No doubt Sussan Ley will be breathing a sigh of relief now that Canberra’s ‘killing season’ is over.

While the federal leadership remains intact, the dancefloor of the Liberal Party is still slick with blood.

In just the past month, two state Liberal leaders have been rolled faster than English Test cricketers.

Of the eight Liberal leaders currently sitting in parliaments across the country, only a few led their parties to the last election.

The rest are the products of inter-election spills, and why the ‘libspill’ hashtag has become a staple of Australian politics.

Instead of upholding the stability of the Westminster institution, the party room insists on settling leadership disputes like a high school popularity contest.

The solution is to empower the rank-and-file and give leaders the mandate of the base.

Looking across comparable Anglosphere parties, a clear pattern emerges where parties that trust their grassroots members with a vote tend to keep their leaders.

In Canada, the direct election of leaders by members of the Conservative Party creates a stability we can only dream of. The Canadian Conservative Party also has a remarkably large membership. Perhaps the two are related.

Then there is the humiliating reality that the Australian Labor Party – historically a party of factional psychopaths (at least formalised) – looks like they run the tightest ship in the country.

Following the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd soap opera, Labor introduced a 50/50 ballot split between the caucus and the membership in 2013, and there have been no spills since.

The UK Tories offer a model ripe for poaching: MPs whittle the field down to a final two, and the paid-up members pick the winner.

Alternatively, there is the New Zealand Labour option, which offers a hybrid: when in government, the caucus decides for the sake of stability, but when in opposition, the membership gets its say to help rebuild the movement.

Furthermore, enfranchisement builds engagement.

UK hustings are vibrant, often seeing up to 80 per cent turnout, much higher than general elections. It turns a leadership contest into a festival of ideas rather than a clannish knife fight.

When the parliamentary wing of the party asks members to volunteer for hours and days during campaigns, treats them like ATMs to fund litigation between clashing egos, and then cuts them out of the decision-making process, it’s no wonder many are left feeling used and disillusioned.

Opponents will cite logistical hurdles, noting that the average age of a Liberal Party member is currently somewhere between ‘retired’ and ‘deceased’. But greater participation would work to attract and enfranchise younger people.

Naturally, the power brokers recoil at this because it means the ‘Praetorian Guard’ of factional warlords can no longer dictate terms.

It’s hard enough as it is to control a relatively small and inactive party, imagine the workload if it were to grow!

No doubt the apparatchiks will scaremonger about ‘entryism’ or ‘branch stacking’ to protect their grip. It is much harder to hold in thrall a group of one hundred thousand people than it is membership of ten thousand.

But one man’s branch stacking is simply another’s renewal.

The goal is encouraging enthusiastic, politically aligned, policy driven individuals to join the party and have a say, not pay for memberships and get the proxies of yet another group of apathetic ‘Libs’.

The party already has cooling-off periods, joining fees, vetting, and bans on dual membership that could be strengthened to act as checks and balances.

The argument isn’t that members will always make the right choice; it is that they have the right to choose, and it’s not like the party room’s picks have been a raging success.

Recent election results will tell you otherwise. But better to own your disaster than have one foisted upon you by a backroom deal in the car park of a chicken shop.

A mandated membership vote would, at the very least, slow the frequency of the spills, and give leaders some clear air to fight the opposition party instead of their colleagues.

It would also give the membership a sense of ownership over the party and a feeling that what they think and feel matters.

If the Liberal Party wants to survive, it needs to stop fearing its own shadow.

It is time to broaden the church.