How do you solve a problem like the Liberals? A good start would be to get the party at every level – parliamentary, organisational and, most difficult of all, the rank-and-file – to understand how much trouble it’s in. Not “Oh well, we’ve lost two in a row, Peter Dutton turned out to be an unusual unit and campaign HQ let us down. But Anthony Albanese is no good, voters will work that out, we’ll go out and listen to the community, the electoral wheel will turn, and if we hang on and hang together, things will swing our way.”

That appears to be the general response so far and it won’t cut it. The party is not just going through a phase like a surly teenager. Its predicament is dire and its future is clouded.

Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain

When the Coalition won the 2019 election, it secured 77 seats. When it lost in 2022, it dropped to 58 seats. At this election, it’s fallen to 43. That’s a total loss of 34 seats over just two elections.

There have been other sustained electoral wipe-outs over the years, most of them suffered by the Labor Party. Under Gough Whitlam in 1975 and 1977, Labor was hit by two landslide losses. Liberals of an optimistic bent point out that Labor recovered relatively quickly after 1977, winning office just two elections later in 1983. But the ALP had Bob Hawke and Paul Keating waiting in the wings as well as a highly talented front bench willing to absorb tough lessons from the Whitlam years.

If the Coalition has a budding Hawke or Keating type among its diminished........

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