ari89
MOSSAD Deputy Director
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/21/2143242.htm?section=australiaLiberal Party leaders from across Australia have agreed to set up a national council in an effort to win back support.
The party has lost 23 consecutive state elections and is currently out of office in all nine governments.
"We have resolved that we will establish a council of state and Territory and country leaders. And that council will be a permanent council, it will meet on a regular basis at least twice a year and we anticipate more frequently," he said.
NSW Liberal Leader, Barry O'Farrell agreed it was important for the Party to share responses to problems faced at a state level.
Queensland's Mark McArdle said the Party had not been engaging with the Australian people for some time.
"What we've failed to do is understand what they want us to do. We haven't looked at ourselves and said, like business has to do every day of the year, reinvigorate yourself, make yourself relevant and move forward," Mr McArdle said.
South Australia's Martin Hamilton-Smith said it was important for Australians to realise that the current dominance of the ALP in governments both state and federally was not good for democracy.
"We want to see Liberals back in office at a state level and at a federal level and the best way to help our federal colleagues is to make sure that state Liberal governments are returned to office," he said.
"We need to lead on policy, we need to hold state labor governments to account but we also need to be out there with better ideas of our own," Mr Hamilton-Smith said.
Tasmanian Liberal leader, Will Hodgman said today's meeting had been about getting "collective solidarity" on how the Liberal Party was faring.
"We've listened the result of the federal election, we're going to take some lessons from that and we're going to become more relevant to Australian voters," he said.
ACT Liberal Leader, Zed Seselja said the Party needed to focus on areas needing improvement.
"We need to take responsibility for where the Liberal Party hasn't been as good as it should, but I think that has changed and we're moving forward in a positive way."
"We're seeing a new generation of leaders coming through and that new generation is going to lead the Liberal party back into government across the nation," Mr Seselja said.
The Northern Territory's Country Liberal Party Leader, Jodeen Carney said it was important to examine policy development and how candidates are preselected.
"The bottom line is we need to pitch to all of the voters of our jurisdictions, clearly we've not been doing that very well, our predecessors haven't done that very well," she said
It would have been nice if they did this prior to losing 2 elections concerning me last year