news, act-politics

Senior Liberal figures are warning the party will be stuck in the political wilderness if it makes Alistair Coe leader, arguing a shift to the right would fail to heed the lesson from Saturday's election loss. The counting continued on Monday, but the final result was still difficult to predict in a number of seats, including Ginninderra and Brindabella. In Brindabella, the Liberals' Nicole Lawder and Sex Party's Steven Bailey are still tipped as the most likely chances for the last seat, and Ginninderra appeared to be a tight race between two Labor candidates – sitting member Chris Bourke and newcomer Gordon Ramsay. The Greens were also hopeful that their lead Ginninderra candidate Indra Esguerra remained a chance. Labor ACT branch secretary Matthew Byrne said the result in Ginninderra was still too close to call on Monday. "It's a testament to all five of our candidates worked extremely hard in that electorate," he said. "It's one that put the Labor party in a position to win the third seat, against all expectations." Meanwhile, positions within the Liberal party on leadership appeared to be polarising on Monday. Liberal ACT Senator Zed Seselja backed fellow conservative Alistair Coe as the "best alternative standout" leader should there be a spill, and others within the party were questioning whether Mr Hanson's leadership was tenable following the result. Mr Hanson has already said his deputy will lead the Liberal party at some point in the future, whether that is "in two weeks time or further down the track". Mr Seselja and Mr Coe met at Parliament House on Monday, although a spokeswoman said it was only to debrief on the campaign. But other senior Liberal sources told Fairfax that making Mr Coe leader would be a mistake in a left-leaning city like Canberra. One, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would almost certainly mean another loss in 2020, unless Labor had a disastrous term. He said the party needed to address fundamental problems that were keeping moderates either at bay or out of the party, while giving conservatives power. "The Liberal party taking Alistair Coe as leader now would be like the Labour Party in Britain taking [Jeremy] Corbyn as its leader," he said. "Difficult though it may be, they've got to stick with Hanson and they've got to address these underlying problems with the party, where they've effectively killed off the moderates." He said Saturday's loss came about because the Liberals looked like a "classically conservative with a conservative message" party, which never played well in the ACT. The Liberals' messaging on rates was cited as an example. "In other parts of Australia, great message ... people will lap it up. But Canberra is different," he said. A second Liberal source said there never appeared to be any real strategy for overcoming the clear barriers to achieving a 13-seat majority, which realistically meant three-seat wins in the left-leaning Ginninderra, and in Yerrabi, where the case against light rail was harder to prosecute. He suggested Mr Hanson and Mr Coe had failed to perform in the campaign, and said the party needed to have a "good hard look at itself", and realise that conservatism was not the right approach in Canberra. "Our party needs to take a good hard look at itself. If you want to be a hard-right party in a centre-left town, you need to think about that," he said. Mr Coe told ABC radio on Monday afternoon that the leadership had "crossed his mind", and that he was "keen on the job at some point in time". But he said the issue was not his focus at the moment, and he was concentrating on the ongoing vote count. He said one of the party's strengths had been its unification and "how we've worked together". The party room is expected to meet next week, once the final result is known.

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