It was an electoral humiliation the likes of which has rarely been seen in Australian political history.
And, of course, Peter Dutton suffered the final indignity of losing his own seat of Dickson, which he had held since 2001, to Labor.
But, as the new Liberal leader Sussan Ley surveys the charred ruins of her party and attempts to mend the fractured Coalition, she could see some small slivers of hope.
There were swings towards the Coalition in 14 seats across the country, with the largest coming in the seat of O’Connor in WA’s southern Wheatbelt where Rick Wilson experienced a 6.5 per cent swing.
Much has been made of the Coalition’s unpopular nuclear energy policy, with many commentators blaming it for their loss.
But Wilson, who prides himself ‘on being an MP that is present throughout the term’, points to his success in Collie, one of the Coalition’s seven proposed sites for the nuclear reactors, as evidence that some communities actually strongly favoured it.
In one booth in Collie he recorded a two-candidate preferred swing of over 19 per cent.
‘The electorate of O’Connor I think had a positive response to our nuclear energy proposal,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
There were swings towards the Coalition in 14 seats across the country, with the largest coming in the WA southern Wheatbelt seat of O’Connor where Rick Wilson experienced a 6.5 per cent swing
Wilson (pictured) prides himself ‘on being an MP that is present throughout the term’
‘I think the Collie people are recognising that 2029 isn’t that far away and the promises from the Labor government and their renewable energy strategy are not leading to more jobs in the Collie community.’
Wilson, 59, also pointed to the live export ban as a reason for his surge in support.
‘The majority of the sheep live exported from WA come from my electorate. The live sheep export ban will have a significant impact on the farming sector and the businesses which support it,’ he said.
‘The truck drivers, shearers and the broader community will be impacted by that incredibly poor policy and that was certainly a big concern in my electorate.’
But he remained tight-lipped on the lessons the wider Liberal party could learn from his success.
‘The Liberal party will undertake a review of the campaign, as we do after every election,’ he said.
‘We clearly have some things to work on and improve, but we will wait for the outcome of the review first.’
Someone not so tight-lipped about their success was Tim Wilson who, despite a nail-biting count, recorded a 3.3 per cent swing towards him in a state that overall went against the Liberal party.
Despite a nail-biting count, Tim WIlson (pictured with former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton) recorded a 3.3 per cent swing towards him in a state that overall went against the Liberal party
In his victory speech, he praised the ‘genuine community-connected campaign’ he ran this time around after he was ousted by Teal Zoe Daniel in 2022.
‘We very much built it from the bottom up, and I think there are a lot of lessons for a recovering Liberal party for how it wants to take on the future of the country,’ he said.
Daniel Wild, deputy executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) think tank, said that the strong performances from Andrew Hastie in Canning, Rick Wilson, and Tim Wilson were largely ‘driven by their local leadership, work ethic, and personal brand in their respective communities’.
Mr Wild took leave from the IPA to stand as a Liberal candidate in the South Australian seat of Spence where he recorded the state’s smallest swing to Labor, not counting the independent-held Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo.
He argued that the Coalition’s ‘mammoth defeat’ has brought it to an existential crossroads, where the Liberal Party ‘needs to decide if it is going to be a party which represents the inner-cities, or outer-metropolitan Australia’.
‘The two constituencies now have dramatically different lived experiences and social values, and simply cannot be represented by the one political party,’ Mr Wild said.
‘John Howard’s conceptualisation of the Liberal Party as a “broad church” worked in part because of Howard’s masterful and visionary leadership.
‘Also, because the Liberal Party used to have a set of unifying principles and beliefs, which it no longer appears to have.’
Daniel Wild, Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), said that the strong performances from Andrew Hastie (pictured with Dutton) in Canning, Rick Wilson, and Tim Wilson were largely ‘driven by their local leadership, work ethic, and personal brand in their respective communities’.
But Mr Wild said that this ‘broad church’ concept no longer held true because of the seismic demographic and social changes across Australia.
‘At both the 2022 and 2025 elections, the Liberal Party took to the electorate the policy of net zero emissions by 2050, in large part to woo well-off inner-city Teal voters,’ he added.
‘This experiment not only failed, but was catastrophic politically, because, in addition to failing to win sufficient Teal voters, it also alienated outer-suburban voters who value energy affordability over emission reductions.’
It is a point echoed by Nationals MP Colin Boyce who recorded the second-largest swing in support for any Coalition MP after Rick Wilson.
‘The whole election campaign was centred around trying to beat the Teals – out Teal the Teals – and deserting what was middle Australia, who live in suburban metropolitan (electorates),’ Boyce told the Australian Financial Review.
The central Queensland backbencher claimed that the prioritisation of inner-city concerns was pushing voters towards other right-wing parties such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots.
‘They’re all our people, and they’re just fed up with this metropolitan-centric point of view being continually jammed down their throat,’ he added.
On the NSW mid-north coast, Nationals MP Pat Conaghan had a small 0.1 per cent swing to him as he faced a second challenge from Climate 200-backed independent Caz Heise in his marginal seat of Cowper, stretching from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour.
Anthony Albanese ‘s Labor Party won 69 per cent of the two-party vote at Greenwich on the water, where voters of Chinese ancestry are higher than the national average (pictured: nearby Balmoral beach)
‘Our regions are hard-working men and women, tradies, small and medium business owners who have been hurt significantly over the past three years with the cost of living due to Labor, Green, Teal policies that have seen power prices go up by $1,300 a year, which have seen food prices go up 20 per cent, gas prices over 30 per cent,’ he told community radio station 2Way FM during the campaign.
Conaghan, who betting markets had expected to lose, said sea changers from Sydney had turned his seat marginal, with his buffer now at 2.5 per cent.
‘The people moving from the cities do not represent us – they might have an influence on the vote but they don’t represent what is truly a Nationals seat,’ he said.
‘They are the people who are the threat because they can afford to be the threat.
‘They do sell their houses for four, five, six million dollars in Sydney – come up here and buy a luxurious place for $1.5million and can afford to pay for those incredible costs that we’ve seen over the past few years.’
There are also still pockets of outer suburbia where the Liberal Party performed well – in contrast to areas where Liberal candidates used to be a shoo-in.
Sydney‘s north shore was long regarded as blue ribbon Liberal territory but polling booths in wealthy areas along the Lane Cove River overwhelmingly voted Labor – turning Bennelong into a safe Labor seat.
Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party won 69 per cent of the two-party vote at Greenwich on the water, where voters of Chinese ancestry are higher than the national average.
Liberal Party MP Melissa McIntosh (pictured at last year’s Midwinter Ball in Parliament House) kept the seat of Lindsay, holding it with 53 per cent of the two-party vote, making it one of just four electorates in Sydney to stay with the Opposition
The ethnically-diverse western suburbs of Sydney are regarded as traditional Labor Party territory.
But, just a short drive from Penrith, the Liberal Party won 75 per cent of the vote after preferences at Mulgoa, which was higher than its vote share at very rich polling booths like Cronulla (59 per cent), Dural (66 per cent) or Vaucluse (65 per cent).
In this part of western Sydney, people are much more likely to either be Australian-born or have English, Irish or Scottish heritage.
Liberal Party MP Melissa McIntosh kept the seat of Lindsay, holding it with 53 per cent of the two-party vote, making it one of just five electorates in Sydney to stay with the Opposition.
McIntosh, who held on despite a 2.9 per cent swing to Labor, has been credited with running a highly effective, ‘hyperlocal’ campaign.
But within this electorate, away from urban centres, the Liberal Party won 56 per cent of the primary vote at Mulgoa, translating into three-quarters of the vote after preferences in an area where locals live on large acreages.
Diane Beamer, a former state Labor MP for Mulgoa who used to live on a five-hectare property, said Lindsay stayed with the Liberal Party because it had a higher proportion of Anglo-Celtic voters than the national average who were also more likely to run a small business.
‘In Lindsay, its ancestry is or it describes itself as Australian, English, Irish or Scottish,’ she told this publication.
Just a short drive from Penrith, the Liberal Party won 75 per cent of the vote after preferences at Mulgoa, which was higher than its vote share at very rich polling booths like Cronulla (59 per cent), Dural (66 per cent) or Vaucluse (65 per cent)
‘It is more Anglo – if you look at the profile of the seat, it really is tradies, small business people – there’s a natural alliance there for some time.
‘I don’t see the Labor Party as connecting with the small business people of Lindsay.’
Beamer, a former state government minister who ran unsuccessfully as Labor’s Lindsay candidate in 2019, said voters in these areas were often successful people who had left working class areas of western Sydney, like Mount Druitt.
‘Why is it hard to win Lindsay? Certainly, it is more aspirational than any other place I’ve been,’ she said.
‘(People think): “I have left Mount Druitt, I have left Tregear, Bidwill – I have left those areas, I’ve got my nice house, I’ve got my business, and I don’t want you to get in the way of my life. Just get lost – I want smaller government, I want you to go away”.’
Voters living on large, rural-style acreages were also more likely to be high-income voters who were also more religiously Christian.
‘That’s what I would call rural residential – now it has 25-acre minimums,’ she said.
‘It’s where you find your oncologists and doctors from all over the place – it’s the only place where the P&C has met to discuss what kind of books are in the library, and banning books.
‘There was quite a strong Christian lobby.’
Successful people living on large blocks in places like Mulgoa, Londonderry, Berkshire Park and Orchard Hills – where the Liberal Party had 70 per cent of the two-party vote – were previously working class people who wanted lower taxes.
‘You’ve moved beyond it – “We’ve got our small business, we want a lower taxing, bigger tax break kind of government”,’ Beamer said.
