Australian politics is shifting towards issue-based campaigning funded by small donors, leaving major parties struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing political environment.

Sometimes evolution can be quite quick, almost revolutionary. Politics is similar to biology that way.

Politicians and political parties think they are part of the political environment, but they are more like organisms within it and if it changes, they will die out if they do not respond adaptively. Only the fittest survive.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Peppered Moth was coloured like white pepper, camouflaging it against the trees in which it lived. Then the Industrial Revolution covered the trees in dark soot and birds could easily pick off the white-pepper-coloured moths. But some rare dark-coloured moths survived and multiplied. By the end of the century 98 per cent of the moths were dark.

With pollution control in the 20th century, however, the light-coloured moths got back the advantage and now nearly all are light coloured.

Political evolution is slightly different in that political moths do not have to rely on a random colour gene to survive. If they are smart they can actually change their own colour themselves to best suit the changing environment – or not.

The Liberal Party – or at least a majority of its elected members – is right now in the “or not” stage. This ground has been well-covered – failures to deal with the new communications landscape and failure to adopt policies which align with the changing views of much of the........

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