The structural failure of the Liberal Party, which is the reason we set up the Liberal Reform Association, has sadly borne fruit.

Following the tragedy at Bondi Beach people saw, in stark relief, how disconnected the political class of Labor and the LNP have become from the people.

It is not only the legislative reaction of politicians to Islamic terrorism, but also the decades of policies that went into creating an unstable cultural situation. The core issue is not that we should address antisemitism or hate speech now that these extreme beliefs are in the country. It is about not importing antisemitism and hate in the first place.

Commonsense demands that when you are being wounded, you take the first step to make sure it doesn’t get any worse by immediately stopping the cause.

That is the bleeding obvious to the people of Australia but not, it seems, to our careerist Liberal and National political class.

It came as a surprise to the people that both the Labor Party and the Liberals were so stupid as to not understand the core of the problem. Or, if we are to be cynical, they actually did understand but didn’t want to do anything about it.

It makes sense for the Labor Party to maintain high immigration, even with the risk of radical ideologies tagging along for the ride, as migrant communities tend to vote Left, particularly when offered support in the Budget. It is my view that the Labor Party has flipped 20 seats in what would historically never be Labor areas.

The mindset of the Liberals and most of the Nationals is harder to fathom.

Ostensibly, they get no electoral benefit from high immigration, yet they can’t bring themselves to oppose it even though it specifically damages their potential constituencies and takes a number of potentially winnable seats out of contention.

Let us reveal how this happens, and in doing so, explain why what the Liberal Reform Association is trying to achieve is so important. With the constitutional changes we propose, we can turn the Liberal Party around.

Let us be perfectly clear. Had the LNP fought against mass migration policies from day one, and insisted on similar assimilation efforts as historic governments, the Bondi tragedy would never have happened. Yes, you can blame Malcolm Fraser for starting it but there have been a lot of Coalition governments who could have put a stop to the decline. They certainly had the numbers in Canberra.

Today, if the Libs and Nats had acknowledged the underlying cause of Bondi and stated, unequivocally, that their election campaign would involve a US-style approach of stopping immigration from nations that carry a high risk of terror and social unrest, Labor would not have been able to introduce either the gun or the hate speech legislation.

It only works for Labor while the Libs are silly enough to support it.

Otherwise, Labor would know they have to wear the consequences of this dreadful legislation all on their own when things go wrong. Trust us. Labor would not have done it. But it is worse than that. Now that the Libs co-own the legislation and are bragging about their role, they will fight to preserve it at the next election. The Libs haven’t yet realised that their entire voting constituency believes they are cowards trying to polish a turd. It is not going to end well.

Don’t blame Sussan from HR.

Instead, let us ask, how did the Liberals end up so totally out of touch with their constituencies?

It didn’t happen overnight.

It is a function of human nature, the compulsory preferential voting system, and the Liberal Party constitutions nearly all of which are seriously dysfunctional in how they select their personnel.

But these Liberal Party rules of operation can be changed more easily than anyone realises.

Over time, a structural disaster has happened to the Liberals and to a slightly lesser extent to the National Party.

Let me set out some home truths.

Firstly, most politicians realise that, other than for quite rare landslides such as the Dutton debacle, only about 10 per cent or so of seats ever change hands and most of them are known well in advance.

Ninety per cent of careerist LNP politicians believe that even if they do nothing to appease the voters, they will keep their job after the next election. The compulsory preferential system means that conservative voters who vote One Nation in protest will still preference the LNP before Labor.

Therefore, the only thing LNP politicians fear is a loss of pre-selection or optional preferential voting.

Secondly, most politicians of a careerist non-conservative disposition believe that the likely consequences of changing the status quo, even if it was a campaign promise or a core party commitment, is that they will lose net votes, not gain votes. Do something good, lose a seat. So, they are incentivised to ensure that nothing of substance gets done and only high-minded and expensive trivial things like Net Zero nonsense are enacted. They don’t mind if the conservative voters go to One Nation because their preferences will come back to them anyway, but they don’t want to alienate any swinging voter.

Thirdly, most careerist, non-conservative LNP politicians do not want their ranks expanded with new conservative politicians who actually want to enact changes that conservative voters want. They, and their acolytes in the party organisation, actively block conservative party memberships so that conservative-minded candidates can’t win pre-selections, get elected, and agitate for changes that might involve upsetting swinging voters and potentially losing votes for the careerists. The Liberal Party membership decline has been a deliberate policy.

Further to that, careerist politicians collude in gaming pre-selection delegate entitlements, thereby further excluding conservative candidates. They don’t care if these people run for One Nation.

Fourthly, the entire policy development process has been captured to prevent conservatives from introducing even popular conservative policy into the party framework.

For instance, while 90 per cent of the party membership totally opposes mass immigration (and has done so for at least a decade), no one has been able to get that into any sort of Liberal Party policy framework that puts any pressure on the careerist politicians to do anything about it.

Fifth, the parliamentarians choose the party leader.

The careerists do not want a leader who wants to argue for any change to the status quo. They want a leader who will prioritise their re-election over the riskiness of trying to actually win. Opposition is very comfortable for them.

For example, not one Coalition politician objected to Peter Dutton’s pathetic immigration policy at the last election of reducing mass immigration numbers by five per cent.

The immigration was around 500,000 a year when it should have been 50,000. Dutton said something to the effect of, Let’s just make it 475,000 a year which is only 425, 000 more than anyone wants, then gradually reduce it over five years till it is only 350,000 each year more than anyone wants. Really? And no mention of the critical cultural questions that come along with migration.

So, how do we change this behaviour? What is the Liberal Reform Association proposing?

The Canadians have successfully reformed their conservative movement and have nearly 2 per cent of their population as members of their Conservative Party. By contrast, the Liberals here have less than 0.1 per cent of the population as members.

We know it is possible to fix this mess because Canada did it. Here are the critical steps:

1. You let the party members vote for and select the party leaders at the federal, state, and local levels. And the leadership candidate doesn’t have to be in the Parliament. Successful business and community leaders could put their hand up. Even Tony Abbott could test the waters. The wisdom of the crowd will always get it right.
2. The members alone, with one vote, one value, select all the local government and parliamentary candidates and continue to assess their ongoing performance. No delegate distortions or gaming allowed.
3. The party needs to run in local government. The housing shortage, for instance, is hugely influenced by local government incompetence. We need to get in there and fix it. But equally importantly, we need to have potential state and federal candidates active in local politics as potential competition for the careerist state and federal politicians.
4. We will introduce compulsory competitive pre-selections 12 months before each election for every position. This will keep every careerist politician focused on what their members want, not what their colleagues want.
5. We end all of this complicated member vetting nonsense because we need 250,000 members. Let the people join. We reduce membership fees to $20 per annum and ask two questions of each new member applicant.
   1. Are you a member of another political party?
   2. Have you paid this membership fee yourself?
6. The delegate system has to go. There are only members and all must be equal. One vote one value. No special arrangements for women or young people. Although they can have women’s only and young liberal branches, they must get no special privileges. Everything must be based on merit.
7. The relevant members will elect the federal, state, and local government section presidents and their executives. Again, no delegates.

If these reforms are made, two things will quickly happen.

Strong organisation and strong parliamentary leaders will emerge.

We discovered that there were only three Coalition politicians who realised that when the people feel like they are being overwhelmed, they want their representatives to acknowledge that and fight for them. These are Alex Antic of the Liberals and Colin Boyce and Llew O’Brien of the Nationals. The politicians who voted absolutely no bloody way to the hate speech bill. They alone reflect the passion, patriotism, and conservative nature of the membership, not of the self-interested careerist parliamentarians who all sadly showed their true colours.

And the conservative calibre of the parliamentarians will quickly change. If the politicians don’t adapt, they will be replaced by the members.

If you think this is worth fighting for, then get your friends and colleagues to join us. We are trying to change the party in a permanent, meaningful way to safeguard the future survival of conservatism.

In particular, we want as many of the existing Liberal and National Party members as possible to come with us.

These are the people who have hung in, hoping the politicians would fix themselves.

As we’ve just explained, they won’t fix themselves, we have to do it for them.

Follow us. Join us. Save the movement.

Graeme Haycroft is the founder of Red Unions and co-founder of the Liberal Reform Association.