Opinion
The official review of the catastrophic 2025 election was always going to leak. The opposition leader, Angus Taylor was foolish, and/or naive in the extreme, to think that it could be kept secret.
It was a grave error of judgment, both politically and morally, to even contemplate that it should be withheld.
White-hot anger erupted inside the parliamentary party and the party more broadly after the federal executive on Friday, at Taylor’s urging, decided almost unanimously to try to cover up the reasons for a defeat which Taylor on Monday described in magnificent understatement as “a bad outcome”.
If only it had been just bad.
If only it had not delivered the worst result in more than 80 years, taking the party to the brink of extinction and rendering it so inept that it has been overtaken by One Nation. But it did.
Trying to run a protection racket, to cover up their own mistakes as well as those of the former leader has only made people angrier, more frustrated and more inclined to give up.
At a meeting last year, the authors of the report, Nick Minchin and Pru Goward, were told in no uncertain terms by surviving MPs not to hold back and to make sure their findings were released.
They promised that would happen. They agreed to take on the assignment after they were assured it would be made public. The opposition leader Sussan Ley promised last year it would be released.
Minchin, who led the national Right for years, cannot believe his party has sunk so low.
On Monday, before his former factional ally, Peter Dutton, accused him of a hit job, Minchin was still pleading for the party to release it.
“Fundamentally the party owes it to its thousands of members, supporters, donors and former members to expose the reasons why we had the worst campaign in our history”, Minchin told me.
The draft report of the Liberal Party’s 2025 federal election review, leaked on Tuesday morning to Niki Savva. It was tabled in parliament by the Labor government on Tuesday afternoon.
“People who worked their butts off have a right to know what happened and to help make sure it doesn’t happen again. It is an outrage to hide that from loyal supporters.
“If recommendations remain secret I don’t have confidence they will be implemented.”
Once loyal supporters have been texting him to say they can no longer support the party.
The only member of that executive who spoke in favour of releasing it was the former NSW premier, Nick Greiner.
The review, unsurprisingly, laid much of the blame squarely at the feet of former opposition leader Peter Dutton.
At its meeting in December the executive baulked at releasing the report after threats from Dutton to sue the party. Dutton texted the party president, John Olsen, warning of possible legal action just as the executive was debating the review.
By that time, my book on the election, Earthquake, which had explored the same territory, including on-the-record revelations about what went wrong in the campaign – as James Paterson said, “everything” – and which included on-the-record quotes from Dutton, had been out for a month.
Niki Savva is a regular columnist and the author of Earthquake, which details the inside story of the 2025 election.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
Niki Savva is an award-winning political commentator and author. She was a staffer to former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello, and is a member of the board of Old Parliament House.