Dan Tehan in the Liberals leadership mix? Who’d have thunk it!

I spent Saturday night at an election party in the seat of Wannon, in Victoria’s west. The host served a lovely roast lamb and some excellent Victorian Shiraz. The largely conservative attendees veered from anticipation to bewilderment as the results rolled in. But they were very happy with one consolation of the evening: the convincing reelection of local member, Liberal Dan Tehan.

As we noted last week, Tehan faced a serious challenge from independent Alex Dyson. But unlike so many of his colleagues, Tehan held on. While Dyson picked up plenty of extra votes, Tehan managed to hold the swing against him below 1%. Importantly, Tehan did well in the division’s largest city, Warrnambool. He then swept the rural booths. Although his margin has been shaved, Tehan’s lock on a seat held by the Liberals since 1955 looks assured.

Politics is full of strange turns, and few would have put Dan Tehan in the leadership frame even a week ago. But with Wannon locked down, Tehan’s stature has been enhanced. On Saturday night, he was already hosing down questions about the Liberal leadership from the ABC’s David Speers.

Nine’s David Crowe and Paul Sakkal are reporting that Tehan has been ringing colleagues this week to test his support. With a number of allies in the partyroom, swinging his support behind Ley or Taylor could also allow Tehan to play kingmaker and choose a senior portfolio on the new frontbench.

Tehan is a moderate, hailing from the centre faction of the federal party. Parachuted into Wannon in 2010, he has adopted the more moderate style of conservatism espoused by local pastoralists, rather than the red-blooded culture war espoused by the party’s right. In recent years, Tehan has tried to pay both ends against the middle, tailoring conservative messages for angry rural voters on social media, while capable of more conciliatory and nuanced positions in person around the electorate.

But while Tehan campaigned better than Dutton and Taylor, he wouldn’t come to the leadership vote without baggage. As education minister under Scott Morrison, Tehan was responsible for “Job Ready Graduates” (JRG), the Morrison government’s ill-judged reforms to university funding.

JRG rejigged the fees that domestic students pay for various degrees, making some more expensive (arts, media) and others cheaper (nursing, teaching and agriculture). Overall, it subtracted government funding from the university sector, dramatically raising the total amount that students pay in fees. Four years on, critics point out that the dramatic shift in fee differentials has barely moved the dial on enrolments. Meanwhile, students in more popular courses are paying far higher fees — approaching $50,000 for an Arts degree. Most in the university sector consider JRG a failure.

Tehan also used his time in Education to reward Catholic schools, meddle in research grants and to initiate a review into academic freedom (an irony, considering the Coalition’s more recent views on student protests).

As trade minister, Tehan signed the Australia-UK trade agreement, a windfall for pastoralists, where he took advantage of the Johnson government’s post-Brexit desperation. As the Coalition’s immigration spokesperson, Tehan has pushed for harder borders and lower migration figures. The reduced targets for international students would have been devastating for university finances, but it’s not clear they would have done much to address the housing crisis in Australian cities.

This mixed policy legacy contains no real scandals, but few triumphs either. While he was kept away from the worst of Dutton’s campaign shitshow by the need to barnstorm his home seat, as immigration spokesperson Tehan must also wear some of the blame for the Liberals’ disastrous showing this election with migrants and new Australians, who turned to Labor in droves.

The bigger issue for Tehan’s colleagues will be that, like Ley, he hails from a regional seat. As Saturday night showed, Australia remains gripped by a significant rural-urban divide. Regional Australia is older, whiter, poorer and less educated than urban Australia. Political attitudes are also out of kilter: regional Australia voted much more negatively in the Voice Referendum, and gender equality also lags in the blokier countryside.

This is a problem for the Coalition, as Peter Hartcher pointed out recently. It is in the cities where the Coalition badly needs to win back voters. Policies that play well in the country are toxic in the big smoke. The tendency of the National Party to play to its regional constituency on energy policy has repeatedly pulled the Libs away from the sorts of sensible climate policies that have helped teal independents steal safe Liberal seats in Sydney and Melbourne. There is widespread opposition to renewable energy — especially wind farms — in many parts of country Australia, but urban voters love them.

Significant shifts in policy will likely be required to rehabilitate the Liberal brand, on everything from nuclear energy to working mothers. It remains to be seen whether a middle-aged white man from the regions is the best candidate to lead the Liberals back from the wilderness.

Is Dan Tehan the man to turn around the Coalition’s fortunes?

We want to hear from you. Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au to be published in Crikey. Please include your full name. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.