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It is pretty human to crave the approval of peers and to hope for more of the same, even if unconsciously.

But for political parties selling themselves as unifying forces of the middle, broad-based and representative, this way lies atrophy. And death.

Courting the applause of extreme media voices is a formula for narrowing a partys electoral reach.

Yet this is where the Liberal Party of Australia has journeyed over its nine years in office. First under Tony Abbotts ideological zealotry and then through various squalls and culture wars since.

After unsuccessful attempts to address climate policy by Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg the latter being the standout casualty of the 2022 reckoning the preference for clever politics over policy solutions has drawn the Liberal Party further from the great Australian middle, and towards gratifying the sharper grievances of religious conservatives and the electoral gains from suburban outsider resentment.

Throwing out euphemisms like the quiet Australians to camouflage his real project of demonising elites, Scott Morrison told a mining conference a year ago Were not going to achieve net-zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.

It turns out this was a thumb in the eye to his own partys greatest asset, its rusted-on intergenerational base of cashed-up professionals in its heartland. In the year since, this support base has been not just ignored, but insulted.

Depicted as mere dupes for even considering candidates wanting swifter action on climate change, corruption, and gender equality, life-long Liberals rebelled, voting with their well-heeled feet.

On May 21 2022, Morrisons divisive strategy backfired spectacularly.

His personal appointment of the anti-trans Katherine Deves in Warringah (a once Liberal seat with the second highest pro-marriage equality vote in NSW in 2017) did not turn the election nationally, but its symbolism mattered.

It said everything about the slice of Australia to which Morrisons Liberal-Nationals government had become in thrall.

Dog whistling Devess harmful views to the marginal outer-suburbs where Morrison thought they might just resonate, was a moral low point in major party politics in Australia. But it was also an undiluted electoral disaster.

So how does the party of Menzies forgotten people and John Howards broad church read the result, and then re-tool for recovery?

That task is made far more difficult because so many of the partys leading lights have been washed away in Morrisons great electoral bungle. The most important loss is the aforementioned Frydenberg (it seems) because the erstwhile treasurer and deputy leader represented the articulate urbane centre-ground. Clearly the most gifted and saleable Liberal in the parliament, he was the heir apparent.

His absence highlights that even the early logistical decisions will set the course. Among the few remaining moderates, Simon Birmingham told Insiders on Sunday, who they choose to be leader will set the tone of the opposition, but influence its policy also.

Therefore, it matters. Assuming Frydenberg does not scrape through on a favourable postal vote surge, Peter Dutton is the both the most likely leader, and the most conservative.

His selection would inevitably take the Liberal Party further from its disillusioned traditional blue-ribbon supporters - certainly in Victoria but elsewhere also.

Voters who walked in 2022, would keep walking.

Here, the basic maths are crucial. It is hard to imagine the Coalition even getting to 76 seats in future without recovering some or all of the teal seats.

Read more: A narrow Labor win and a 'teal bath': all the facts and figures on the 2022 election

Yet history shows that good independents consolidate their wins, suggesting these seats would be very hard to recover at any time, let alone when policy and personnel options are this limited.

Besides, finding genuinely local, top-shelf female candidates who are both capable and willing to take on a Zoe Daniel or a Monique Ryan and who are prepared to campaign over almost a whole term, will be a supremely difficult task.

Making that commitment for a party with two more average conservative men running it (names like Angus Taylor and Dan Tehan have been mentioned) is even more difficult to picture. And if one of them is Peter Dutton, probably impossible.

This explains why Liberals are casting about for a woman to take one of the two leadership posts, probably that of deputy. Karen Andrews and Sussan Ley have been floated.

Surveying the carnage, Birmingham observed that the wellsprings of the weekend rout began a long time ago with the needlessly drawn-out marriage equality vote, (a full-blown culture war) and the rejection of the National Energy Guarantee championed by Frydenberg and Turnbull.Both political storms had registered negatively with soft Liberals in the heartland seats, leaving many distinctly unimpressed.

Yet as the beleaguered party considers its options, entreaties to double-down on the very things that alienated it from its base are already being aired. The logic can be well hidden.

A hardliner from South Australia, Senator Alex Antic, told Sky News on Sunday,

>The Liberal Partys experiment with the poison of leftism and progressivism must be over.

Other prominent conservatives on the network suggested Liberals who had become pale imitations of Labor were the ones defeated, whereas hardliners who stood up against climate policy and who oppose a First Nations Voice to Parliament, had been successful.

These were their takes after the most significant shift to the left by mainstream voters in memory.

They highlight the influence of ideology and what looms as a wrestle for the centre-right soul that lay ahead.

Sensible Liberals meanwhile, have some big decisions to make.

They could listen to the extremist voices in partisan media, remembering of course its what got them to here. Or they could be more self-critical.

In a democracy, its never a terrible idea to listen to what the voters have just told you. Their message wasnt hidden at all.

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Morrison's 'great electoral bungle' leaves the Liberals decimated and heading in the wrong direction - The Conversation Indonesia

In the autumn of 2021, simmering rage over issues of womens safety and respect in the workplace, triggered by Brittany Higgins allegations, galvanised into the March4Justice rallies. Tens of thousands of women young and old and their male, trans and non-binary allies, came together to declare enough was enough.

One of the features of the mass demonstrations was the array of pithy homemade placards, held aloft to create a sea of verbal dissent, a cardboard homage to the finely crafted banners of the early 20th-century suffragette rallies. My favourite placard, held by a grey-haired woman in a purple T-shirt, declared My arm is tired from holding up this sign since the 70s.

But the most common sign was a take (down) on the infuriating adage boys will be boys, now updated and edited to read boys will be held accountable.

Last night, Australia showed us what happens when the boys in power are held accountable.

The 2022 federal election has delivered a demonstrable, undeniable reckoning of the gendered balance of power in this country. The pattern is clear: a Morrison government that stubbornly refused to listen to women was punished by the electoral death of their, if not firstborn, then at least favourite, sons.

Some have wondered even lamented that the orchestrated fury of the March4Justice rallies rapidly dissipated. But its now clear that the women of Australia were following another adage, the feminist exhortation: dont get angry, get organised.

Make no mistake: what happened last night was not an aberration.

If Australias history wasnt so conveniently parsed and packaged to exclusively showcase the achievements of white men, we might have seen it coming.

Weve been here before.

In 1902, Australia became the first country in the world where white women could both vote and stand for parliament. With the passage of the Franchise Act, 800,000 new voters were instantly added to the electoral rolls.

As one American journalist at the time put it, the world fairly stood aghast, breathlessly waiting to see what effect this paradigm-shifting political experiment in representative democracy would create.

The answer came in 1910. The Womens Federal Political Association (WFPA), led by Vida Goldstein, Australias most influential and internationally recognised suffrage campaigner, had been assiduously educating female voters in the exercise of their new citizenship rights. Goldstein had become the first woman to stand for election to a national parliament in 1903. She ran as an independent because she fundamentally repudiated party politics, believing it encouraged mediocrity and inspired corruption.

But Goldsteins aim was always collective, not personal. I believe it is the duty of woman to take her share in the work to protect her interests, Goldstein said in her first campaign speech in 1903, and that she should take the deepest interest in political matters.

By 1910, the WFPAs service-oriented, educational efforts paid off.

As even a cursory glance at Wikipedia will tell you, the 1910 election heralded several major political milestones.

It was Australias first elected federal majority government as well as Australias first elected Senate majority.

The first time that a prime minister, in this case Alfred Deakin, was voted out in an election.

And perhaps most significantly, the worlds first Labor party majority government at a national level.

What youll have to dig a little deeper into the archives to discover is that when Andrew Fisher became Australias fifth prime minister, it was widely acknowledged that he and his party owed their victory to women. At a time before compulsory voting, female voters vastly outnumbered male voters. Crucially, the Labor party, mindful of the nations new constituency, campaigned on three discreet female virtues: moderation, respectability and competence.

Challenging the boys own bravado of politics-as-usual was rewarded at the ballot box.

But it was not only womens votes that mattered. Just as critically, it was their organising abilities that attracted the attention of political pundits. Deakin himself conceded that the Labor leagues had worked hard to enrol female voters and that it was mostly women who worked as the recruiters. Their women pass from house to house, Deakin noted, enlisting those of their own sex an army of unpaid volunteers, discipline, unity and the complete efficiency of its machine.

Writing (under a pseudonym) in the London Morning Post, Deakin announced it is a new era in politics without precedent for its methods.

Those methods door to door, kitchen table conversations, local fundraising networks, word of mouth became key to political campaigning.

And the progressive side of politics was not the only beneficiary of womens enfranchisement and political education. The Australian Womens National League, a conservative organisation established in 1904 to buttress the monarchy and empire in the antipodes, fight socialism and educate women in politics, quickly became largest womens association in the country. Its now widely acknowledged that the financial and organisational support of the AWNL was critical to the formation of the Australian Liberal party in 1944.

But what the 2022 election demonstrates is that, today, both major parties have failed in offering policies and leadership on issues that clearly matter to the most women: climate action, integrity and gender equality.

Many will rightly conclude that the results of the 2022 election represent a rejection of the way that parliamentary politics is currently conducted in this country: centralised, stage-managed, aggressively partisan.

But this is not new. The teal wave of centrist independents, backed by the grassroots, community-fuelled Voices of movement, represent the historic power of womens systematically coordinated, organised, laser-focused anger. Not placards. Not street protest but realpolitik.

Turns out there was nothing fake about the sensible white-collar women challenging so-called moderate Liberals in affluent electorates. (Another sexist tactic to undermine the credibility of professional women, suggesting they are merely puppets of wealthy men pulling their naive, impressionable strings.) The fact that Zoe Daniel dedicated her win in Goldstein to the woman the seat was named after is an indication that her moral compass had a clear true north. Today I take her rightful place, Daniel announced.

Daniel will be joined in that place a seat at the table, a voice in parliament by a record number of female MPs. Not only that, but perhaps more importantly, the winning candidates independent and Greens, House and Senate have committed to action on womens safety, domestic violence prevention, pay equity, universal childcare and other measures which will appreciably benefit the lives of all women.

The results of this election also prove, if empirical proof was needed, that enough men will use the power of their own electoral privilege to vote for female candidates and the issues and values they represent, recognising that good governance is gender neutral.

In her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Womens Anger, the American political commentator Rebecca Traister notes that the righteous fury of the unrepresented has always been feared, and therefore brutally suppressed, at the point of bayonet, yes, but more insidiously by the gaslighting of history. The confidence trick comes when we begin to hear one another and understand that we [are] not as isolated in our rage as we had been led to believe.

Women have always been the sleeping giant of Australian politics. I suspect the leviathan potency of womens electoral rage will never again be underestimated.

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History tells us women can turn elections: the Liberals should have listened - The Guardian

As David Pocock looks setto oustZed Seselja and become the first ACTsenator from a minor party, former Liberal chief minister Kate Carnell says her party has many lessons to learn.

Mr Pocock, the independentcandidate and former Wallabies captain, is on the verge of unseating Liberal senator Zed Seselja after securing a strong vote in the federal election.

He said had been"overwhelmed" bythe amount of support for his campaign.

"We tried to keep it positive,"he said.

"Trying to make it about people and I think that really drew 2,200 people in Canberra to volunteer and I was blown away by the support."

Mr Pocock said the increased support for independents across the country showedthe public wantedmore from its representatives.

"It's a clear message that people want politics done differently," he said.

"Communities have realised that they can actually have someone standing up for them that doesn't have to toe a party line."

In a statement on social media, Senator Seselja congratulated Labor federally and said he was proud of his teams campaign.

However, he stopped short of conceding his seat.

At this stage, it is too early to determine a result for the second ACT Senate seat," hesaid on Facebook.

"Much of the vote is yet to be counted, including significant numbers of pre-poll and postal ballots, which traditionally provide a boost to the Liberal count."

Follow all the post-election action as vote counting continues

While the count shows SenatorSeselja is currently ahead of Mr Pocock, mostminor parties urged their supporters to preference Mr Pocock over Senator Seselja, making the prospect of a Liberal victory highly unlikely.

Pre-poll and postal votes are being counted today, with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) still focusing on first preferences.

"If it stays really tight on first preferences, we might have to go all the way in this Senate contest, which will be some weeks," AEC spokespersonEvan Ekin-Smyth said.

Labor's Katy Gallagher has already secured the first ACT Senate seat, and all three lower house seats within the territory remain in the hands of Labor.

The ACT government has also been led by Labor for two decades, so the Liberals losing theirACT voice in the Senate will shift the balance of power significantly.

Former chief minister Kate Carnell said the situation was not good for democracy, but said Canberrans had been clear that Senator Seselja was not the right man for the job.

"What I've seen is Zed lose the small 'l'Liberals,"Ms Carnell said.

"Canberra is a centre to the centre-left electorate,it always has been, and the positions Zed has taken on a range of issues have really been conservative-right."

The Liberals polled so poorly in the ACT's lower-house seats, that the AEC is even recounting the seat of Canberra on a two-party preferred basis between the Greens and Labor.

Ms Carnell said the Liberal Party needed to change its image in Canberra.

The thing the Liberal Party needs to do is realise they have got to support women, she said.

[ACT Opposition Leader] Elizabeth Lee is doing a great job in the Legislative Assembly but we have got to get more women into winnable positions.

Ms Carnell also said it was essential for whoever ranin the ACTto represent the values of Canberrans.

We, as Liberals, have got a lot of soul-searching to do to see how we can better represent the people of Canberra, she said.

Mr Pocock has vowed to hit the ground running in the Senate, saying one of his first acts would be to introduce a private senators bill to overturn the federal ban on the ACT introducing or debating voluntary assisted dying.

"It makes no sense that in 2022 we don't have the same rights as states to actually debate and legislate on issues that affect us,"he said.

Ms Carnell agrees, saying Senator Seselja lost Canberrans'support for not backing territory rights, saying it was "at odds with representing the ACT".

"With regard to assisted dying, which the majority of Canberrans have supported for a really long time, Zed just wasn't supporting the view of Canberrans,"she said.

Despite Labors Senate vote falling, Katy Gallaghers position in the upper house is secure.

Senator Gallagher will also form a key part of Anthony Albaneses cabinet and she will be sworn in alongside Mr Albanese later today.

She said the Liberals had paid for not representing Canberrans.

Canberrans will vote for the people who represent them on issues like territory rights, climate, integrity, anti-corruption, she said.

That is reflected in the vote.

Senator Gallagher said the ACT would be in a better position to be represented with Mr Pocock in the second ACT Senate seat.

During the campaign, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr urged Canberrans to putMr Pocock as their second preference after Labor ahead of the Greens.

"The tide is turning with every state and territory now being able to debate its matters around euthanasia and past laws,"Senator Gallagher said.

"I think the rest of the country is also wondering why the territories are not allowed to do that."

Re-electedMember for FennerAndrew Leighbelieves the new Labor government will be able to move swiftly to restore territory rights.

Dr Leigh said he would like to be one to introduce the bill that would repeal the 1997 Andrews Bill.

"I hope that it will be backed by opponents and supporters of euthanasia, that we can see this fundamentally as a territory rights issue," he said.

"That people in the federal parliament will say, 'well, let's leave it to the legislators of the territories to figure it out, whatever my personal views on voluntary assisted dying'."

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Posted21h ago21 hours agoSun 22 May 2022 at 10:45pm, updated15h ago15 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 5:28am

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Liberals in the ACT 'have a lot of soul-searching to do' as David Pocock looks likely to secure Senate seat - ABC News

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

A New York Magazine piece argued Friday its a good thing the Disinformation Governance Board is on "pause" because otherwise it would have let liberals continue to "lie to themselves," avoid "the agony of self-reflection" and only "exacerbate the populist revolt."

Author Sam Adler-Bell began his article with some skepticism towards the Washington Posts recent assessment that a coordinated attack shut down the board in which "far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites."

Adler-Bell wasnt so given to this dramatic reading of the situation, rather, he claimed it was a typical "activist endeavor."

"The rights campaign against the Disinformation Board resembled any other successful advocacy effort to halt a government initiative," he wrote, adding, "when it comes to political messaging in our polarized age, par for the course."

WAPO'S TAYLOR LORENZ RUNS COVER FOR 'VICTIM' NINA JANKOWICZ WHILE REPORTING DHS PUT PAUSE ON DISINFO BOARD

DHS put a pause on the Disinformation Governance Board less than a month after its start. (iStock)

Having inoculated his readers from the thought that what the right did wasnt a horrific propaganda campaign warranting arrest and punishment (former Disinfo Board executive director Nina Jankowicz claimed that conservative attacks on the board threatened "national security"), Adler-Bell then dinged liberals for their efforts to stop "disinformation" altogether.

The author admitted he sees the importance of "smart people" looking at how "the architecture of social media facilitates and incentivizes witch hunts and the dissemination of hateful, dishonest content," but clarified, "I dont think it requires any great leap of conspiratorial thinking to find fault with a disinformation board under the aegis of the DHS."

"Government officials whoever resides in the White House are professional liars," he declared, adding, "They lie haughtily in the interest of national security, sheepishly in the interest of saving face, and passionately when their jobs are on the line."

Adler-Bell also wondered, "Would Jankowiczs office have been empowered to counter disinformation coming from her own department? Or only from those criticizing it?"

Nina Jankowicz, former head of the Disinformation Governance Board (Arkadiusz Wargua/iStock)

NINA JANKOWICZ COMPLAINS DISINFO BOARD UNDONE BY DISINFORMATION, CHILDISH ATTACKS

He admitted the fear of having a Republican administration inevitably in charge of a board like that. "And what would its remit have been under the next Republican presidency?" he asked, following that question with a statement from National Review writer, Nate Hochman.

"As one conservative writerput it, Its not clear to me that Democrats have fully reckoned with the non-negligible possibility that Donald Trump is in charge of the new Disinformation Governance Board in 2 years," he stated.

Adler-Bell continued, hitting liberals even harder: "But the other pernicious problem with liberals fixation on disinformation is that it allows them to lie tothemselves."

The author said, "Disinformation was the liberal Establishments traumatic reaction to the psychic wound of 2016. It provided an answer that evaded the question altogether, protecting them from the agony of self-reflection."

New York Magazine writer claims that now-defunct Disinfo Governance Board would have only fueled the populist right.

Essentially, it made it so that liberals didnt have to address real issues. The game of disinformation was about characterizing the Trump-voting part of the country as having "beenduped, brainwashed by nefarious forces both foreign and domestic. And if only the best minds, the most credentialed experts, could be given new authority to regulate the flow of fake news, the scales would fall from the eyes of the people."

Adler-Bell illustrated the phenomenon, "Like other pathological reactions to trauma, the disinformation neurosis tended to re-create the conditions that produced the affliction in the first place."

"By doubling down on elite technocracy and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility," he wrote.

Former President Barack Obama spoke at a disinformation conference in April. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

The author then slammed a recent liberal disinformation conference headlined by Barack Obama at the University of Chicago: "[G]athering the leading lights of liberalism to an auditorium at the University of Chicago so that they together can decide which information is true and safe to be consumed by the rabble outside strikes me as a hollow exercise in self-soothing," Adler-Bell opined.

He claimed it was "more likely to aggravate the symptoms of our legitimacy crisis (distrust and cynicism) than resolve any of its impasses."

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Adler-Bell cited Harpers Magazine author Joe Bernstein, writing, "the new class of disinformation experts, however well intentioned, dont have special access to the fabric of reality."

He concluded his piece, claiming, "If faith in our institutions is to be restored, I dont think it will be accomplished by stigmatizing doubt or obstructing the dissemination of falsehood."

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NY Mag: Disinformation a fantasy that lets liberals lie to themselves, avoid agony of self-reflection - Fox News

After a 2017 state election bloodbath which toppled Colin Barnett's long-term government, WA Liberals consoled themselves with the message that things could not get any worse.

How wrong they were.

In the five years since, things have continued to get substantially worse for WA's once-dominant political force.

At a state level, the Liberals barely exist.

They held on to just two lower house seats in the 2021 election wipe-out, forcing them tohand leadership of the Opposition to the Nationals.

Like in 2017, Liberals thought that result 14 months ago was as bad as things could get for them.

And they were wrong again.

Follow all the post-election action as vote counting continues

The scale of the Liberal losses in WA's federal seats may not be quite as extreme as that state result, but blue-ribbon territory has once again fallen all over Perth.

And instead of battling irrelevance at just the state level, WA Liberals now face exactly the same fate federally.

Once again, the WA electorate has sent a loud and clear message to the Liberals.

And once again, voters will be watching closely to see how the party responds.

Liberal strategists always knew some WA losses were possible, given the popularity of Mark McGowan, apparent voter resentment towards Scott Morrison and the Coalition's support for Clive Palmer's High Court border challenge.

But as the campaign wore on, WA Liberals expressed optimism the damage might not be as bad as they once feared.

Going into election night, they knew Swan and Pearce were deeply vulnerable and they had a serious fight on their hands from 'teal' independent Kate Chaney in Curtin.

But strategists were expressing hope, bordering on confidence, that Ken Wyatt would hold on in Hasluck and the Curtin challenge would be overcome.

In the end, the losses in those two seats were not even the most surprising results.

Tangney, which has only been won by Liberals since 1984, fell to Labor by anot-insignificant margin.

And even more shockingly, the Liberals are no certainties to hold on in Moore a seat thought of as so safe that neither party really spent any real time even thinking about it going into polling day.

Liberal Ian Goodenough is ahead there, but not by anywhere near enough to feel close to comfortable.

In Pearce, Swan and Hasluck, the results were not even close.

The Liberals barely even got 40 per cent of the two-party preferredin Pearce and Swan

And while things were substantially closer in Curtin, that was not enough to prevent what should be the bluest of domains falling out of Liberal hands.

The upshot is that the Liberals were thrashed right across Perth, even in territory they once felt comfortable in.

And the losses were across the board too, from ritzy Curtin to outer suburban battlegrounds such as Pearce and Hasluck the swings against the Liberals in many seats were in the double digits.

For the WA federal Liberals who remain, the coming days and weeks will bring heavy soul searching as they try to begin rebuilding a shattered party.

But there will also be extremely tough questions facing state Liberals.

More than a year since their WA electoral annihilation, can they say things have actually improved, as they look ahead to the next WA election now less than three years away?

Questions about how long David Honey should remain as WA leader may well become more pressing for state MPs nervous about what they saw on the weekend.

The WA Liberal team hoped McGowan's popularity had taken a hit from the dire situation facing the state's hospitals and how he handled reopening interstate and international borders.

But whether that is true or not and the evidence of Saturday night's result certainly makes it seem dubious, at the very least is now almost a side issue for conservatives, because WA voters have again made their views about the Liberals painfully clear.

In the space of five years, the WA electorate hasdelivered three incredibly emphatic rejections of Liberals in the state.

Now the clock is ticking to turn things aroundbefore voters are left to contemplate if they should repeat the trick next time they go to the polls.

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Posted23h ago23 hours agoSun 22 May 2022 at 9:07pm, updated19h ago19 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 1:20am

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How will the WA Liberals rebuild after three emphatic election victories for Labor? - ABC News