MARK RILEY: Sussan Ley must out-Albanese by weaponising his constructive, consensus-style approach

Post-election analysis can be fairly superficial stuff.

The winners are made out to be electoral gods who can luxuriate in the candescent glow of their own brilliance.

And the losers are a bunch of knuckleheads.

This may be true in some cases. It is possibly true in the present.

But there are deeper reasons people vote the way they do.

Determining exactly what they were at the Federal election and why they led to such a resounding victory for Labor is the first big challenge facing Sussan Ley as she tries to chart a course back from the political wilderness for the Liberals.

She said yesterday that the Liberal Party must “listen, change and develop a fresh approach.”

That is a good start. But she might not like what they hear.

The Coalition was short on policy. We know that. And the policy it did put forward wasn’t persuasive.

One of the least persuasive was the policy her deputy, Ted O’Brien, was principally responsible for designing: the nuclear energy plan.

But it wasn’t just policy, or a lack of it, that delivered the Coalition its electoral thumping.

It was also one of those three things Ley identified yesterday. It was the “approach.”

Peter Dutton chose the Tony Abbott method of opposition. He reflexively opposed almost everything irrespective of its merits.

The objective was crude. It was to deny the Government policy “wins” at any cost — even if that included a cost to average Australians.

It opposed tax cuts, it opposed energy rebates, it opposed funding to build houses, it opposed cuts to HECs, it opposed fee-free TAFE courses.

And then it accused Labor of not doing enough to ease the cost of living. Jim Chalmers once described this tactic as throwing sand into the machinery of government and then complaining loudly that it didn’t work.

Dutton’s approach was also deeply personal, railing against the “rotten” Government and the “weak” Prime Minister.

Albanese turned that last epithet into a positive during the campaign when he declared that “kindness is not weakness.”

It was a masterful line. It appropriated his opponent’s most destructive attack and commuted it to his advantage.

The aggro approach was effective for Abbott, but only because the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government had manifestly made itself unelectable.

Anthony Albanese’s Government wasn’t that and in all likelihood won’t be at the next election.

Mind you, in lieu of any threat from the Coalition benches, Labor has a rich history of creating its own destructive opposition from within.

The better approach for Ley would be to out-Albanese the Prime Minister — to adopt his more constructive, consensus-style approach and weaponise it against him.

As opposition leader, Albanese positioned himself as a constructive rather than destructive alternative.

He fought passionately against many of the Morrison government’s major reforms but often waved them through them to allow the greater good to be served.

He would record his principled objections and attempt unsuccessfully to amend the proposals in the Senate but ultimately vote for them with a promise to improve the measures if he became prime minister.

Albanese figured that the Australian people were sick of confrontation in politics. They were particularly sick of confrontation for confrontation’s sake.

He was right. The Coalition’s catastrophic defeat under Peter Dutton is further proof of that.

So, the challenge for Ley is to not allow herself to fall into the role of the perpetual naysayer.

She shouldn’t become the next leader of what Albanese so easily dismisses as “the Noalition.”

Ley conceded after her election as leader on Tuesday that governments are formed in the sensible centre.

The sensible centre is not inhabited by rusted-on partisans in the binary, Hatfield and McCoy style of politics.

It’s inhabited by families struggling with the cost of living who are looking for something constructive from their leaders to lighten their load.

That is not to say Ley shouldn’t press Albanese. She has a particular skill to get under the Prime Minister’s skin.

But she should use it sparingly, judiciously.

To win over the people she is first going to have to win back their attention.

And the best way to do that is through a conversation, not a screaming match.

Who knows, that might just provide the path back to the roseate glow of victory — eventually.