The Liberal Party has just experienced its worst-ever loss at a federal election. This abysmal result is evidence that our broad church is dying. But why?

One theory is that the Liberal Party has a ‘women problem’ i.e. not enough is being done to help women enter Parliament. Add to this that women, especially those in their 40s, are abandoning the party in droves at the ballot box, and it’s not hard to see why the finger is being pointed. But it is pointing in the wrong direction.

The Liberal Party does not have a ‘women problem’. It is full of intelligent, capable, and ambitious women who care deeply about Australia’s future. However, the overwhelming majority of these women haven’t had children yet, don’t have children at all, or have grown children who’ve flown the coop.

It is not women who are missing from the Liberal Party, it is families.

When Menzies talked of the Forgotten People, he resolutely emphasised the importance of homes material, homes human, and homes spiritual. The real life of the nation, he said, is to be found in the homes of people who ‘see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race’. He understood and believed in the critical importance of families to the health and wealth of the nation.

John Howard knew this too, stating that ‘every arm of government policy should be directed towards assisting and strengthening Australian families’. And while talking points are always careful to include buzz words like ‘everyday families’ (whatever they are), it is little more than lip service.

For the past decade, the Liberal Party has sacrificed its beliefs on the altar of popularity, endorsing candidates and policies that satisfy focus groups instead of families. By pursuing what is popular instead of what is right, the party has abandoned its core constituency and been abandoned by it in return.

This is not just an electoral issue. On the organisational side too, families are the forgotten people. Branch meetings have become blood sport, social events are anything but social or eventful, and youth divisions are treated as breeding grounds for the next generation of staffers and career politicians. None of this has amounted to overwhelming electoral success, let alone a surge in membership.

There is a saying among churchgoers: ‘If the Church isn’t crying, it’s dying.’ In other words, the survival of the church depends on future generations of churchgoers – the ones running through the pews or crying on the floor – more than on the current generation. Not only does this encourage families to attend church, it builds the church around them; acknowledging the family unit as the beating heart of the institution.

The Liberal Party is dying when it should be crying. So what is to be done? It must rebuild, and it must do so around the family. At an organisational level, this requires a reorientation away from policy and towards people.

First, it is too narrow-minded to insist upon gender-based quotas, as if all women think and vote the same way. Women in their 40s (read: mothers) don’t vote for the Liberal Party because they don’t see themselves reflected in it. It is not that they don’t care about politics, they do; but while politicians debate about the future of Australia, mothers are busy debating with the future of Australia. The Liberal Party should be a place where the two can occur simultaneously.

(I know this to be true – I am a Liberal Party member, former staff member to federal Liberal politicians, and now, a 34-year-old mother to two young children. Even this relatively long association with the party (at least the last decade of my life) does not provide a pathway for me to practically contribute as a mother.)

Families should be encouraged to bring children to branch meetings – what better way is there to instil in them the importance of parliamentary democracy and its hard-won freedoms of thought, worship, speech, and association?

Functions and social events should be opportunities for members to learn about and appreciate one another. Consider what might happen if the Liberal Party held a family activity day (or any kind of open day for that matter). Let’s further dare to imagine holding key events at family-friendly times in family-friendly settings.

And then there is the Young Liberals division which, at best, has become a proxy for university politics. At worst, it is mobilised to act as judge, jury, and executioner in factional warfare. This does nothing to attract young people to the party outside of those with political ambition. Perhaps it is time to carve out a space for Young Liberal Families in order to provide a more casual setting within which to socialise and organise.

Members will not appear out of thin air; they need to be nurtured. It is important to stress the point that by engaging families at the organisational level, the party will naturally engage men and women in political debate. And if the Liberal Party wins back families, it wins back younger men and women, building a stable of potential representatives rooted in their local communities and in touch with mainstream Australia.

Community is key – build it and they will come. The Liberal Party’s stronghold in rural and regional Western Australia is of little surprise to those of us who live here, where a sense of community underpins daily life. I live in a farming community (note: they’re called that for a reason) and know firsthand that when your back is against the wall, it’s the people who rally around you that keep you going. Community is the essence of the Liberal Party that must be recaptured.

The Liberal Party must do more to support families and households by fighting for them in every policy discussion. We are the party of aspiration – we are lifters, not leaners; we believe in a hand up, not a handout; we want Peter and Paul to succeed. Families don’t want short-sighted sweeteners that only last until election day, they want a party that will glove up and front up no matter how bloody the fight and how numerous the rounds.

When we have done this in the past, when we have nailed our colours to the mast, we have succeeded. And succeed again we must – not for our own sake but for the sake of all Australians.