Federal election 2025: Backlash and blame game, Liberals torn over who should fix the mess and who caused it

Liberal MPs are urging the Party not to reward the “architects” of their electoral wipeout, as the fallout and blame game continues after Saturday’s bruising defeat.

The Coalition on Tuesday remained hopeful it could retain two inner-city seats and win back two more from teal MPs, as the party room weighs up who to instill as Peter Dutton’s successor following the Liberal Party’s worst election result in its history.

Sussan Ley, Angus Taylor and Dan Tehan are the front runners.

MPs say whoever becomes leader will need to guide the Coalition through some deep soul searching and a post-election review that will need to be “extensive, brutal and honest” if they are to avoid being permanently relegated to the Opposition benches.

Some MPs say they have “no doubt” a historical political comeback in 2028 could be achieved, but others a return to Government will be impossible if they failed to learn the most immediate lesson from their defeat: that they failed to sell a convincing enough message to Middle Australia, and they didn’t work hard enough to claw back women, young people, and urban voters.

On raw numbers, the conservative Mr Taylor appears the leader apparent, but critics believe the weekend’s loss was in part because the shadow treasurer failed to take advantage of the cost-of-living crisis and develop a strong economic argument against Labor.

One source warned there was no chance of recovering electorally if the party rewarded those who were behind the defeat.

“We failed on the economic front, that’s the fundamental issue,” they said.

“We couldn’t prosecute the economic message.”

Whoever takes the helm will inherit a splintered joint party room. The Liberal brand has been decimated in the cities, and much of its stronghold now lies in the urban fringes and regions, made evident by the fact that he three vying for leadership came from outside the cities.

Two different insiders called for a total, structural rebuild of the Party. One moderate MP said the Liberal Party desperately “needs to recover its liberal ethos” if it is to recover electorally.

Simon Birmingham, the leading moderate before he quit politics last year, said the broad church model that successfully melds liberal and conservative thinking is “clearly broken”.

“The Liberal Party is not seen as remotely liberal and the brand of conservatism projected is clearly perceived as too harsh and out of touch,” he said on Monday.

There were some glimmers of hope on Tuesday, with a recount in Melbourne’s Menzies reigniting hopes Keith Wolahan could be returned to Canberra, while the teal seat of Goldstein was returned to moderate Tim Wilson.

Counting remains close in neighbouring Kooyong and in Sydney’s Bradfield, where Liberal women are in tight competition with teal competitors.

Their votes could help decide who becomes the next Liberal leader, and has moderates hopeful liberalism will remain at the table for years to come.

Former Coalition minister Christopher Pyne — whose former SA seat of Sturt became a casualty in the national red wave — said the Liberal Party must focus on winning back more of those inner-urban seats.

“Those who argue that the party should ignore inner-urban seats and pitch its message to outer suburban and regional electorates don’t need to analyse polls anymore — they got the verdict on Saturday,” he wrote in a newspaper column on Tuesday.

He lamented that the Liberal Party’s base was disappearing and warned that unless the Party learned the lesson handed to it at the weekend by voters, it risked being a permanent party of opposition.

Liberal senator Maria Kovacic said the “brutal” loss needed to be a catalyst for change and “move back to the centre”.

“We must move to the centre. We have no choice. That’s where we belong,” she said.

But Conservative Liberals like Alex Antic said the party needs to lurch further to the right, and “make the Liberal Party great again”.

Federal Liberal deputy president Fiona Scott said Saturday’s result showed the Party “does need to take a long, hard look at itself”.

She also nominated polling as part of the blame for the shock wipe-out.

“There was polling all over the place this time. Clearly our polling wasn’t right,” she said during a broadcast interview, declining to offer comment outside the studio when approached.

“If we listened more to our candidates and members, there were signals that some things could have evolved.”

In the lead-up to Saturday, Coalition MPs and even Mr Dutton were adamant that internal, seat-specific polling was telling a better picture than the national polls were, which in the end underestimated Labor’s success.

Tasmanian MP Jonno Duniam said moving forward the Party needed to “stress test any information given to us rather than relying on a singular pollster and taking it blindly and hoping that that’s the guiding light for us”.

“That’s what we did, and now we have this result. It’s not good enough, and it’s something we really have to avoid into the future,” he said.

Nationals’ senator Matt Canavan suggested the same.

“We’ve had a default position of asking pollsters and focus groups what our principle should be, rather than deeply thinking about what’s best for the Australian people,” he told The Nightly.

“It’s been a spreading virus, this focus group virus, for the past decade. Since we walked away from the Abbott agenda, there’s been a propensity to rest back in the warm embrace of pollsters, and not take up the hard fight of arguing something from first principles.”

Senator Canavan was hopeful of the future, saying he had “no doubt we can win the next election”, pointing to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s 2012 win as an example of a “remarkable political comeback”.

“We just have to be in the fight, we’ll need a bit of luck and errors from the other side,” he said.

“We need to rediscover our fighting spirit. I’d much prefer to lose after leaving everything on the field than lose like we have, where we didn’t even put up a fight.”

When the joint party room reconvenes, the Nationals will almost equal their Liberal counterparts after the junior party recorded a strong showing to win 16 seats, and stands to clinch Bendigo from Labor.

The mixed results for the two Coalition parties have raised questions about its future, especially on senate tickets.

Deputy Nationals leader Perin Davey is set to lose her senate spot, and said the Liberal’s declining vote is to blame.

“(My loss) is not based on a loss in the National Party vote, my loss will be based entirely on people not wanting to vote for the Liberals because of our agreement with the Liberals that on this cycle the Nationals position falls to the third spot on the senate ticket, which is the most at-risk spot,” she said on Tuesday.

She and fellow National Michael McCormack said the party’s strong showing around the country gave them a strong case for more seats at the shadow cabinet table, and an examination of the Coalition deal.

“That’s maybe something to look at… The Liberals have some soul searching to do, and the Nationals do too,” Mr McCormack said.

“The Liberals obviously have a lot of reviewing to do. Let’s hope that when the review is done, I hope the Liberal Party and the Coalition can get behind the leader chosen.”