Leaked election review slates Dutton while highlighting Liberals’ longer term intractable problems

In an example of short-term thinking, the Liberal Party’s federal executive decided on Friday to bury its election review. But it was unable to cremate it.

On Tuesday the review was referred to at the Liberal parliamentary party’s regular meeting. No one called for its formal publication. There was no need. By then, it had been widely leaked. Later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tabled it in parliament.

Before Christmas former leader Peter Dutton had a hissy fit about the assessment of him in the review, done by former federal minister Nick Minchin and former New South Wales minister Pru Goward. That led to some changes. The leaked version is the original version.

The picture that emerges is of an autocrat who distrusted and shut out others from their proper roles before and during the election, but who then could not deliver results.

The first of the review’s recommendations is blunt: “The Party must never again allow the Parliamentary Leader and Office to effectively run the campaign.

"The Federal Director [of the party] is the Campaign Director and must have overall responsibility for the conduct of the campaign.

"Just as you should never be your own barrister in a court of law, the Parliamentary Leader must never be his own campaign director.”

In its critique of the relationship between Dutton and party director Andrew Hirst, with its mutual complaints, the review says: “The Leader and his Chief of Staff had little trust in the Federal Director/Federal Secretariat, a breakdown which evolved over the parliamentary term, but was not effectively communicated to the Federal Director or the Federal President.

"The Federal Director irregularly attended shadow cabinet meetings, unlike past practice, and briefed the Party Room seven times during the term. Face to face meetings with the Leader were also infrequent,” the review says.

“The Federal Director observed that the Leader’s chief of staff would seek to direct campaign decision making for which he did not have responsibility.”

“The Leader’s office observed that the Party’s campaign team, headed by the Federal Director, had in the six years of Anthony Albanese’s leadership failed to develop an effective negative of Albanese.”

Although the reviewers do not reference it, the dramatic breakdown brings to mind the 1996 split between prime minister Paul Keating and Labor national secretary Gary Gray. In the 1996 campaign, Gray dubbed Keating “Captain Wacky”.

The review presents extremely depressing reading for the Liberals, not just because it finds so many faults with the party’s preparation and performance last term and in the campaign that it will be near impossible to fix them all by 2028. Even more serious, it points to underlying demographic trends working against the Liberals that have become ingrained.

“The 2025 Federal Liberal campaign failure is widely considered to be the worst campaign the Party has ever fought,” the review says.

“It was the result of an extraordinary combination of internal errors by the Parliamentary Party and the Party’s organisation, compounded by several adverse external factors,” including an interest rate cut and the flood-induced delay of the election.

Another external factor, Donald Trump’s election as US president, “soon became problematic for the Opposition Leader”, as Labor successfully identified Dutton with Trump.

The review points out: “Successful campaigns are based on a relatively straightforward rule - get the right message to the right people in the right place at the right time. The Liberal Party in 2025 comprehensively failed to follow that rule.

"There was no clear, effective message, either positive or negative. The campaign was disastrously misled in targeting and resourcing by its market research. This led to unfounded confidence that the Party could win the election.

"The overall strategy, determined by the Leader, was unclear.

"The campaign was fatally flawed by the Leader and his office taking over the overall conduct of the campaign, leaving the Party’s organisation responsible only for campaign mechanics.

"Furthermore, while Peter Dutton was never opposed or criticised openly by his parliamentary colleagues, there was widespread acknowledgement that he lacked appeal, especially to women, but his image was never successfully remade or addressed. Compounding this, the Opposition failed to frame the Prime Minister sufficiently negatively.”

Even if we assume next time there may be a better leader, without the strains between the leader’s office and the federal director, and other problems (such as flawed polling) are rectified, the Liberal Party will still be faced with two deeper, seemingly intractable problems. It has lost younger and middle aged voters, and it has been deserted by female voters. There are no obvious pathways for the party to get these cohorts back.

The review says: “The Liberal Party only won a majority of votes in the over 55 age group, 55.8% [two party preferred]. All other demographics were lost. This includes professional and managerial workers, sales, clerical and services workers, blue collar workers and those unemployed.

"Based on Crosby Textor’s post-election survey of voting provided to this review, while 46.8% of men voted Coalition (TPP), only 42.1% of women did so, representing a gender gap of 4.7% and worrying in a country where there are more female voters than male.

"It is also no longer the case among women that only professional women chose not to vote Liberal; women in all age and socio-economic demographics predominantly voted for non-Liberal parties.

"Crosby Textor post-election polling also found seats with a higher female to male voter ratio were less inclined to vote Liberal. This was more pronounced in outer metropolitan and inner regional seats. Redbridge polling confirmed the Crosby Textor results.”

“The female vote decline was referenced by many submissions. Some attributed it to the lack of female candidates in winnable seats and called for quotas. While the percentage of women candidates in winnable seats varied across the state divisions despite this, even in a state like NSW with a high number of female candidates, the swings were broadly comparable. Excellent female candidates failed to be elected.”

As Angus Taylor faced his first parliamentary week as leader, there is little evidence the Liberals are shaping effective pitches to these constituencies. The Taylor opposition, alarmed by One Nation, was focused on the issue of ISIS brides, likely to be well down the list of ordinary voters’ priorities.