What the NSW Liberal party can learn from the federal election
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It is not an exaggeration to say the Liberal Party is in crisis when one of the two major parties is left with just four seats in the biggest city in the country. It is crisis point. How can the Liberals recover from this? It is important for our nation. We can't have an effective democracy where it's assumed that one side now always wins an election. But with less than 40 seats in the future, the Coalition is facing years in the wilderness.

And I can't possibly see how it's likely that the coalition can win back to your seats in the near future. Now, there is an argument that the coalition should move further to the right, but they need swinging voters. They actually need to win the middle ground. So where do they go from here? Opposition leader in New South Wales is Mark Speakman. He is urging a move back to the centre and joins me. G'day, Mark. G'day, Clinton. How are you? I'm OK. You and your colleagues in Liberal Party, not so OK. Did you see this coming?

I don't think anyone saw the extent of the loss that happened on Saturday. The polling was suggesting that the Labor Party would be returned, possibly a majority government, probably a minority government. I don't think anyone foresaw the extent of the loss. I will receive comments throughout this program suggesting from our listeners, from loyal Conservative Party voters, saying that the Liberals should be...

Moving further to the right, how do you respond to that? Well, I'm not going to give gratuitous advice to my federal colleagues. That's for them to analyse what happened at Sort Out. Look, here in New South Wales, I want the Liberal Party to be firmly addressing the needs of middle Australia, whether they're women or young people, people from diverse cultural backgrounds. That's our job here at New South Wales, so that's my focus. It doesn't mean you're having an internal culture war, left versus right, within the Liberal Party.

but it means you're focusing on bread and butter issues. First and foremost, housing affordability. We've got a housing crisis here. Rents have skyrocketed, homes are unaffordable, worst housing unaffordability on record, cost of living crisis. What I want the state Liberal Party to be focused on are those issues, on good schools for your kids,

hospitals that treat you promptly and well, traffic congestion, public transport, trains that run on time. That's our job in New South Wales, to focus on those bed and brother issues. At a federal level, though, you mentioned appealing to women. I think there were more female candidates for the Liberal Party than ever before.

I think you're right and look here in New South Wales we've had great success with getting women in our parliament around about 45 percent of our Liberal MPs are women around 45 percent of our Liberal front benches are women but importantly they have got there on merit we don't have quotas they've got there on merit and what's more important I think in government we had a pretty strong track record on women's issues as Attorney-General and Domestic Violence Minister on

I delivered new laws on coercive control and affirmative consent, really important for women's safety. We doubled the number of places in women's refuges. And for getting women back to work, we had those back to working from home policies. And we also had rolling out childcare in places where there were childcare deserts. So we had a strong record on women, but we've just got to keep that up. It is astonishing, though, that you can have – we're all experiencing cost-of-living problems at the moment –

You could have 12 interest rate increases. There was an interest rate increase under the previous coalition government, yet Labor's returned with a bigger majority. Is it an indication, and given that Liberals only hold one state, or two states now, Queensland and Tasmania, that the Liberal Party needs to reform from the ground up, that perhaps even it needs to rebrand itself?

I think the lesson to be learned in New South Wales is that we have to keep focusing on the issues that matter to people like cost of living, life, housing, affordability, but not only identify the issues but provide a coherent set of solutions and do them in a timely manner. I think that's what we have to do here in New South Wales. Do you fear the party has moved too far to the right?

Look, I don't think so in New South Wales. We in New South Wales have been firmly grounded in the middle and as I say our focus has been on service delivery and infrastructure delivery. You look at the record of Dominic Perreté, Gladys Perejiklian, Mike Baird, Barry O'Farrell, it was all about really strong service delivery, making sure we had world-class hospitals, world-class schools and a transformation

basically a transformation of infrastructure in New South Wales. An enormous amount of infrastructure that sadly Chris Mint is not following through. There's almost nothing in the pipeline at the moment that wasn't started by the Liberals and Nationals. Following the council nomination debacle of last year, the Federal Executive took a role in running the State Liberal Party. Given this result, should the Federal Executive now remove itself from the State Liberal Party?

Well, there matters for internal discussion at the moment. My focus is not on the internal machinations of the party. My focus is on making sure we've got a great set of policies to take to the people of New South Wales. My job has to be outward looking, not focusing on internal structures in our party, but focused on getting a great set of policies. But that is important because that plays a role in pre-selection of the candidates who you will need to win the next election. Yes.

Well, my understanding is that the federal intervention won't be around longer than this year. It's due to expire on 30 June. I don't know whether it will go any longer than that, but generally candidate selection will be done by conventional pre-selections, which will basically be plebiscites by local branch members. I know you don't get a vote. Who would you like to see as the federal Liberal Party leader? Oh, again, I'm not...

I'm not going to... Come on, Mark. Who do you want to work with? Look, good try, but I think, you know, a few names being bandied around it, I could work with any of them. And that's my job. My job is to make sure we've got strong collaboration between state and federal oppositions because there's just too much at stake. You know, I respect the decision of the voters on Saturday and I congratulate the Prime Minister, but we are seeing prosperity in Australia slide backwards. Every other OECD country has seen...

big gains in living standards in the last couple of years. Australia has been the exception to the rule and we just can't afford to have that continue. Well, just lastly, Mark, given this is now a result, there is so much brand damage to the Liberal Party brand. Does it make it impossible for you to win the next election?

Absolutely not. Look, here in New South Wales, as I say, we're focused on the things that matter. We've got a minority government. It's a minority government that's performing poorly. It's a government that has ripped money out of schools and hospitals and infrastructure. It's lacking imagination. It's lacking vision. And I think we have a great chance to win in 2027. But at the end of the day, it's a matter for the voters and we've got to come up with the goods. Always good to talk to you. Thank you, Mark. Thanks, Clinton. Mark Speakman, the New South Wales Opposition Leader.