It's going to get worse before it gets even more worse.

Please excuse the radio silence. Sparty has been travelling and distracted by personal matters.

Earlier this week

John Roskam

wrote an interesting piece in the AFR. He asked the question:

Is the Liberal Party even trying to win this election.

Good question. Good question.

Roskam concludes with this:

The Coalition has been in power federally for approximately nine of the last dozen years. If, as it (Coalition) claims, Australia is not on track, then perhaps some of the responsibility for that rests with the Coalition itself.

While I think that Roskam’s question was a good one, I too have a question:

Is the Liberal Party even capable of winning an election any more?

Although I still believe that Tony Abbott was mostly a poor Prime Minister, he was an excellent campaigner. Turnbull was terrible. In 2019, Morrison relied on the incompetence of Shorten and the people around him. In 2022, Morrison tried the same trick again but did not work. And in 2025, Dutton seems to be running the Morrison play book again.

Yours truly is not a political operative. Never worked inside a political party let alone an election. But it seems to me that elections are won and lost over the term of government and not over term of the election campaign.

What little policy the Coalition developed was poorly communicated and not stress tested. Some of their ideas were just plain stupid:

• 2 more future funds - beyond idiotic

• FBT free small business lunches - ridiculous

• Tax deductability on mortgage payments - moronic

• Not supporting the government’s tax cut proposal - unbelievable

• Supporting most of the government’s fiscal profligacy - cowardly

Where was the differentiation? Where was the focus on cost of living, NDIS, defence?

Their feeble attempt at reigning in the out of control growth of government fell over at the tiniest of pressures.

There are some out there who seem to delight in the failure of the Coalition because it will force them to go back to first liberal/conservative principles. To fill the benches with true believers.

Don’t hold your breath. For as long as there is a coalition with that clown club of agrarian socialists of the National Party, nope.

3 more years of garbage government is 3 more years of garbage to clean up.

I honestly can’t offer ideas other than make sure your capital is liquid and you have a go bag packed.

It's going to get worse before it gets even more worse.

If Dutton can’t best Albanese and Taylor can’t best Chalmers that is a statement on the paucity of talent within the (misnamed) Liberal Party.