A 6-month-long internal soul-searching exercise, designed to examine the Liberal Party’s historic election loss, has been abandoned after it became obvious a soul did not exist.
The report’s authors – a collection of party elders and external consultants – said no stone was left unturned in looking for a soul. “We checked the policy basement, the values drawer, the folder labelled ‘principles’, but all we found were some talking points from 1996 and a half-finished strategy labelled ‘How to Blame Immigrants For Everything’.
Insiders say the party had hoped to uncover at least a small fragment of genuine conviction, or failing that, something they could rebrand as conviction before the next election. But the results were conclusive.
“It’s not just missing. It’s as if it never existed,” one person familiar with the report said. “We found more evidence of a commuter car park roll-out plan in 2022 than of a soul”.
The report recommended developing an interim soul using focus groups and generative AI. Despite the findings, the party insisted it remains committed to its core mission: connecting with its base, doing what Barnaby Joyce says and absolutely not changing anything at all.
