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I well recall watching, as a staffer on a small television in the office of Kevin Rudds chief of staff the result of the 2009 Liberal leadership contest being read out. The battle had been a shemozzle. There were no good options. We had thought Joe Hockey the biggest threat and most likely victor . Malcolm Turnbull was too sharply, recently damaged. Still, when Tony Abbott triumphed, we were stunned. Then we grinned. This, we thought, would be easy. History records it was the opposite.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.

Observing, at close quarters, Liberal crisis and resurgence made me sceptical about claims of a partys impending collapse. And yet, returning to Australia, I find myself becoming sceptical of my old scepticism. The weight of evidence is accumulating.

Byelections dont mean much, but the Aston result seems different. The party machine . This was the type of seat . And oppositions very, very rarely lose seats in byelections.

Duttons counter-intuitive counter-offensive was to announce his party would oppose a policy that . Duttons opposition to the Voice was probably inevitable, but had he kept this a personal decision he would not have become the protagonist of the fight. The decision to bind the frontbench turns this into a clear Dutton-Albanese battle. . It has tied the party to regressive social policy, will keep attention off the economy, while reinforcing the perception that Duttons strategy is simply to oppose things. Resolve polling now suggests voters . He may yet succeed in the referendum, but I tend to that it is a no-win proposition. A Yes vote will harm him; but a No vote will make Australians want to forget the whole affair, including Dutton.

The problem for Liberal Party optimists is that repeating itself is not the only thing that history does. Time brings change. And over the 20-odd years that both Albanese and Dutton have been in parliament, the clearest change is the gradual decline in support for the major parties. If that trend continues, one or both of our major parties will either drastically change or collapse. Neither party can afford to ignore this; but the Liberals, facing serious decline among both women and young people, far less so.

Dutton, to his credit, has been surprisingly honest about at least one dimension of the partys problems. Talking to The Australians Paul Kelly, for a long article , Dutton admitted the party had not stood for any substantive policy formulation since Tony Abbott was removed. As a result, we allowed ourselves to be defined by our opponents. This was a failure of leadership but it was not only that, and this is where Duttons honesty ends.

Both Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison found themselves trapped, unable to move for fear of repercussions from their increasingly feverish party. Journalist James Campbell : if the Liberal Party adopted policies that reflected the actual values of its members it would be smashed at the ballot box. Why should Dutton find this dilemma any simpler than his predecessors?

If the single dominant fact about politics right now is the crisis in the Liberal Party, the most important question is: what will the Albanese government do with this rare opportunity? It is unclear it will do much.

This means that the defining feature of the contest between the two parties still at an early stage, to be fair is that each is promising to be something different from what it currently appears to be. Each expects us to give it the benefit of the doubt. Dutton has done absolutely nothing to alter the Liberal Party he inherited, but promises he will.

On the other side, Anthony Albanese holds out the prospect of progressive government. As an of observers , in most areas schools, health, taxes, arguably climate this remains an article of faith rather than demonstrable fact. Now we can add to that the cold water the government last week . Perhaps this is exactly the way to make change stick by doing it slowly or perhaps this is what happens when Labors left takes power, with all the compromises that inevitably entails: who does that leave to prod the party back in the direction of its ideals?

Still, for both leaders, their implicit call for patience is probably reasonable significant change takes time. Christmas, with the Voice vote out of the way, is probably a fair time to take stock. (This will be no comfort to those trying to survive on JobSeeker.)

In 2009, Abbott took an issue which seemed both to divide the Liberals and make them seem outdated and turned it into a formidable political weapon. Fifteen years later, the damage that did to Australia is clear. At the time it seemed good, at least, for the Liberal Party; with hindsight even that much is unclear. It will be fascinating to see which elements from history recur. As was the case then but as too many at the time forgot much more is riding on this than the electoral fortunes, or even the long-term future, of a single political party that, after all, has existed for less than a century.

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The problem for the Liberal Party is that history doesnt always repeat - Sydney Morning Herald