Can the new Federal Coalition be an effective Opposition and start acting like a 'government in waiting' ready to lead?

So, the Liberal and National parties have reformed the Coalition, reset its front bench and the Liberals have resolved their leadership.

Fine, but now comes the hard bit – being an effective opposition.

We haven't had one for a while.

What do Oppositions do?

In our Westminster democracy, 'His Majesty's Loyal Opposition' is an accepted and integrated part of the political system recognised in parliamentary practices and processes though not in the Constitution.

Oppositions have multiple functions – to criticise a government, to hold ministers to account, to identify mistakes and even to thwart and harass government through all available legitimate means if they think the proposed policy is harmful or undesirable. Co-operating with government to improve legislation or bipartisanship on some issue is sometimes both necessary and desirable, like after a national calamity where bipartisanship not partisanship is needed - as long as it is not done too often for too long.

What does the Coalition have to do to be an effective Opposition?

Yet an Opposition's most important role in our system, is to be the "government in waiting". It must be more than just a critic or spoiler of government initiatives. Rather, it must be "policy ready" across all areas to convince voters it is ready to start running the country immediately after an election. It is a case of opposition one day, government the next.

Being the "government in waiting" is what distinguishes official oppositions from commentators, interest groups or minor political parties who may criticise a government but neither seek office nor expect to achieve it. They rarely have the full range of policies ready to implement and are prone to make exaggerated promises as they know they will not have to implement them as they will never be the government. They also mistake platitudes as policy.

Being "policy ready" also means being different to the incumbent government to make things better. How effective this is done is what often determines if the electorate will change their vote to put an opposition into office.

Yet being "policy ready" is a big ask for any opposition, even more so for the current Coalition given its structure and the current political environment.

Challenges facing an Opposition wanting to be the "government in waiting"

Loss of numbers

A political party is in opposition because it has loss seats. The Coalition at the 2022 and 2025 has lost a lot of seats in both houses. This means it has fewer people to do the work of developing and selling the policies to expose government mistakes and convince the electorate they are worthy of their vote.

Staffing

The current opposition with just 70-80 staff thanks to cuts initiated last year by the Albanese Government, cannot possibly match the resources of the government with its 400 plus ministerial staff and the large prime ministerial office with nearly 60 staff.

For the Coalition, it is not just staff numbers that is the only problem, but their quality. Attracting experienced staff to an opposition that has lost two elections and been in turmoil since the last, is difficult. That the non-Labor side also lacks, unlike Labor, some sense of dedication to a "cause", makes it harder to attract "true believers" willing to sacrifice careers to work in what must seem at present an impossible task.

Developing a sense of mission, explaining about what they are for, not just what they are against, is an urgent task that the new Coalition leadership must address to galvanise support and effort. Idealism, not ideology is needed.

Access to government departments

Nor does an opposition have access to the vast resources of government departments that advise ministers on policy, implementation issues, and even critique opposition proposals. By contrast, departmental briefings to oppositions are limited, constrained and supervised by the government ministerial staff.

Also, departments are implementing policies and so know what is not working and keep their ministers informed of such trends. By contrast, an opposition does not have the same access to this feedback. They can get some idea of what is happening by research, combing all the official reports, and talking to the stakeholders involved. On that point, though, an opposition that seems far away from winning the next election, will find that external stakeholders will often be lukewarm in their interactions as they want to talk to those with the power – not those of out of power. This especially applies to the corporate end of town.

Constraints on parliamentary processes

While oppositions can use parliamentary processes like question time, debates, and committees to probe and expose, governments can blunt such efforts. They have the numbers and the Albanese Government after 2025 has increased its majority thus making this easier to do this in the House of Representatives. athey A government can control how long debates will, the order of business and even the length of question time.

Even in the Senate, where the Albanese Government lacks a majority, the Coalition's recent loss of Senate seats means it can now be more easily sidelined by government deal making with the minor parties and the cross-bench on key policy issues.

Complexity of public policy – need for expert assistance and external connections

The increasingly complex nature of modern policy requires access to expert advice that an opposition usually lacks. Labor oppositions partly compensate for this through their reservoir of trade union support. Labor also has greater connection to the growing array of interest and community groups, than the Coalition. Indeed, some suggest the Coalition parties have been "disestablished" from many of our key institutions – the media, universities, professions and even the corporate sector and thus access to their knowledge and inputs.

So, an area where the Coalition, if they are serious about regaining the agenda, must be to develop some innovative ways of making wider community connections.

So where will the Coalition get its ideas and funding from? Australian centre right think tanks are fewer and smaller than their US counterparts and are themselves often sidelined from debates. Funding from contributors will only be forthcoming if the Opposition acts like a genuine "government in waiting" poised, if not to win next time, at least to be relevant in current policy debates – setting the agenda rather than reacting to the one being run by the government.

Conclusion

These are the challenges confronting any opposition, but especially the Coalition given its current depleted state. It was recently reformed, assumedly, to avoid policy "me-tooism" with the incumbent government that seemed to characterised its predecessor. the new Coalition team is supposed to better reflect the core values of its rank and file and its own history. That is important, but those values need to be articulated in real policy terms to show how they would make a difference to people's lives compared to continuing under the present government. Such policies need to be framed in the wider public interest rather than just the opposition's partisan interest of winning office.

It is a big task and time is running out.