Channelling Farage or chasing Teals?

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Well, the apology tour must end.

The mass therapy session is over and those calling for a split in the party need to be consigned to the margins.

That's a sentiment coming from one of the Liberal Party's most senior politicians.

James Patterson is arguing that his colleagues need to reject the false choices that are being offered, whether it's a free market teal or adopting Nigel Farrar-style populism.

So was it a rallying cry to unite the party or a a warning shot for those stepping out of line?

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Brett Worthington, filling in for PK.

And I'm David Spears.

Now, Spearsy, I get ridiculed a bit for my focus on the Senate.

I like to go and watch Senate question time.

I long wondered why I'm in that room, but usually the only one sitting in the Senate press gallery.

And they notice it when you're suddenly there.

But I've got a theory that to understand power and politics you need to understand the senate there are types of people in the senate who send very subtle messages publicly but most of their work is carrying out behind the scenes for labor it's don farrell he's not the person you necessarily think he's one of the big senior people if you were just watching from the outside but he is a crucial person for the labor government on the other side Big changes within that party has meant that James Patterson, the once rising star of the Conservative side of politics, is very much a senior figure on the Conservative side.

And when you see a speech like this, I think it's important for people to understand who James Patterson is and why it is that we are so interested in what he's got to say here.

Yeah, look, just a couple of things on that.

You're right to observe the power that sits in the Senate within parties.

And I know you were talking on the podcast yesterday with Shalana about Pauline Hanson.

That's an example.

Lydia Thorpe is another, Penny Wong.

I mean, these are some of the most prominent people

in politics in Australia.

James Patterson, I know it was a couple of weeks ago, we were likening him to Matthias Cormann as a Conservative and the Liberals, also holding the finance portfolio, funnily enough now, trying to keep the Conservatives in line with the moderates.

That was during the Turnbull era.

I think James Patterson, and what we've seen in this speech, really fits with and cements that position, even more so, I think, as someone really straining to hold the show together, doing more than perhaps anyone in the party, I think, right now to hold the show together, given the obvious strains we can all see.

And he talks about in this speech between those who want to adopt a more Farage-like approach and those who want to move to the centre politically.

He has laid out in this Tom Hughes oration, I mean, he says it's trite to call it a middle ground, but that is kind of what he's suggesting here.

Back to the broad church in many ways.

And I think there's ways in which we can pull apart this speech.

So he looks to the forward, he looks backwards as well.

I think let's start with looking back at the election because James Patterson was the campaign spokesman.

He certainly hasn't carried the can for the election result in the way in which figures like Jane Hume certainly have, but he had a very close insight into this campaign.

And I think it'd be too simplistic to say that this speech is leveled at any one individual at all.

It is more of a kind of vision statement of looking at where the party's at.

And just on that, he was a bit annoyed on Radio National this morning that this was written up by most of the papers as having a shot at Andrew Hastie and just sitting up in Jim Paper Price.

He was keen to say, no, no, no, that was not my intention here.

Like, they are my friends and political allies

in some regards.

And I think the way in which he gets to Peter Dutton is clearly one where he's saying i admire peter dutton i think peter dutton has ventured us into a direction with nuclear power that uh we as a party will adopt going forward but it won't look like what it looked previously like it won't be government-owned building and operation publicly owned fleet of nuclear power stations we're not doing that again and that's pretty obvious from anyone in the liberal party look there's a few points in the speech and his own public comments since the election where he is acknowledging where they went wrong policy was underdone things like the nuclear power idea you know sure they still like the idea of nuclear power, but not the publicly owned

fleet of power stations.

I think you could point to their gas policy as well.

I remember interviewing James Patterson mid-campaign when they still hadn't

nutted out the details.

And he did as good a job as anyone could, I think, of trying to put a coherent argument forward as to how it would work, but it was clearly underdone.

They hadn't done the policy work.

Work from home was a disaster for them as well.

So he, amongst others, has acknowledged those policy mistakes.

They weren't ready on the policy front.

But when he says we need to move on from this national apology tour, I don't know if it's an apology tour that's their problem right now.

Sure, there's been a bit of that and they've had to acknowledge their mistakes.

The problem seems to be more, you know, a process they're going through of working out where they want to be, who they want to be, what sort of direction and what sort of Liberal Party they want in the future, rather than...

just apologising for where they went wrong at the election.

I think that's the bigger problem.

And he points to that idea that some of the research that they've had since then talks about that people and voters don't understand who the Liberals are or what they stand for, which is partially a product of being a party of government.

In government, you have to make decisions that don't always align with what your policy or your beliefs or ideologies are.

And you see that with Labor.

That's not special to the Liberal Party at all.

But I just thought it was quite telling the ways in which James Patterson in this speech makes the point of we are not a think tank, we are not an activist group, we are a party that should be striving to win government.

And that has sort of been lost in part of these broader debates that you're seeing playing out in the Liberal Party at the moment, as what is it that they are seeking to achieve here?

Because that remains unclear.

And I think he's gone further than anyone else I've heard in the party, trying to explain what those values are and how they should position themselves.

Now, in his view, he's rejecting the idea of a Farage-light party on the right that's more populist.

He goes through in some detail why he thinks, you know, all Farage has done is ruin the Conservatives in the UK.

He doubts they're going to survive where they are in the polls until the next election in the UK.

So he's sceptical.

And at those levels, you could get elected in the UK, but you certainly...

That is below where the coalition was at at this last election, where they've had their worst in 80 years.

We have preferential voting.

We have compulsory voting.

It would not be the same here, is his point.

And he's probably right on that.

At the same time, he's also rejecting the notion of the teal light party as well, that simply stops what are called the culture war issues and only focuses on, what does he call it, the narrowest set of economic interests.

That's right, soulless and hollow, I think.

Soulless and hollow.

And he even states the sort of culture issues that they should still stand up for, the flag, Anzac Day, Australia Day, and so on, where he thinks the majority of Australians are.

I suppose he's suggesting they shouldn't die in a ditch over cultural issues where most of the public disagree with them.

And, you know, I noticed that he didn't suggest they should be fighting on things like trans issues, for example, right?

So the things he's listed there, they should keep fighting on a safer for the party.

So what's he saying?

Don't go tealite don't go for Raj Light we need to yes focus on our base and he references this as well you've got to build your base and it's right to look after the membership the the people who stand there and hand out the leaflets and turn up at branch meetings you've got to be a party for them and then build from that to take votes off labor so yes start with the base then take votes off labor where you can so where it's um where it's lacking this speech and fair enough too is exactly how you do this with the policies That's the work that's got to come.

And he's saying we've got to get cracking on that now.

Yeah, it was interesting where he makes that criticism of Nigel Farage in an Australian political sense in terms of voting, but also making the point that Nigel Farage and the policies that are being put forward aren't conservative policies that are being advanced as well.

He calls out the prospect of what some of the policies that Nigel Farage is putting forward would have on the budget and debt as an issue going forward.

And that fusion that he talks about between the conservative wing and the moderate wing is where he sees that happy place for the Liberal Party, a way in which you can respect traditions, honour the values that you talk about, having faith and the role that that plays within the community, but then also not approaching a debate that is demonising to parts of your constituency and where that comes to the fore.

And he sort of pulls about five policy areas where he flags as areas you can get into.

Housing, migration, energy

policy, productivity, manufacturing.

The two that jumped out to me was housing and migration.

Now, there has been the likes of Andrew Andrew Bragg, the front bencher, that are pushing back, he's more moderate, against the suggestion that migration is to blame for the housing crisis.

There is an argument in there that says if you continue this line of blaming everything on migration, you are risking alienating a voting base that you've already seen the loss of Chinese Australian voters.

To have further losses with multicultural communities, particularly South Asian Australians, could be further devastating for the modern Liberal Party.

That finding what you stand for and articulating what that is is really focusing where they need to be.

James Patterson is acknowledging that migration is too high.

He agrees with Hastie and Co.

on that, but he's not repeating their language about feeling like strangers in our own country.

And your point, too, about the electoral impact of going after migration can be double-edged because you can turn off multicultural communities.

We've seen that as a problem for the Liberals now at two elections with Chinese Australians in particular seats where they've just been wiped out.

So he's a lot more careful and nuanced in his language on that.

The element that stood out to me

is on government support for manufacturing

and where he talks about Farage and the economic damage that that approach is taking.

James Patterson is far more free market.

We've got to maintain this free market principle, small government.

And I'm writing about this for the website tomorrow.

I think this is a real point of tension to watch in the Liberal Party because Hastie had that social media video that he did with the

car.

What was the car?

It was the Ford.

Definitely a Ford, an old Ford, and I'm sure that

just a Lara, who's much more smarter than I am, will have an answer for me in no time.

It'll make me look much smarter.

Anyway, the point was, he's saying we've lost our manufacturing capacity and we need to support that and grow that.

Now, James Patterson, sure, he agrees, but.

Forget the fridges, though, he's essentially saying, forget that kind of.

His line was, is it a grave national security threat that we no longer make fridges, washing machines or TVs?

No.

But in an era of strategic competition, our dependence on authoritarian powers for critical imports is a serious problem.

So he's acknowledging there's something that needs to be done here.

And he goes on to say, where we do have to make interventions, so we're talking about government intervening in the market, we must be surgical in how we do so.

For example, with industries which have no real market dynamics like defence.

Otherwise, every vested interest will beat a path to Canberra's door with their handout and a business case about why their industry is strategically important.

Now, why that jumps out to me is Anthony Albanese is about to go sit down with Donald Trump, all right, in a matter of days.

What's the big deal on the table?

Critical minerals.

What's the government doing here to make this a sweet deal for Trump?

It's this critical minerals strategic stockpile, $1.2 billion of government money to, it'll either be setting a floor price, off-take agreements, basically taxpayers' money to help get critical minerals going, get them out of the ground, process them even, work with the US on countering the dominance that China has in critical minerals, which is causing Trump and the US all sorts of grief.

Trump needs critical minerals.

And so the Australian government is using the taxpayer purse to offer Trump something.

Now, what is James Patterson saying here?

He is very cautious about that approach.

Peter Dutton, before the election, the Coalition's official position was no taxpayer support for critical minerals.

Billions for billionaires is how Angus Taylor called it, the Shadow Treasurer at the time.

Andrew Hastie, however, I understand, has quite a different view.

on this.

He sees the strategic need for the government to be involved here in getting these critical minerals developed, processed, working with the US on this.

So I just think that's a really interesting and sort of overlooked point of tension in the Liberal Party right now.

Sure, they've got differences on climate,

on, you know, all sorts of things.

But this issue of critical minerals, I think, is a really interesting one too.

And even the climate comments that James Patterson made, they were interesting to me that they were framed around energy.

And so...

I wonder the extent to which the coalition is concerned that they are being painted as climate change deniers, going back decades of a debate here where James Patterson, without saying the words net zero, my reading of this speech was you can adopt net zero and that doesn't wave the white flag to the government on energy transition and approach to climate policies here.

And he essentially is saying that we need to take the fight up to Labour over the energy transition.

And then you can point to the bailouts that were not allowed to call bailouts last week that the government is having to do to maintain this level of domestic manufacturing, that this is all part of a broader suite.

And if the coalition is seen to be fighting over whether or not climate change exists, it misses the ability to go after the government for government policy in areas that is causing issues.

And they're very much linked, right?

Because what he's arguing, and certainly what Peter Dutton argued, is that to develop critical minerals or any form of mining or manufacturing, energy is the answer.

Get energy cheaper, all of this becomes possible without the government having to get involved.

Now, that sounds great.

How do you get energy cheaper, though, Brett?

This has been the camaraderie, right, that we've had for such a long time.

And even that nuclear policy, which would have cost a lot of money to build those plants, it was still unclear if we'd get get cheaper power anytime soon you know in the next decade or so which really counts strategically yeah easier said than done i suppose to get energy prices down right now ford falcon gt lara she's very smart and on it so she knew knew the answers that that we were seeking who is this speech for though it's given to liberal allies essentially but um James Patterson is suggesting that this is the last he wants to say on the election and does want to turn his focus going forward.

He is trying to broke a peace within the party to some extent.

A senior conservative working very closely with Susan Lee.

Who do you think this message is?

It's a really good question, Brett.

I think.

I mean, I assume he's talking to his colleagues and urging them to, you know, find that middle path and come together and stop this squabbling.

And, you know, we've reached a point where they need to start actually focusing on Labor and the government and coming up with some policy ideas themselves.

I think it's also very much aimed to the Liberal Party base and the membership and giving them, dare I say it, some hope.

There's a lot of despair, I'm sure, amongst the membership and, you know, about where the party's at and the tensions that are on show for all to see, and giving them some hope that, look,

we've been through tough periods before.

We really can't afford to split.

And he's kind of gone there, right?

Where a lot of them are talking privately.

Yeah, how real is that talk?

That's very much emerging, I guess, in recent days.

It feels like it's getting more focus and heat.

Look, yeah, we spoke a bit about it on the couch on Insiders on the weekend.

You know, I've been speaking to Liberals who privately will say that, yeah, this is actually being talked about more.

One who said to me, it's inevitable that we split given the big differences in terms of what direction various people think we should be going in.

And this is a Liberal Party split, not a coalition split.

We're not talking about the Nationals and the Liberals, as it's been talked in the past.

We're talking about

the Liberal Party breaking in two.

I think practically, though,

what would cause that and how it would happen, it's harder to see it happening.

I mean, I still don't know how they resolve some of these differences over net zero, for example.

And James Patterson is saying those debates need to be had.

That a problem in the last term was there was unity at all costs and discipline were put above having crucial debates that the party needed to have.

And sometimes they need to happen in the public.

So he's not saying don't squabble or don't fight, but do it with goodwill, I guess.

But his critical line was, if we split, it's going to go about as well as the Labor split did in the 1950s.

In other words,

not well at all.

But the point coming into that, where he makes the point, is we have governed Australia for almost two-thirds of the post-war era, then goes on to say that

the talk that he's there because we need to split because we can't work ourselves out.

And his quote was, our task is to make sure these voices remain marginal, end quote.

And today on the radio, he was saying that in many ways that's directed at those outside of the party room that are agitating and pushing for this more so than those within the party room.

Yeah, I mean, look, he's right to point to the history of the Liberal and the non-Labor party's success at elections.

You know he lists their success.

They've held government more than Labor has post-war.

But you can't deny what we're seeing happen internationally on the Conservative side of politics.

I mean sure, the Republicans in the US are still in power, but they're a very, very different Republican party under Trump and MAGA.

That has been a transformation that we've seen in the last,

well, I guess since Trump first emerged on the scene.

So, you know, it's changed that party party enormously.

What we're seeing unfold right now in the UK with Farage and reform that are beating the Conservatives.

Now, maybe Patterson's right.

Maybe that, you know, fiddles out and the Conservatives come back in time the next election.

But we don't know.

Right now, they're in all sorts of strife.

So these international trends on the Conservative side in Europe as well, you can't ignore them.

Yes, we're more protected from them here by our voting system.

But just because the Liberals have done relatively well over the last 80 years doesn't mean they will continue to do so.

And it's an interesting debate that is happening where it's not being framed like so many of these debates are about what does it mean for Susan Lee and Susan Lee's leadership.

It seemed to me that this was a piece trying to make a case about, it doesn't matter who the incumbent leader is, it is about how we as the party of opposition, and today on the radio he said that that work wasn't done in the last term around policy development because people realised it was quite hard after many years in government of having a lot of resources at your hand that people weren't putting in the work.

And the Liberals do need to do a much better job of their campaigning and messaging and social media and how they target particular voters all of that but even with the slickest operation campaign outfit policy is what matters policy is what matters he's absolutely right about that and they just they they didn't have the policy offering at the last election and that that excerpt from nikki savers book that the nine papers ran during the week where you know she wrote about the staffers being sat down and said right you got to come up with some policies quick smart because the shadow ministers are doing a terrible job you're like wow really is this how it works So look, he's right.

They've got it.

And that's not easy.

What did Michael McCormack say on afternoon briefing last week?

It's not like drive through McDonald's

to find policies.

It is really hard.

It does take time.

You know, if they unveiled everything by the end of this year, it would fall apart.

So it's the timing as well.

You need something out there, but not everything out there pretty soon.

So look, it's not easy, but they will live and die on their policy offering.

And right now, they're all over the shop in terms of where they want to land on this stuff.

And he said that's work for them to be doing.

He makes a very brief point at the start about the organisational part of the Liberal Party needs to get better at analytics and campaigning, but comes back to the point of you can have the world's greatest, slickest schmick campaign, but if you've got a dog of a policy, not his teraphrase, then that's not going to win over voters no matter how fancy your campaigning could well be.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.

Look, he had a couple of other purlas in there, I thought, the line about this freedom in the Liberal Party to speak out from the back bench.

He's never met a swing voter in a focus group who's ever said that's the reason they're voting for the Liberal Party.

So look, it's great that we have this freedom, but look, he's stressing the need for unity at the end of the day around some policies, and that's where they're struggling.

Well, I'm not sure if it's policy development, but Susan Lee, the opposition leader, is in Melbourne today and very much keen to talk about crime, which as someone who spent a lot of time in Victoria yourself

and me, it really feels like Victoria is the state that gets kicked a lot at the moment from the coalition side of politics.

But what's this crime focus from Susan Lee about, do you think, given so often it's viewed as a state state issue rather than necessarily a federal one?

I mean, it is largely a state issue.

You know, who funds the police, a criminal justice system, is, you know, these are all state issues, right?

Look, it's not unusual, though, for federal parties to weigh in.

They know, and this is a very...

real and serious issue for so many Victorians.

And I'm sure if you did sit down with the focus group, it'd be right up there in terms of a big concern for them.

So no surprise, politicians are going to jump on that.

But look, there are areas, you know, when we talk about what's happening with the illegal tobacco trade, and clearly the federal government

plays a role in terms of what's been going on with excise and what can be done with the federal police and targeting criminal gangs and so on.

So, look, there are, you know, it's overstating it to say that it's entirely a state issue.

The feds have nothing to do with it, but it's largely a state issue, isn't it?

So there's a bit of...

a bit of seeking political capital from a big concern there, but there is also some justification for the coalition to be talking about it.

What do you reckon?

Yeah, I think that you just get flashbacks to to Peter Dutton talking about African gangs in Melbourne and you do wonder where the party positions itself going forward in that.

Now, Susan Lee is a very different political figure from Peter Dutton.

Look, if you were a Liberal in Victoria and it gets mentioned in James Patterson's speech, you look at the poll that came out earlier this week in Resolve that is suggesting that on current trends, the Liberal opposition would lose another election in Victoria where you've got an unpopular Premier and Labour Party, but certainly no popularity necessarily in the coalition ranks.

And it's just interesting that Susan Lee is picking that as an issue with which she wants to deal with that.

Well, it's also an issue, just to come full circle on where we began, where her colleagues, be they the Andrew Hasties and Jacinda Dumpajiba Prices or the James Pattersons or the Andrew Braggs on the moderate side of the party, where they can all pretty much agree that crime is safe ground for the Libs to be talking about and railing about.

Now, Susan Lee won't use any sort of ethnic description like the African gangs that you mentioned from Peter Dutton.

She'll avoid all of that.

She's very, very wary of upsetting any multicultural community, particularly in Melbourne.

But the issue broadly, generally, crime is a much safer political turf for her to be talking about than climate, than migration, and all of these more difficult issues for the Libs right now.

The big elephant in the room that is looming is the Prime Minister will be coming back from leave.

We'll see him then head back to the US where he will be meeting with Donald Trump.

That's something you're going to look into with Insiders on Background this weekend.

Yeah, look, this is going to be a critical meeting.

It feels like some of the concerns around, will AUKUS survive the meeting?

Will Trump rail against Australia's defence spending levels?

It feels like the heat's come out of some of those issues, that they'll probably be okay.

We might have a surprise.

Trump might absolutely embarrass Anthony Albanese in the Oval Office on those issues.

We'll see.

But it feels like the temperature's come down a bit on some of those issues.

Clearly, I think Anthony Albanese needs to come out of this with some assurance around AUKUS, but also something on critical minerals.

This has been talked about for, gosh, how long, Brett?

A long time, this offering that Australia's had on the table.

The periodic table that's under the ground.

Exactly, exactly.

So, what are they going to settle on?

What's happened between the US and China over recent days?

I know we've all been watching the Middle East, understandably, but China on Friday seriously ramped up its export restrictions on rare earths.

And this is a real worry for the US.

They need these.

They need better access to these rare earths that are so important for defence, for tech, for EVs, all of this, for manufacturing.

So what Australia can offer, I think, is going to be really interesting.

Hayley Channer from the US Studies Centre is my guest for the podcast this week.

She's got a quite detailed look at what we are offering, what we can offer, what we should offer, what the US really needs here as well.

So get into the nitty-gritty of that a bit.

Well, the Prime Minister will need to get his eight hours sleep while he's on leave, a bit of sunshine and rest up and get ready because there will be a lot of eyes

on that meeting.

Speasey, thanks for spending some time with us.

Cheers.

And tomorrow, Phil Courie, the political editor of the Australian Financial Review, will join myself and Mel Clark for the party room.

We're going to zoom out and look at where we've landed in this week where it's felt like news has been falling left, right, and centre.

If you have a question, you can send it to us.

Just send a short voice note to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

See you, Speasy.

See you, mate.