Dutton, Hanson and Palmer epitomise the right’s lack of talent

Call it what it was: a collapse of the right. Labor may well claim the recent election is an endorsement of its track record and future plans, but the more significant point is arguably that the public comprehensively rejected its right-wing opponents.

The Liberal Party won its lowest primary vote and its lowest number of House of Representatives seats since its formation in the 1940s. It has been more or less expelled from the capital cities and out of Tasmania entirely, and the Coalition as a whole is now dominated by its Queensland wing. Nationally, Nationals and LNP MPs far outweigh straight Liberals.

Elsewhere on the right, Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots was more like a sad trombone, One Nation failed to win a single lower house seat and remains stuck in mid-single-digits, and while Advance Australia’s anti-Greens campaign might have had a small impact in the lower house, where it really mattered — the Senate — its efforts bombed: the Greens will hold the balance of power.

The other right-wingers crashed too: Family First, Gerard Rennick People First, the Libertarian Party, and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers all failed to trouble the scorer. Apart from the Coalition, it appears no right-wing parties have won Senate seats this election (although Pauline Hanson and UAP’s Ralph Babet will remain in the Senate after winning six-year terms in 2022).

Various commentators have rightly pointed to the influence of Trump on our election, with the Australian public rejecting anyone (Dutton, Palmer, One Nation) who had previously been supportive of Trump. George Megalogenis has also argued convincingly that inner-city demographics (for example, growing numbers of social progressives and renters) have worked against Coalition efforts to regain city seats.

But there’s another reason why the right has failed again in Australia: it continues to put up candidates that are fundamentally and unequivocally terrible.

It should have been obvious to anyone with cognitive functions that Dutton was a poor candidate. He had no policies and ran a terrible campaign, but just as importantly, demonstrated absolutely zero effort in attracting women, non-white or younger voters. He dragged a historically economically liberal party further towards the hard right. Even then, Dutton was the best his party could offer.

Clive Palmer failed badly in 2022, and the only lesson he learnt for 2025 was how best to blow millions of dollars again. Representing the party with the stupidest name imaginable, his presence was a reminder only that Australian political donations and advertising laws need reforming. No ideas, no coherence, no seriousness at all.

Pauline Hanson, in her thirty years of politics, seems to have become somehow less knowledgeable and articulate, even as her ideas have increasingly been adopted by the Coalition. The flaming star of the Australian right has turned into its embarrassing, whiny aunt.

The rest of the independent and minor-party right are all hacks and nutters too, as they have been for years. Malcolm Roberts and Gerard Rennick make Bob Katter look like a stable genius. Ralph Babet makes his predecessor, Brian Burston, look respectable (just Google “Brian Burston + best sex of her life”).

Having said that, it’s also been difficult in recent years to distinguish the outer fringes of the Coalition from its exiles. What separates Barnaby Joyce or Alex Antic from George Christensen or Craig Kelly? Very little, because since at least Tony Abbott’s leadership, the cranks and weirdos have been more prominent than the moderates in the Coalition.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price became an opposition frontbencher simply by spouting idiotic Trumpisms, because anyone who attracts attention on the right is immediately deemed a rising star. And to be fair, compared with the likes of Dan Tehan, Angus Taylor and Susan Ley, at least she actually does possess some charisma.

But why is Australia’s right so talentless? Somehow, we’ve escaped the trend that’s swept Europe and the United States, and we’ve yet to face the likes of a Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni — or the rise of a serious hard-right party such as Germany’s AFD, let alone the movements led by Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.

It would be foolish to fall back on sentimentalism — Australia’s egalitarian roots, or its “fundamental decency” — to explain the failure of the hard right, and just as simplistic to point to our preferential voting system. These may commonly lean our politics towards the middle, but neither have ever prevented populist race-baiting (Abbott’s stop the boats, Howard’s Tampa, etc) or a strong conservative vote (arguably including the recent election of Albanese). Indeed, with even the Labor party showing centre-right tendencies, it’s not hard to imagine a harder right threat emerging.

When the largest and most influential news company in the land is the hard-right News Corp, and most other major outlets are also now at least right-curious, the potential for the rise of the right is baked in.

In other words, the failure of the hard right hasn’t been structural: it’s been personal. Thanks to News Corp, and especially its organs Sky News and The Australianright-wing politicians are never truly tested until the ballot box arrives. All it takes is the imprimatur of Gina Rinehart, or a Murdoch editor or presenter, and any bozo can float to the top. A few friendly interviews, a round of fundraising lunches, and congratulations! You’ve won preselection/attracted donations for your Senate run. Your ideas and policies will rarely be challenged, your credentials rarely scrutinised, and the relevance of your messages to the Australian public never, ever questioned.

This is how you end up with a Liberal leader promoting nuclear power in the land of cheap renewable energy, or a Liberal prime minister (Scott Morrison) hand-picking a candidate (Katherine Deves) for North Sydney’s Warringah seat because she lobbied to stop transgender women from competing in women’s sport.

The right seems immune to taking any lessons from past failures, but this may not always be the case. The right-wing space is currently dominated by dolts, dull as dishwater, who can’t string four interesting words together and are for some reason obsessed with wind farms, but there’s nothing inherent in Australia that precludes a competent, popular candidate emerging.

Without willing it into being, it’s not hard to imagine a sun-kissed young thing with good hair, a strong torso and a firm corporate background bemoaning how difficult migrants have made it to buy a family home, how the past is the past and let’s not regret it, and how regulations and taxes are strangling our shiny future. We need a new voice, and Australia is for Australians! Someone who can cook a BBQ without it looking like cosplay, and play a sport without looking like a disorientated alien. Someone who can dog-whistle for Australia. It’s hard to believe it hasn’t already happened.

Progressive Australians may bemoan the conservatism of the Labor party and the flat-lining of genuine left alternatives, but they should thank their lucky stars that the political right is still such a basket case. Anyone observing the rise of the teals must realise that the tools employed by them (social media, community support, hard work, etc) will surely be used by others too, and to completely different ends.

In the meantime, hopefully Albanese realises that the best way to keep the right at bay is not to slide towards it, but to finally spend some political capital on good and brave causes.

Is there any unrecognised conservative talent in Australian politics?

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