In last month's state election, the combination of an engaging leader and competent campaigning delivered an improved result for Victoria's Liberals. However, as Tim Colebatch explained in Monday's Age, a massive swing of 6.3 per cent will still be required to win in 2010.
With Liberals in all states a long way from regaining government, maybe they should try a change of focus. A basic first step must be to seek policy consistency and distinctiveness. An important test for the Liberal Party in each state is to ensure that it has policies that are distinctly "liberal".
For starters, the Liberal Party should always be seen as the party of small government. Its MPs at state level need to do some hard thinking about how that principle can be enunciated in this era when state governments are awash with cash.
Fundamental to this will be developing a new model for federal-state relations to tackle the huge problem that vertical fiscal imbalance creates.
No one should underestimate how hard this task will be. However, there are other policy areas where developing a Liberal position should be comparatively easy. There are large swathes of state government responsibilities where the Liberal Party can position itself firmly on the side of citizens who want to live their lives free of unnecessary government-imposed rules and regulations. Unfortunately, state Liberals have been patchy, at best, in these areas.
The Liberal Party has often got itself into a muddle on issues like racial and religious vilification laws. Once you start down the slippery slope of this type of restrictive legislation you can end up with the sort of scenario as sketched by British writer Rod Liddle in The Spectator recently. "Today you can be prosecuted for insisting that homosexuality is a crime against nature and yet also prosecuted for denigrating the Koran, a book which insists that homosexuality is a crime against nature". Let the Liberal Party be the party of free speech.
The Liberal Party also needs to re-address the area of planning. Too often planning policy achieves the amazing double of both imposing prohibitively high costs on those perceived to be contributing to urban sprawl and imposing restrictions on market-based opportunities to deliver urban consolidation.
State Liberal parties should adopt policies that increase land supply and reduce charges for new development. At the same time, they must stop pandering to busybody neighbours and control freak local councils, and instead defend the rights of property owners to develop their properties in the way they see fit.
As well as being the party that defends property rights, the Liberal Party must be the pro-consumer party. The past two decades have seen significant improvements in shop trading laws but, in states such as Western Australia, there is still much more to be done. The Liberal Party should stand squarely behind the interests of consumers and against the vested interests that restrict shop trading hours.
The Liberal Party should also take a stand on behalf of the group that is rapidly becoming the most maligned in the country -- poker machine players.
The fact that a minority abuse a product is not a legitimate reason to deny the majority the right to their enjoyment. The current anti-pokies proposals reek of those that the temperance movement tried against alcohol. Reducing pokies numbers is the modern-day equivalent of the "six o'clock swill". There may be worthwhile reforms that can be made to how licences are issued and how machines are allocated, but that can be done without attacking the rights of citizens to enjoy the leisure activity of their choice.
Across a whole range of areas there should be a real focus on removing the myriad of rules and regulations that stifle genuine community activity.
In various jurisdictions, there are now laws that prevent the Country Women's Association preparing sandwiches for volunteer firefighters; other laws prevent parents coaching junior sporting teams without police checks, while various regulations have to be complied with before children can work on a relative's farm; and there are even rules covering the taking of photos in public places. Instead of all this regulation let civil society work it out. This way trust will be built, rather than destroyed by the nanny state.
Some of this agenda of personal freedom may be instantly appealing to voters, other parts less so.
The tendency for state Liberals will be to try and cherry-pick. That misses the point. It is only through arguing from a consistent philosophic base that they will build credibility with the community.
In fact, the very act of taking a stand on some tough issues will make the Liberals appear stronger than they have at any time in the almost 10 years since they last won a state election anywhere in Australia.
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