If evidence was needed to show the Queensland Liberal National party was facing an identity crisis after losing last month’s state election, it arrived in the inbox of members of its governing executive committee this week.
“The president has signalled her intention to commence a broad strategic review of the party,” the email said.
Top of the list of discussion points for a state executive meeting to begin the process later this month: “Defining what the party stands for – what is our raison d’etre?”
The 2008 merger of the National and Liberal parties created a church of competing ideologies so broad, in the words of one member, “everyone sings their own hymn and the noise just sounds awful”. In the pews, agrarian socialists sit alongside free marketers. Ultraconservatives do God’s work alongside secularist “small l” liberals.
At the state election, the LNP was criticised in the north for “having a bet each way” by claiming to be pro-coal and directing preferences to the Greens ahead of Labor. In Brisbane, where the LNP holds only four seats, the party picked candidates from the religious right and champions of mining to run in progressive areas.
In the wash-up, a group of entrenched MPs in safer seats were returned to parliament. The defining feature of the cohort? They are overwhelmingly middle-aged white men.
Of the 34 LNP members elected to the next state parliament, 29 will be white men (the other five are white women). The average age of its MPs is over 50.
“If we haven’t got really good women candidates, then it’s a problem with the party, not with women,” a former MP, who asked not to be named, told Guardian Australia.
Among the issues flagged for the party’s official review, a lack of youth engagement and an ageing membership are listed as “existential threats”.
A new hope: Crisafulli chosen to bridge divide
David Crisafulli stood unopposed to become the LNP’s parliamentary leader this week.
A relatively moderate Liberal MP and a protege of former federal senator Ian Macdonald, the 41-year-old is seen by his colleagues as having the best chance to rebuild a coalition of rural, regional and city voters needed to win government.
Crisafulli was raised at Ingham in north Queensland, the son of an Italian immigrant cane farmer. He worked as a television journalist and represented the Townsville seat of Mundingburra for a term, from 2012 to 2015. He subsequently moved to the Gold Coast and has held the safe blue-ribbon seat of Broadwater since 2017.
He told the party room on Thursday he was a “conviction politician”.
“We are smaller in number, but the fire burns. This will be a strong and committed room of people.
“I’m hungry to win ... because there are a generation of Queenslanders who know no different than Labor governments.”
While many in the party are enthused by Crisafulli, several LNP MPs, former MPs and party members – including moderates and conservatives – who spoke to Guardian Australia said the party required more significant change than a leadership change.
“Crisafulli has no chance unless the back of house has a top-to-bottom cleanout and that is well on the cards,” one party member said.
The “broad strategic review” instigated by the party’s acting president, Cynthia Hardy, is unlikely to appease many angry members who blame backroom figures for repeated state losses. Their idea of reform begins with replacing current party officials, not allowing them to drive the process.
Photographs of those same figures spending election night on the luxury yacht of their supposed political rival, Clive Palmer, have created “white-hot anger” in the ranks.
It is understood a large contingent from various groupings within the LNP are pushing for a separate reform process. A state council meeting is being planned for next year, for the purpose of countering the influence group referred to as “the cabal”, including those linked to Palmer and others blamed for strategic mistakes.
Analysts had predicted a push for a demerger of the Liberal and National parties in the wake of the election loss, to allow them to better pitch to competing interests of city and regional voters. However, multiple party sources say such a move cannot be contemplated because it would leave separated parties – especially the Liberals – in a poor financial state.
Longstanding supporters of demerger, such as the federal MP for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, are not aggressively pursuing the case. Entsch told Guardian Australia his views on the matter were “still strong” but that he would leave discussion to his state colleagues.
With a demerger untenable, the LNP is seeking a way to manage a party that has become increasingly factionalised in recent years.
Moderate Liberals have increasingly felt isolated in the LNP, particularly after a series of preselection battles with a growing conservative faction of “Christian soldiers”, who have grown their influence in the party.
“The Christian right are joining because their leaders are saying ‘go and join the party’,” a former MP told Guardian Australia.
“There’s no equivalent forum for moderates to say to like-minded people they should join the party – maybe what we need is a call to arms to moderates to get involved.
“It comes in waves, this thinking that moderates should maybe just give up on the LNP. The Christian conservatives have infiltrated the party for the past few years.
“They’re driven by principles, not pragmatism.”
Warning signs on female voters
The federal Liberal party’s own thinktank, the Menzies Research Centre, has repeatedly warned the party has a problem with women. Its research says women are not joining the party, or voting for it.
“Fewer women than men have voted Liberal in four of the five [federal] elections since 2001,” the centre’s most recent gender report card says.
The process of reform – encouraging female candidates and members – is fraught in a party where conservatives are ideologically opposed to the notion of quotas or achieving equality through affirmative action.
The LNP senator Amanda Stoker, a leader of its Christian right grouping, this year criticised former state leader Deb Frecklington for “playing the gender card” when backroom figures attempted to replace her.
Susan Harris Rimmer, the director of Griffith University’s policy innovation hub, said the notion that party members were rewarded for ability and effort – not promoted on the basis of gender – exposed a more significant problem within the LNP, given the lack of female representation in parliament.
“Where’s the evidence of a strategy for diversity that’s rewarded for effort?” Harris Rimmer said.
“I see women working very hard and not getting rewarded for effort. The talent is clearly there, it’s their own culture of the party that’s the problem.”
Harris Rimmer said Crisafulli needed to “work very hard” to win back women’s votes.
“There’s nothing antithetical to gender equality in the conservative tradition. You can be a conservative who strives for gender equality, we just haven’t seen a clear pathway. It’s about finding a way to show they are committed, and it has to be authentic.”
Earlier this year, Guardian Australia highlighted the party’s problematic vetting practices for potential candidates, which have included questions to women about their sexual history, sexual orientation and family arrangements.
This week, the LNP administration at Brisbane council refused a request from a Labor councillor to attend meetings online – using technology already in place during the pandemic – after giving birth.
Those who know Crisafulli say he has built alliances with colleagues, is pragmatic and nonconfrontational, and that he was not likely to risk a backlash by instigating a backroom clearout or a significant reform process.
They say he is a good candidate to lead the LNP through an identity crisis given his appeal to various sectors of the party.
But commentators warn that the LNP’s ability to win back lost voters – particularly women and urban Liberals – will depend more on the product than the salesman. For the time being, the state opposition is a party of mostly white men, led by two white men.
“This demographic lens on policy is so important and the LNP has been missing it,” Harris Rimmer said.
“They cannot win without half the population thinking their concerns are important to them.”
