Banking sector leader tells Libs to lift their game
Following the latest federal Liberal party coup, a former SA Senator says the Libs are struggling to attract a new generation of voters – and rolling out a former PM every election isn’t the solution.
Hours after the Australian Liberals’ leadership spill on Friday that saw Sussan Ley ousted in favour of conservative MP Angus Taylor, former Federal Senator and CEO of the Australian Banking Association Simon Birmingham called for his old party to return to core policy areas that define it.
Speaking at an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce business lunch on Friday afternoon, Birmingham said the Liberal party needed to “define its values in a way that will appeal to new generations of Australian voters”.
And the tactic of rolling out former Prime Minister John Howard during election campaigns was not a solution to building relevance for the opposition, the former Senator said.
Birmingham, who quit before the last Federal election and has been outspoken about the party’s model being “broken”, reflected on former Liberal Party leader John Hewson’s 1993 Federal election campaign: “a bold policy platform proposing sweeping tax reform and other efficiencies across our economy to modernise and transform it”.
“It did not win the 1993 election, but told generations of voters at the time who had been voting Labor for the better part of a decade what the Liberal Party stood for,” Birmingham said.
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“The only prescription that can unite the Liberal Party and define its values in a way that will appeal to new generations of Australian voters is one about economic reform and change and to get back to those core areas that have been the party’s strengths.”
Over the weekend, new leader Angus Taylor announced the party would now be cracking down on its “Australians first” immigration policy and lower personal income taxes. Sussan Ley also announced her resignation, leaving five Liberal women in the federal lower house.
Pressure has been building on the Liberal Party from its right flank both internally from conservative members and externally from parties including One Nation, which is growing in popularity nationally. In SA, recent polling showed One Nation may now get more first preference votes than the state Liberal Party.
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Birmingham said this pressure was “not unique” to the Liberals.
“Politics is fracturing around the world,” he said.
“People have been looking for significant change from traditional parties of government, and we can see that in most places.
“What’s driving that is a whole range of dissatisfactions, part of which is the inflationary pressures coming out of COVID which have, for most people, seen them feel the first real wave of economic pain in their lives.”
He said the party should be proud of its history and the Howard era and what the former Prime Minister achieved.
“But let’s not fool ourselves that rolling Mr Howard out during election campaigns tells younger voters we’re the party of economic strength and credibility, because he’s a historic figure for those voters who didn’t live through that era,” he said.
“That’s got to be a proof point built into policy.”
It follows comments made by Birmingham after the Liberals’ 2025 Federal Election loss, when he claimed failures at the previous election had “not been learned and acted upon”.
“The broad church model of a party that successfully melds liberal and conservative thinking is clearly broken,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.
“The Liberal Party is not seen as remotely liberal and the brand of conservatism projected is clearly perceived as too harsh and out of touch.”
