously to discuss internal party matters describes the Liberal Partys lack of talent at a state level as a human resources problem borne of perennial opposition.

Being in opposition between 1999 and 2010 meant the party was not attracting top-level staffers and MPs. At the same time, junior MPs and staffers including Daniel Andrews and Tim Pallas went on to be key players in the Andrews government. The period of opposition since 2014 has only compounded the problem.

For years, the source said, standout young Liberals chose to become staffers in Canberra and then took up jobs in the corporate sector. When he was opposition leader, Michael OBrien hoped gun advisers would come back to Spring Street should the Morrison government lose. This migration never occurred.

We havent had transformational leadership since the Kennett cabinet. Our leaders and frontbenchers are not people who resonate with Victorians, one Victorian MP said.

The Victorian Liberal Party is something regarded as not to be touched with a 10-foot barge pole. Also, Labor people tend to be more interested in social policy rather than national security or economics, so state politics is a more natural home for them.

Tim Wilson, a self-styled modern Liberal who lost the Brighton-based seat of Goldstein to teal independent and former journalist Zoe Daniel, argues Australian Liberals are confronting the same deep-seated quandaries as counterparts in New Zealand, Britain and other comparable nations.

Centre-right parties, he explains, spent much of the last century acting as a counterbalance to authoritarianism and communism. This instinct spurred last centurys centre-right parties, and the market-driven Hawke-Keating government, to pursue free market reforms. But the mission has failed to shift in response to the problems of contemporary politics, Wilson argues, leaving the Liberal Party fighting yesterdays battle and unable to find the field for todays.

Liberal Tim Wilson conceding defeat to Zoe Daniel in May.Credit:Penny Stephens

The partys attachment to the aspirational class of voters is almost hackneyed, but Wilson says the modern Liberal party has forgotten who fits into this group.

We are the party of aspiration, but that means your policy has to be geared toward those aspiring young people, new Australians are aspiring not just older Australians that are after security, he says. Instead we are putting forward policies that entrench power.

Menzies was talking about forgotten people, not forgotten ideas.

Wilson, whose book The New Social Contract outlines his ideas for the future foundations of the Liberal Party, says conservatives need to embrace policies that decentralise power and give people control over their financial and familial security. He cites the proposal to allow people to use superannuation to buy a house an idea he championed that was eventually pledged by Morrison during the election campaign.

Conservative writer and commentator Gray Connolly agrees. The biggest problem facing centre-right parties is that younger voters, and those not yet of voting age, hold conservatives responsible for the absolutely dismal sense that they will never own a home, delaying their path to family life and financial security.

The barrister says too many Coalition MPs are attached to Reagan-era and Thatcherite economic policies.

You cant hope to get anywhere until you break the boomer death grip, he says. No one on the right gives the impression to people under 50 that they actually care about improving their circumstances.

Another former senior federal MP, who didnt wish to be named, said the party had failed to explain its philosophy to an entire generation of voters who view the Liberals as simply social conservatives and not championing classic liberal ideas such as free enterprise, individual freedoms, freedom of speech and smaller government.

The teal independents ravaged the Liberal Party in their most traditional seats.Credit:Joe Armao

The so-called teal candidates, who ended the career of Josh Frydenberg and other Liberals, pitched themselves as fiscally responsible, socially liberal professionals the very people the Liberal Party used to attract. While there are Liberals who question whether some teals truly held these values, it is clear it must win back these voters if it is ever to regain its old seats.

While some Liberals, including outgoing Kew MP Tim Smith, have called on the Liberal Party to abandon inner-city voters, describing them as loud, entitled and privileged, Napthine argues that Victoria often considered the most progressive state needs to represent these people.

Napthine, who has never called himself a conservative, believes that the Victorian branch has always been a broader church [than] other jurisdictions.

Guy agrees, refusing to concede state seats such as Kew, Caulfield and Brighton to teals. Where we hold seats, I expect to hold all of those and go forward, thats our aim, thats our goal, he said on Friday.

With fewer than 100 days until the state election, polls indicate the Coalition is currently facing its third consecutive election loss against the backdrop of rampant factionalism, low membership and a damaged brand. Sources across the party say infighting leads to poor decision-making and generates a toxic atmosphere that turns talented people away.

Connolly calls for US-style open preselection contests, where anyone can run to be a Liberal Party candidate and locals who are not members of the party get a vote.

Instead it is hush-hush and you end up with a quite incestuous and strange party room and the political ranks dont really represent the base of your party, he says.

Mirabella is a pragmatic farmer who doesnt spend Friday afternoons in the Melbourne or Australian clubs, where many members of Victorias Liberal elite mingle. He thinks he can build bridges and rebuild trust within a branch that, for the best part of this century, has been characterised by rolling factional warfare.

If we spent as much time campaigning and fighting our opponents as we do fighting each other, wed be doing a lot better, Mirabella says.

Matthew Guy at the 100 Days to Change the Government State Campaign Lunch on Friday.Credit:Eddie Jim

Off the back of a disastrous fortnight which saw Guy lose his chief of staff to a donor scandal, the Coalition has had its best week in months thanks to a policy announcement: a promise to shelve the Suburban Rail Loop, which the independent budget office revealed would probably cost far more than anticipated.

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Instead, Guy wants to invest the money in the states overburdened health system. Labor, which has lost grip on its narrative around the mega project and the health system looked rattled.

The opposition has flirted with scrapping or amending the project since before the last election, party sources said. These same sources said Guy who has rebranded as Matt and his new chief of staff, Nick McGowan, reached for the rail loop policy to get the opposition out of the rut caused by a donor saga revealed in this newspaper.

But with the Coalition needing 18 seats to govern in its own right, few Liberal MPs deny the grim state of the broader party and the monumental task Guy faces to win.

Guy declared health will be the key issue of the campaign, but he will also deliver new policies on cost of living, which pollsters in both parties believe to be voters top priority with interest rates rising and real wages falling. To turn these concerns into seats, Guy probably needs to win them in the western and outer south-eastern suburbs, where his party has little presence or history.

In inner-eastern Malvern, the Liberal Partys state branch has about 500 members. In the western suburb of Werribee, it has about 60. The average age of members is in the 60s. Thats a measure of the challenge that confronts it.

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Link:
The prescient Victorian document that foretold the Liberal Partys crisis - The Age