liberal

Where are they now? Who now holds the seats of former Liberal Leaders.

The success of Independents at recent elections has cost the Liberal Party some of its safest seats. They are losses that have toughened the Coalition’s path back to office.

The seats lost, Bradfield, Mackellar, Warringah, Wentworth, Goldstein (recovered 2025), Kooyong and Curtin, have long been bastions of the Liberal Party. They are the sort of seats once held by Prime Ministers, Party Leaders and senior Ministers.

And then there are the losses to Labor in 2025 with the Liberal Party suffering its worst ever election defeat. The losses to Labor and Independents and a near wipe out in the state capitals has left Liberal Party with few of the urban seats traditionally occupied by the party’s leadership.

Of the 13 seats held by former Liberal Party Leaders, only two are currently held by the Liberal Party.

Newly elected Leader Angus Taylor is the Liberal party’s 17th leader since Robert Menzies formed the party eight decades ago.

Of the 16 previous leaders, eight won elections – Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John Gorton, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Of those, four won elections that took the Liberal Party from opposition to government – Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott.

Five led the Liberal Party to an election and lost – William McMahon (who was the 9th leader to serve as Prime Minister), Billy Snedden, Andrew Peacock (twice), John Hewson and Peter Dutton.

Three others lost the leadership before having the chance to fight an election – Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson and the recently deposed Sussan Ley.

At the next election we will learn which list Angus Taylor’s name will be appended to.

The scale of the Coalition’s defeat in 2025 increased the number of former Leaders’ seats that are no longer held by the Liberal Party. Of the 13 seats once held by former Liberal Leaders –

  • 5 are now held by Independents (including the Centre Alliance in Mayo)
  • 3 are Labor held
  • 2 were lost to Labor and later abolished
  • only 2 are still held by the Liberal Party

The fate of the 13th leadership seat will be decided on 9 May at the by-election in Sussan Ley’s former seat of Farrer. I previously published posts on the Farrer electorate, and also on whether the seat is more naturally a Liberal or National seat.

The Liberal Party will be under threat from Coalition rivals the National Party, 2025’s second placed Independent Michelle Milthorpe, and surging national polls that give One Nation a chance of victory.

But enough on Farrer. In this post I list the fate of seats once held by Liberal Leaders. I also have a whimsical trawl through the list of seats named after Prime Ministers but now held by representatives from the other side of politics.Read More »Where are they now? Who now holds the seats of former Liberal Leaders.

VIC22 – the Impact of the Liberal Party’s Change of Preference Recommendation

For the 2022 Victorian election, the Liberal Party has changed its position on whether Labor or the Greens should be listed first on the party’s how-to-vote (HTV) material.

Until the August 2010 Federal election, the traditional Liberal decision was to list the Greens ahead of Labor. At the 2010 Federal election, it was the Liberal preference recommendation that elected Greens’ candidate Adam Bandt as the new member Melbourne.

Some in the Liberal Party were unhappy that Liberal preferences were electing members of a party that Liberals labelled as more radical left than Labor.

The position was changed shortly afterwards and it was announced late in the 2010 Victorian state election campaign that Labor would be listed before the Greens on Liberals HTVs. That has been the party’s position in Victoria at state and Federal elections since.

In most seats the choice is entirely symbolic as Liberal preferences will not be distributed. But there are several inner-Melbourne seats where the Liberal candidate is traditionally excluded during the distribution of preferences. The Liberal decision could have an impact on several Labor-Green contests.

In this post I look at the record of preference flows before and after the Liberal switch on preferences. The question for 2022 is whether the new Liberal position will flip the flow of preference as dramatically as the 2010 decision. Will the decision change the result in any seats?

Read More »VIC22 – the Impact of the Liberal Party’s Change of Preference Recommendation