BEN HARVEY: The next Liberal Prime Minister won’t be the next opposition leader

Being leader of the opposition is always the worst job in politics but especially so after the caning we saw on the weekend.

Labor’s commanding majority means whoever takes over from Peter Dutton has only the slimmest of chances of winning in 2028.

A week is a long time in politics so who knows what will happen but, short of the Albanese Cabinet being exposed as nazi pedophiles, the mathematical reality is the blue team won’t be in real contention until 2031.

That’s a full six years of eating a shit sandwich in front of the cameras and pretending it tastes good.

Andrew Hastie worked out early that there is not enough Listerine in the world to take the job and quickly ruled himself out.

It took Dan Tehan a little longer to realise opposition leaders have the life expectancies of fruit flies. He pulled out on Friday.

So that leaves Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley duking it out in the conservative Thunderdome.

It’s all very Conclave, though any smoke coming from the Liberal Party room after Tuesday’s leadership ballot might be from the smouldering ruins of coalition unity after Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s defection.

Taylor and Ley should examine the political carcasses on Wikipedia’s list of opposition leaders since federation before they go into next week’s meeting.

They would learn that the average tenure over the past 124 years has been well short of the six years they might need to do to have a shot at the Lodge.

Only four opposition leaders have held the position as long as the next Liberal leader will probably need to and history shows longevity is usually a burden.

Bill Shorten (2013-2019), Bill Hayden (1977-1983), Arthur Calwell (1960-1967) and Doc Evatt (1951-1960) all failed to get the top job.

Most of the politicians who became prime minister after winning an election as opposition leader served only a relatively short time on the non-government benches.

Anthony Albanese’s three years and Tony Abbott’s four were unusually long stints.

Gough Whitlam and Ben Chifley both served two years before moving into the Lodge.

Kevin Rudd was opposition leader for 12 months before winning in 2007, the same period as John Howard before besting Paul Keating in 1996.

Joseph Cook was the boss of the other side of the chamber for just six months before he became PM in 1913.

Bob Hawke was there for barely one month before he won in 1983 and in 1909 Alfred Deakin was opposition leader for just seven days before becoming Australia’s fourth prime minister.

Here’s the statistic that should give pause for thought to anyone thinking about putting up their hand to replace Peter Dutton.

Since 1901, only two opposition leaders who served six years or more made it to be prime minister.

They were John Curtin and Bob Menzies — and those two had bizarre and non-replicable pathways to victory.

Curtin led the opposition from 1935 until 1941, when he became prime minister without the inconvenience of having to win an election.

The governor-general at the time, the magnificently named Brigadier General Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven, appointed Curtin as prime minister after Menzies, who was the incumbent, lost the support of two independents who had been giving him the numbers to form government.

Hore-Ruthven didn’t want another wartime election so soon after the 1940 poll that installed Menzies as prime minister so gave Curtin the keys to the Lodge, where he stayed until he died in office in 1945.

When Menzies was rolled in 1941 he was leader of the United Australia Party. Two years later he reinvented himself as leader of the Liberal Party.

It was in that capacity that he served the next six years as leader of the opposition and the following 17 as prime minister.

So, there’s hope for whoever takes over from Dutton. All Ley and Taylor need to do over the weekend is grow the intellect and conviction of John Curtin and Bob Menzies.