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One reason often suggested is demography: younger voters are increasingly alienated from conservative parties. Yet, it was ever thus: the Liberal Partys past electoral success was never based on capturing the under 30s. The loss of younger voters is actually a problem common to both major parties. If you are under 25, you are as likely to vote Green as you are to vote Labor; that trend is set to continue.

Peter Dutton meets locals in his north Brisbane seat of Dickson. Paul Harris

At least as important to the Liberals current woes as demography, is geography. The Liberal Party is today less representative of metropolitan Australia than it has ever been. Add to that the proportionately larger influence within the Coalition of the National Party whose electoral base has held firm while the Liberals bled marginal seats in the cities and the opposition today is overwhelmingly a party of regional voices.

This is evident in the makeup of the Coalition leadership. Not one of the six who occupy leadership positions comes from Sydney or Melbourne. The largest city represented in the leadership group is Brisbane (Peter Duttons electorate Dickson is on Brisbanes northern outskirts). The two Senate leaders (Simon Birmingham and Michaelia Cash) come from the smaller capital cities (Adelaide and Perth respectively).

Of the other three (Liberal Deputy Sussan Ley, and the Nationals leaders David Littleproud and Perin Davey) two hail from southern NSW and one from western Queensland. Most of the other senior frontbenchers also live in regional Australia, including Angus Taylor (Goulburn), Dan Tehan (western Victoria), Barnaby Joyce (New England) and Ted OBrien (Sunshine Coast). Of the 24 members of Duttons shadow cabinet, only seven slightly more than a quarter are from Australias three largest cities.

The weighting away from the large cities is even more pronounced in the opposition party room. Of the 56 Coalition members of the House of Representatives, only 16 represent electorates in Australias eight capitals (Sydney, 7; Melbourne, 2; Brisbane, 4; Perth, 2; Adelaide, 1; Hobart, 0; Canberra, 0; Darwin, 0). The aggregate population of the capital cities is about 17.5 million more than two-thirds of Australias 26 million people. Yet the capital city electorates represented by Liberal MPs are barely more than 10 per cent of the House of Representatives. Even taking into account senators, most of whom are capital-city based, the figures do not get a lot better.

By far the largest proportion of Coalition MPs comes from Queensland: 21 of the 56. As I well know, having represented the state in the Senate for 18 years, Queensland is predominantly regional in character. It is the only mainland state where most of the population lives outside the capital city. While the politics of NSW are dominated by Sydney and the politics of Victoria are largely about Melbourne, the politics of Queensland are not, primarily, the politics of Brisbane, which is often radically at variance from the rest of the state.

Modern Brisbane is a progressive city within a conservative state. While regional Queensland is the bastion of One Nation, Brisbane elects more Green MPs than Melbourne. Only four of the 21 Queensland Coalition MPs come from Brisbane. The other 17 more than 30 per cent of all Coalition MPs are from regional Queensland, as are most of the senators.

In Queensland, the Liberal and National Parties merged in 2008 to form the LNP. In that merger, the regionally based National Party was by far the strongest element, the Brisbane-based Liberals very much a minority. The LNPs animating spirit is less Sir Robert Menzies than Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Although in Canberra, LNP MPs are allocated between the Liberal and National parties, at home they are expected to be unreservedly LNP. Dutton (who supported the merger) is proclaimed not as the next Liberal prime minister but the first LNP prime minister. If one aggregates the LNP MPs with the nine NSW and Victorian Nationals, the number of Coalition MPs who are actually members of the Liberal Party in their home state is fewer than half (26 out of 56).

The strength of regional Queensland in Coalition politics is a mixed blessing for Dutton. Obviously, it presents a mighty electoral bulwark. Yet the very strength of that bulwark steers the Coalition in directions which, while popular in the north, are often unpalatable to voters in southern capitals or in Brisbane itself. Since the Coalition has maxed out on the number of Queensland seats it can win, there is no further electoral dividend there. But the bulwark can be an impediment to reaching swing voters in the metropolitan south.

Barnaby Joyce in his seat of New England. Supplied

The politics of regional Australia are very different from the politics of metropolitan Australia. The average voter is typically older, poorer and more wary of change someone who is more likely to see reform as a threat than an opportunity. Regional Australia is less culturally diverse. Its social attitudes are less liberal. It is more dependent upon the old economy of mining and agriculture than the digital and services economy of the big cities. It often feels disempowered, and that sense of disempowerment can sometimes provoke a defensive parochialism. It represents a shrinking proportion of the population.

Although much has been written about the flight from the Liberal Party of inner-city elites in the context of teal victories in wealthy electorates such as Wentworth, North Sydney and Kooyong, the Liberal Partys deeper problem as was evident from the Aston byelection is its loss of touch with suburban Australia. That has always been the core constituency of successful Liberal governments: Menzies forgotten people, Howards battlers, Tonys tradies.

The domination of the Coalition by conservative regionalism is an important cause of its alarming disconnect from suburban, big-city dwelling, more liberal, multicultural Australia. And increasingly, the Tweed River is replacing the Murray as the key fault-line of non-Labor politics.

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Why is the Liberal Party in the doldrums? Its a question of geography - Sydney Morning Herald