Liberals must ditch culture wars, protect minorities and ‘prioritise fairness’

The Liberals must prioritise fairness, protect minority groups and ditch the culture wars stoked under Scott Morrison’s leadership, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says, warning that a move to the right would “guarantee political purgatory”.

The key moderate Liberal from NSW – a diminished faction in federal parliament after Saturday’s teal bloodbath – said the government’s religious discrimination bill and failure to legislate a federal integrity commission were very damaging in city seats, as was the “confected culture war” on trans rights prompted by the selection of Katherine Deves in Warringah.

“There was a tendency to prioritise division over economic policy ambition”: NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg.Credit:James Brickwood

“There was a tendency to prioritise division over economic policy ambition,” Bragg told the Herald and The Age in an election post-mortem on Monday. “Unless we are anchored by a strong economic agenda, we drift off into division. Some of this weird stuff has been very damaging.

“We spent too much time talking about trans issues. That really damaged our brand. People just couldn’t understand why [we spent] all this time talking about the trans issues which community and professional sporting groups are managing themselves.”

Bragg is a first-term senator and a former executive director of the Business Council of Australia. He was the Liberal Party’s acting federal director for two months in 2017. This election he had campaign responsibilities for the Sydney seats that were lost to teal independents including Wentworth, where Dave Sharma conceded defeat on Monday.

With the loss of Trent Zimmerman and Jason Falinski, as well as Tim Wilson and Josh Frydenberg in Melbourne, Bragg is part of a weakened moderate faction that includes Marise Payne, Paul Fletcher and Simon Birmingham in its senior ranks.

Dave Sharma formally conceded defeat to Allegra Spender in the seat of Wentworth on Monday.Credit:Janie Barrett, Edwina Pickles

Bragg said the lesson from the loss was not that the Liberal Party must move to the right but that it needed to be the “live-and-let-live party” in the political centre. Protecting minorities, including Indigenous Australians, ethnic and religious groups and the LGBTQ community, was core to the future of Australian liberalism.

“We need to be the party that supports fairness, the party that supports enterprise. That requires us to be the great big tent that is in the middle of the landscape, not the extremes,” he said. “Moving to the extremes only guarantees electoral purgatory.”