Simon Birmingham has identified a number of key failures of the Liberal Party in losing the 2022 election.Credit:James Brickwood
While moderate Liberals pointed the finger at Morrison and his key lieutenant in NSW,Alex Hawke,some pointed out that senior moderates in the cabinet,such as Birmingham and NSW Liberal Senator Marise Payne,needed to take their share of the blame.
“Morrisonism was a disaster for the city seats. It should never have been allowed to happen. It should have been stopped by senior moderates,” one moderate Liberal source told theHerald andThe Age on Sunday,requesting anonymity.
“It shows there has been an institutional weakness which has got to stop. You can’t hang it all on Morrison. It was facilitated by others. You can’t hold yourself out to be a great lionness of the moderates and then be trampled by a bulldozer.”
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Philip Citowicki,a moderate NSW Liberal figure and former Julie Bishop staffer,said the party misread or failed to give due consideration to the massive swings against Abbott and,at a state level,Tim James in Gladys Berejiklian’s old seat of Willoughby.
“The hubris of the right reigned supreme,” he told theHerald andThe Age. “Somehow they thought the Abbott swing of 18 per cent was similar to how Howard lost his seat in 2007 – that was only a 5 per cent swing.
“They should have looked to the state seat of Willoughby and how bad misreading zeitgeist can be – also an 18 per cent swing!”