Conservative Liberals embrace at CPAC to celebrate the electoral defeat of ‘lefties’ within the party | Liberal party

Former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker has argued the Coalition will remain in opposition “for a very long time” unless it focuses more on conservative social issues, while federal vice president Teena McQueen has welcomed the defeat of “lefties” within the party.

Many guests at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia on Sunday criticised the approach of the Liberal party and ex-prime minister Scott Morrison, suggesting they had been too progressive.

Stoker, a former Queensland senator who failed in her re-election bid in May, called on the party to campaign more on free speech as she accused unnamed colleagues of being “afraid of being called a nasty name”.

“We will not and we cannot win hearts and minds for the cause of freedom just by talking about dollars and cents,” Stoker told the CPAC audience in Sydney. “To keep running campaigns that only offer a one-dimensional ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ will condemn us to opposition for a very long time.”

The Coalition was reduced to just 58 lower house seats at the May federal election.

Brexiter and former UK politician Nigel Farage described Morrison as a “letdown” to murmurs of agreement from the audience. Ross Cameron, a former Liberal MP and Sky News host, criticised Morrison as “one of the worst prime ministers we’ve ever had”.

Former Liberal finance minister Nick Minchin was loudly booed when he told a panel he didn’t believe the party needed to change. McQueen called on the party to “renew” with more conservative candidates after the “lefties” had lost their seats.

In a panel on Saturday, Sky News Outsiders hosts Rita Panahi and Rowan Dean described many Liberal politicians as “bedwetters”, in particular criticising the shadow attorney general, Julian Leeser, for his potential support for the Indigenous voice to parliament. On the same panel, the failed Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, claimed she’d been silenced by the party during the election campaign.

Coalition senators Jacinta Price, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic and Keith Pitt all spoke during the conference as did former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott and one-time Liberal candidate Warren Mundine.

In the crowd were the Coalition senator Gerard Rennick, former senator Eric Abetz, and Victorian state politician Bernie Finn, who was expelled from the Liberal party over controversial anti-abortion comments.

“It is time for conservative politicians, politicians generally, to stand up against this name calling and understand the sky doesn’t fall in,” Antic said in a speech on Saturday.

In her speech on Sunday, Stoker said the Coalition needed to “unify the party” around conservative values.

“You do not need to be a ‘quiet Australian’ any more,” she told the crowd, evoking a phrase Morrison used to describe aspirational suburban voters who took the Coalition to victory in 2019.

Stoker warned the party ran the risk of failing to be relevant to voters like those at the conference – and voiced her frustration with former colleagues.

“Too many Liberals [showed] willingness to just go along with cultural movements they didn’t truly believe in because they weren’t willing to take on the zeitgeist,” Stoker said. “They were too afraid of being called a nasty name to speak up.”

McQueen called on conference attendees to rejoin the Liberal party, acknowledging the concerns of conservative critics. She appeared to welcome the defeat of numerous moderate Liberal MPs in blue-ribbon seats.

“Stick around. We’re listening to you. We hear you. We’re moving forward,” she said.

“The good thing about the last federal election is a lot of those lefties are gone. We should rejoice in that. People I’ve been trying to get rid of for a decade have gone, we need to renew with good conservative candidates.”

McQueen requested supporters “don’t give up on us yet”. Stoker called on critics to “stay and make us better”.