Liberal Party executives were due on Friday to examine an internal review into last year’s federal election campaign. Its delivery comes just days after the resignation of federal director Tony Nutt.
Michelle Grattan tells associate professor in journalism at the University of Canberra, Caroline Fisher, that the party HQ has got to share some of the responsibility for the campaign.
“But the main responsibility I would have thought lies with the politicians, the leader. Malcolm Turnbull ran a poor campaign,” Grattan says.
“It is true that the Liberal Party has not got a very good on-the-ground campaigning capacity, and that must be sheeted home to the federal executive. You don’t build that up just at the last moment, you’ve got to develop that throughout a term, throughout more than one term.
"Also, fundraising is clearly a problem for the Liberals these days. It used to be Labor that was crying poor and Liberals got a lot of money from business. Now business is more reluctant to kick in and I think that the campaign was under-resourced.
"But if the leader had been really firing, if people had seen a vision from Malcolm Turnbull, then some of those problems with the campaign wouldn’t have been so important.”