“We sent the troops into battle without ammunition.”

The Liberal Party must differentiate themselves and provide strong principled policy that exposes Labor’s lies, says Senator Alex Antic, on Sky News Australia following the election results.

Rowan Dean:

Liberal Senator Alex Antic joins us now to analyse the election results. Alex, you’ve heard what I have to say, tell me what you think about the loss. And our viewers, Outsiders viewers, will not forgive me if I do not say you should be the next leader of the Liberal Party.

So there, I’ve said it, and you can do with that what you want. But that’s what Outsiders invariably think you and Jacinta [Nampijinpa Price] and Matt Canavan and others are the stars and that the Liberal Party is in a real mess. What happened, Alex?

Alex Antic:

Well, thanks, Rowan. It’s very nice of you, but my place in the Senate would prevent that. I’m not sure my path leads that way, but it’s very nice of you to say that anyway.

Look, Rowan, where to start?

I mean, I think probably the first thing to say is that it’s a difficult time for a lot of good people and colleagues, Peter [Dutton] included. Peter’s a very good bloke. He really is. And the tragedy of this is that people never really … saw the very kind, very quick-witted and mischievously humoured Peter Dutton out of all of this. I wish that there had been more of that. But I think in politics, there is too much spin, too many focus groups, too many attempts to sort of try and turn things into things they’re not.

And he would have been a very good Prime Minister. But unfortunately, in this country, conservative politics, the conservative movement has, I think, and I have said it for a very long period of time, let Australians down by allowing things that are simply and demonstrably not true to be repeated ad nauseam over and over again. We’re talking about Net Zero. We’re talking about the sorts of things that are going on in our classrooms. We’re talking about allowing, you know, this nonsense of the push-back against colonialism.

Rowan Dean:

Sorry, Alex… James [Morrow] just wanted to jump in.

James Morrow:

So, Alex, can I just hop in here? Sorry, I just want to hop in here on this, because, you know, a moment ago, you said that Peter Dutton is a quick-witted individual and, you know, and that there’s all these sort of Labor lies out there.

Where was this quick-witted individual when we needed him to go out there and push back against every lie from nuclear reactors cost $600 billion to they’re going to take away your free Medicare or all of this sort of stuff? This was the most flat-footed campaign by an Opposition Leader I have seen for ages. He is the first Opposition Leader since World War II to suffer a swing against his own party, you know, at the first term election being out of power.

What accounts for the way in which this campaign was conducted and why there was absolutely no push-back against an absolute symphony of lies from the Labor Party? Was it the focus groups? Was it campaign headquarters?

Does campaign headquarters have something to do with getting in the way of Peter Dutton running the campaign?

Alex Antic:

Yeah, well, James, I mean, I was getting to that, I must say. The whole argument about what went wrong with the campaign is probably a different story. My point is just simply that I feel sorry for Peter because I think he’s a good bloke.

The reality of that is, no, I don’t think the campaign was of any sort of quality at all, frankly. I mean, I think it simply didn’t have policy that resonated. I mean, many of the policies were, in my mind, reminiscent of a mobile phone contract.

You know, for the first 12 months, you’ll get something free. You know, there’s a whole host of them, which I don’t mean to be flippant about, but that’s just instinctively. I would hear things like we’re going to cut fuel excise and I would think, great, but why only for 12 months?

So I think these are some of the problems. There wasn’t the depth of gifts on offer. I mean, in many cases, I feel very sorry for some of our excellent candidates, particularly here in South Australia, where we’ve done a power of work trying to get real people back into politics. But unfortunately, we sent the troops into battle without ammunition. And so I think that is the number one problem.

Now, to the issue of nuclear in particular, well, look, I just can’t answer that because we announced what I think was a very good and sensible nuclear policy and then wouldn’t talk about it. So I don’t know the answer to that. But what I do know is that this rot, this will never be explainable simply in the last four weeks. What we have to look back is the last 20 years of conservative politics, where we simply have waved and smiled and nodded and pushed things through and there hasn’t been enough push-back.

I can tell you, I’m in there day to day, making these points around anyone that will listen, getting called all sorts of names – hard right, far right, whatever. I was the only member of the Coalition that crossed the floor to vote against the hate crimes bills. I voted against the social media bills.

There are things that are just not being said inside the walls of the Liberal Party and they have to.

The other thing you need to say is that I think there are people inside the party that didn’t want Peter to become the Prime Minister. I myself was the subject of a story that was backgrounded, trying to effectively pick on one word I said back in 2022, which apparently was antisemitic, which it was not as far as I was concerned.

That was shopped around to multiple journalists and when I asked the question about where this had come from, I was told inside your walls.

So what’s that all about?

Why is that happening? And it doesn’t damage me. I’m number one on the ticket. I was never going to not get elected, but I suspect it damaged Peter.

Rita Panahi:

Well, how do you address that? How do you address the bedwetters, the quislings, the enemy within, which seems to be more interested in defeating conservatives within the Liberal Party than actually defeating Labor?

Alex Antic:

Well, it’s a very good question and there’s a very simple answer. I mean, look, I have a lot of time for some of the personalities inside the minor conservative parties, but I do not believe there is another answer. We’ve seen it in the United States.

The Republican Party is stronger under a stronger conservative leader. And I think the same is true here. People are hardwired to vote red or blue in this country.

It’s like a game of football. There’s only red and blue on the team. On the field and everyone else is in the stands shouting.

What we have to do is make sure that we make the Liberal Party great again. I said it. There we go.

So we can make Australia great again, by the way. And no one should have any backlash about that. That’s a simple statement. Trump himself said it during the American campaign. Why are they getting stuck into this slogan? Who doesn’t want to make America great again? But onto the issue, what needs to happen is doing what we’re doing here in South Australia, which is having real people join up, attend AGMs, attend preselections and make sure that you’re getting proper, true blue, big L Liberals who are representing your party. That is a long process. It is happening here.

Almost everybody, I would say, that we are now preselecting, I would say, are very true Liberals in South Australia. And the machine has changed. Now, unfortunately, there was a national swing on and we lost some very good people. People like Dan Wilde, who was a candidate in the very red seat, Irena Zagladov in Makin. And so that is the blueprint forward here. It’s not running off.

Rita Panahi:

Who’s going to reform the party? Who’s the next leader?

Alex Antic:

I just don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know. I think the names that have been thrown around are all probably right. But, you know, I just don’t know. I simply don’t know. I mean, I think, you know, Angus and Andrew are two good names as well. I like Dan. So, you know, I just don’t know the answer.

Senator Alex Antic is a Liberal Senator representing South Australia in the Federal Parliament. Senator Antic completed a law degree at the University of Adelaide, worked as a commercial lawyer from 2002 to 2019 and served as a Councillor on the Adelaide City Council from 2014 to 2018. [ more ]