Excerpt: Once the natural party of government, the Liberal–National Coalition has become a federation of feuding tribes. Factional decay, Murdoch’s fading megaphone and a tone-deaf leadership culture have left it stranded between yesterday’s media and tomorrow’s electorate.

It used to be easy to spot the federal opposition. It wore a blue rosette, spoke in clipped tones, and knew which Canberra clubs served a decent cutlet after Question Time. Now, across the chamber, you don’t see an alternative government at all. You see a family reunion where everyone’s brought a grudge.

So is there still a genuine opposition in Australia, or just a bundle of Liberal and National tribes fighting to the death to be last one standing? The evidence points to the latter. What remains of the Coalition is consumed by factional war, an obsession with control rather than renewal, and a brand that no longer speaks to the suburbs that once sustained it. Add to that the fading power of the Murdoch press and an attention economy that has made traditional politics sound like an old record, and you have the anatomy of decline.

Factions first, policy last

The Coalition still carries the title of Opposition, but it behaves more like a party in opposition to itself. After the 2025 election loss, the Liberals chose Sussan Ley as leader. It was an historic choice, but also a fragile one. Ley’s main job, as the ABC reported, was to “unite a party after a bruising election result.” That unity is still theoretical.

Inside the party room, moderates and the National Right glare across a gulf of distrust. The Nationals threaten to walk whenever the Liberals sneeze. The Coalition once claimed to represent a broad church. Now it resembles a congregation locked in a vestry arguing over the collection plate.

The Howard legacy: control at any cost

Much of this chaos traces back to John Howard. He built a fortress and called it stability. His centralised, presidential style rewarded loyalty and punished ambition. For a while it worked, but it left a party allergic to fresh air.

Howard’s method was to neutralise rivals rather than nurture successors. Later leaders copied the trick. Mathias Cormann, once seen as leadership material, was quietly removed from contention and sent off to Paris to head the OECD. It was efficient, and it left no one capable of challenging the hierarchy.

By the time Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison had finished trading knives, the Liberals had lost the habit of argument. They had mastered only survival. The result is a political culture that prizes control over imagination.

The vanishing Liberal brand

The Liberal Party once spoke for the middle-class mainstream: suburban professionals, small business owners and “doctors’ wives.” Now it struggles to hold their attention.

In 2022, community independents seized blue-ribbon seats once considered untouchable. In 2025, the Liberals clawed back one or two, but the drift is structural, not cyclical. Educated, urban voters now expect credible climate policy, integrity in government and a tone that matches modern Australia. The Liberals still sound like a Rotary Club from 1987. They seem mystified that their former base has moved house.

The Nationals’ long goodbye

Out in the regions, the Nationals are living through their own slow extinction. Rural populations are ageing. Young people are leaving for cities. Farms are consolidating, services have moved to regional hubs, and mining towns rise and fall like dust storms.

The party that once saw itself as the permanent voice of the bush is now talking mostly to itself. Demographic reality has narrowed its map and shrunk its muscle. The rural leg of the Coalition is collapsing just as the urban leg is rotting, leaving the partnership limping towards irrelevance.

The Murdoch lobby still shouts, but no longer decides

For half a century, the Coalition could rely on the Murdoch press as an unofficial campaign arm. The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, Sky News and the Herald Sun operated like a political party without candidates. When elections loomed, the whole apparatus went into overdrive for the Liberals and Nationals. It still does.

Yet the megaphone no longer reaches the crowd. Print circulation has collapsed, and even digital growth cannot replace the authority once carried by front pages. The Australian boasts of rising online readership, but it is largely preaching to the converted. The thunder still rolls, yet the lightning strikes elsewhere.

Australians under forty rarely see a newspaper. They wake to feeds curated by algorithms. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube now shape opinion far more effectively than editorials. The Murdoch lobby remains noisy, but it is no longer the decider. It is a powerful echo chamber shouting in a shrinking room.

The attention economy and the new silence

The modern information landscape is hostile territory for old political machines, especially conservative ones that value hierarchy and patience. The attention economy rewards outrage, brevity and novelty. It punishes long speeches and detailed policy.

Young Australians are not disengaged; they are simply elsewhere. They join movements, follow creators and crowd-fund causes. Party branches, with their minutes and motions, look slow and joyless by comparison. The Coalition’s culture, still shaped by the blokey, Sydney-centric swagger of the Abbott to Morrison years, is hopelessly out of tune with this reality.

The party that once claimed to represent aspiration now seems bored by the aspirations of anyone under fifty. In an era when authenticity counts more than authority, its default setting of scorn and certainty reads as arrogance.

The women who left, and why they won’t return

The Liberal heartland once relied on professional women who valued fiscal restraint and competence. That quiet army of “doctors’ wives” has deserted. They were alienated by a party tone that treated climate concern as hysteria and women’s safety as a public-relations issue.

The rise of the teals was no passing fad. It was the political expression of educated women’s impatience. Even where some teal seats fell back in 2025, the movement reshaped expectations. These voters have found alternatives, and the Liberals have not offered them a reason to come back.

Opposition or autopsy?

Put it all together and the picture is bleak. The Coalition still occupies its benches but it does not occupy the national imagination. It issues statements instead of ideas.

Under Ley, leadership remains fragile. Moderates and hardliners continue their ritual standoff. Policy on climate, energy and industry is cloudy. The electoral map is unkind, and the culture narrower than the country it wants to govern.

Even the once-reliable media advantage has faded. The Murdoch lobby continues to rally behind the Coalition at every election, but the audience has migrated. The megaphone works fine; it’s just that fewer Australians are listening.

What revival would require

A genuine revival would need a political miracle and a cultural transplant. Four changes are essential.

1. Rebuild the talent base. Stop recycling the same names and start recruiting people who reflect modern Australia.
2. Treat climate policy as economic strategy, not as a wedge. Every serious investor already does.
3. Address the gender problem honestly. A female leader helps, but not if the culture beneath remains unchanged.
4. Speak the language of the real world. Concise, factual messages must travel on digital platforms where voters actually are. A splash in The Australian will no longer move a single seat.

Each reform would offend a different faction or donor, which is why none have happened. But without them, the Coalition will remain a ghost organisation trading on muscle memory.

The verdict

There is still a federal opposition, but it is hollow. It looks like an opposition and sounds like one, yet rarely behaves like one. What is left of the Coalition sits between the ruins of yesterday’s media order and the noise of tomorrow’s algorithm.

Howard built control. Abbott built resentment. Turnbull built confusion. Morrison built spin. Peter Dutton built fear. Sussan Ley inherits the mess and a map of diminishing blue.

Until the Coalition rediscovers the courage to argue for the future instead of protecting the past, the answer to the old question will remain the same.

Whither the Coalition? It will wither.

Coda: The Ley Exhibition – Coalition’s Top Ten Bum Notes

Determined to make it up to Peter Dutton for being missing in action during the Coalition’s catastrophic and incoherent campaign, Sussan Ley is planning a curated exhibition: “The Coalition’s Top Ten Bum Notes.” It promises to be an unforgettable survey of political dissonance. Among the exhibits:

1. The Abbott Overture: a brass section playing “Stop the Boats” on a loop until your ears bleed.
2. The Turnbull Fugue: a delicate melody of innovation drowned out by a conservative drum solo.
3. The Morrison Medley: a Pentecostal rock ballad performed in multiple keys simultaneously, with a Hawaiian ukulele solo.
4. The Dutton Dirge: heavy percussion, minor key, lyrics about fear of the future.
5. The Joyce Polka: a tipsy two-step around every scandal, performed with a megaphone and no rhythm.
6. The Littleproud Lament: an elegy for outback seats that no longer exist, accompanied by a lone banjo.
7. The Birmingham Bridge: a piece so cautious it never quite starts.
8. The Ley Reprise: cheerful backing vocals for a song no one remembers writing.
9. The Cormann Concerto: a farewell movement played in OECD time, with champagne and tax breaks.
10. The Howard Anthem: a nostalgic finale that insists everything was better in 1999, even the music.

The exhibition is free, though donations of policy ideas are gratefully accepted. Critics say it could be the most coherent performance the Coalition has produced in years.