Indigenous leader Warren Mundine has called on the centre-right Liberal Party to re-focus on Australian values to win over voters again following its crushing defeat in the 2025 federal election.
At the launch of the state Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Victoria on June 20, Mundine, CPAC’s chairman, said the party was no longer what it once was.
“We must bring it back to what it should be. We must bring it back to be the fighter for our freedoms and liberties,” he told attendees.
In addition, the party leader said the Liberals would respect and represent “modern Australia.”
Mundine’s remarks were echoed by Daniel Wild, the deputy executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs and former Liberal candidate for Spence, who pointed out that the Liberals had adopted many progressive policies in the past decades.
Refocusing on Australian Values
Mundine said the Liberals needed to refocus on Australian values—rooted in freedom, democracy, and the Australian way of life—which, he argued, the party’s recent election campaign failed to reflect.“The Australian public is very angry. They’re not happy,” he said.
“We’ve just seen the latest [economic] figures across this country, and we’re going backwards very quickly,” he said.
Mundine said the rejection of The Voice constitutional change was an example of an initiative going against Australian values. Labor’s proposal involved permanently embedding an Indigenous advisory body into the federal parliament.
Mundine was a campaigner against The Voice and co-founded Australians for Unity with Senator Jacinta Price. The initiative was credited with derailing Labor’s $365 million (US$237 million) initiative.
“We proved that Australians actually support our values. Sixty percent of Australians voted for those values,” Mundine said.
The CPAC chairman also said they found similar success with Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s campaign in 2022.
“I first met her in 2022, and we went out and worked on the Liberal Party’s campaign in Western Melbourne,” he said.
“At the end of that campaign, it was the only area for the Liberal Party in Melbourne that had a 9 percent swing, and we didn’t talk about left and right.
Concerns Socialist Party Gaining Steam
Meanwhile, Victorian MP David Limbrick from the Libertarian Party said the state had drifting toward an authoritarian left with the growing socialist influences—namely the Victorian Socialists Party.“They’re really growing. They’re very well organised. They’re very animated,” he said.
The MP noted that a key strength of the socialist movement was its adherence to a clear set of principles—something he argued was lacking in conservative and centre-right movements.
“If we are going to have any hope of defeating that type of thing, we need to have those principles on our side of politics—things like individual liberty,” he said.
“We need to actually believe in the rights of the individual. We need to actually believe in freedom of speech. We actually need to believe in free markets, like this is a really important thing.”
