AARON PATRICK: Liberal leadership contenders debate how to save their sinkhole party

The shadow ministers sharing their vision for the sinkhole that has become the federal Liberal Party over the past two days aren’t campaigning to become leader, but if colleagues happen to be impressed by their eloquence, what can you do?

Among them, Perth MP Andrew Hastie deserves a prize for the week’s best flip-the-personal-narrative appearance. Last year he quit the front bench “because the Coalition wasn’t moving hard enough on immigration”, he said, and launched a stop-the-boats-type petition under the Trump-inspired slogan: It’s time to put Australia first again.

On Monday there were no MAGA references by the opposition industry spokesman. Through the unexpected medium of ABC television, Mr Hastie responded to one of the most miserable opinion polls in Coalition history by revealing that he is, notwithstanding the fierce opposition to immigration, an unembarrassed multiculturalist.

“I grew up in inner-city Ashfield,” he told Patricia Karvelas, referring to the Sydney suburb where a minority of residents state their ancestry as “Australian”. “My father was the minister of a church where we had a Chinese, Korean, Western Samoan congregation. I lived multiculturalism in that sense, but they were all bound by one faith.”

The Ashfield Presbyterian Church is no longer under Hastie management, but the casual mention of its multilingual congregation was a subtle way for the former SAS officer to distance himself from One Nation and send a message to his party’s left that Christians such as himself can appeal to immigrant communities.

The distinction is vital, of course, because the Coalition risks losing two million voters of Chinese and Indian heritage if its tough-on-immigration policies become confused with xenophobia.

Name change?

Which adds to the challenge of the problem discussed this week by Liberal MPs, confusingly led by families spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh, who said her proposal for a Liberal Party “rebrand” was inspired by a television network, Sky News, which is changing name to News24.

It is unclear if Ms McIntosh seriously believes an unwanted but legally necessary change-of-corporate title should trigger a similar swap by the most successful political party in Australian history. But her suggestion led to colleague Tim Wilson being asked: “If Liberal is such a good word, why do only 17 per cent of Australians want to put a 1 next to it?”

Journalists can be such smart arses.

Unfortunately for the press, Mr Wilson, the most senior Liberal on the party’s left, has thought about the word a lot — perhaps too much. He provided the kind of intelligent, long and slightly poetic answer that almost every one in politics used to be surprised wasn’t delivered on a daily basis by party leader Angus Taylor, whose affable-but-less-than-thoughtful speaking style makes you wonder if Rhodes scholarship selection panels conducted verbal interviews in the 1980s.

“Because liberalism is not just an end in itself,” Mr Wilson said. “It’s an enlivening of how people can live out their best lives. It’s about the sense of aspiration that people can look to the horizon, the blue Liberal horizon of hope, with confidence about what they can build if they apply hard work paying off, people being in control of their own lives and feeling a basic sense of respect, which they aren’t getting from the Albanese Government that wants to divide Australia, just as One Nation does.”

Note the optimistic message: One Nation splits Australia; the Liberal Party offers hope.

Back in Parliament, Tuesday’s question time added to Mr Taylor’s wretched week. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who has mocked the older man for years, reminded Mr Taylor of the dramatic way in which he argued for a change of Liberal leader in February, when support for the Coalition was about five percentage points higher under the hapless Sussan Ley.

“He said it was a ‘change or die’ moment, and then he forgot to change, and so that leaves only one option,” Dr Chalmers said.

Making the day worse, Mr Taylor was accused by a Labor MP of impugning country firefighters over a 2003 bushfire in the Snowy Mountains apparently left to burn.

As every bush man knows, insulting the rural fire service is a banishable offence from a country community. Which may be why Mr Taylor’s close ally, Garth Hamilton, put up such a fight over the comment he was literally banished from the House of Representatives for 24 hours.

Comeback challenge

Is the Liberal Party dying? It is too early to tell. The patient is sick, but the doctors are working towards a recovery.

Mr Taylor and the rest of the front bench plan to spend the rest of the year developing policies that can be proposed in 2027 for the next election, which can be held as late as May 20, 2028.

The news is not all bad for the Coalition. Australians are unhappy at the state of the nation, Pauline Hanson’s “monoculture” idea may have cost her support and the economic outlook is not great. Fifty-seven per cent of people feel Australia is going in the wrong direction, according to a Roy Morgan poll out Monday. Only 25.5 per cent believe the opposite.

Still, the comeback challenge is so great that it is hard to imagine a putative rival would seek to remove Mr Taylor soon. Why not let him do all the work and step in afterwards? Avoid the temptation of forceful quips that could be turned into boomerangs.