Richard Wilson: Liberals must win back the middle class to stay relevant

In Australian politics, the middle class has become curiously invisible.

We in the Liberal Party — who once drew strength from what Menzies called “the forgotten people” — have suffered crushing defeats, most recently in last week’s Federal election and weeks earlier in WA. These results weren’t accidents. They are the consequence of losing touch with our natural constituency.

Eighty-three years after Menzies’ landmark address, his insights remain prescient. Yet today, our political rhetoric too often borrows from the divisive playbooks of Trump’s America or Brexit Britain, rather than engaging with the distinctly Australian experience: a quiet frustration that life isn’t getting easier, even as we continue to hold high hopes for our families and futures.

In WA, where the Liberal presence has withered to near-irrelevance, we need more than messaging tweaks. We need a fundamental reconnection with middle Australia’s personal circumstances, beginning with five underlying truths.

First, Australian households have changed. The single-income family with a male breadwinner is no longer the norm. Nearly 74 per cent of couple families with children aged 0–14 now have both parents working. Today’s middle class balances dual incomes, outsourced domestic services, complex child care arrangements, and financial stress despite respectable earnings.

A 36-year-old healthcare worker in Perth embodies this reality. Juggling irregular shifts and the care of two children, her family earns enough to be considered middle class — yet housing costs consume nearly 40 per cent of their post-tax income. We do not speak convincingly to her daily experience. Worse, our rhetoric often judges her family’s pragmatic choices rather than championing their aspirations.

Secondly, employment is transforming. Stable, long-term jobs are giving way to gig work, contract roles, and careers threatened by technological disruption. Over half of workers now expect their job’s required skills will change in the coming years due to AI and automation. A 42-year-old accountant in Joondalup whose expertise in corporate compliance now competes with intelligent software doesn’t oppose innovation, but he reasonably expects leadership that recognises his predicament. He wants a clear, practical pathway to keep contributing. Too often, his concerns are met with silence or patronising assumptions that he can’t cope without government support.

Thirdly, the middle class has become significantly more diverse. People who migrated here since 2000 now make up about one in six members of the workforce. In metropolitan Perth, about 34 per cent of small businesses are operated by first or second-generation migrants. The Vietnamese-Australian family running an IT services firm in Malaga exemplifies this new middle Australia. They value education, work ethic, and upward mobility — principles entirely aligned with the Liberal tradition of self-reliance and enterprise. Yet our messaging and policy priorities don’t speak to them.

Fourthly, environmental pressures have become economic ones. WA farmers and regional producers face worsening soil degradation, water scarcity, and extreme weather events. In the past 30 years, winter rainfall in southwest WA has fallen by 24 per cent, undermining agricultural productivity and resilience. A wheat farmer in Merredin, using regenerative practices to prevent erosion, isn’t anti-development or ideologically green. He’s an environmental pragmatist focused on what works. He doesn’t want culture wars about climate. He wants sensible, evidence-based policies that protect both his income today and his land for tomorrow.

Fifthly, middle class Australians remain far more compassionate than some commentators suggest. Eighty-six per cent agree that unemployment payments should be enough so no one skips meals, and 84 per cent believe those payments should cover access to medical care. But sympathy for the needy does not equate to tolerance for waste or systems that entrench dependency. What many oppose isn’t compassion — it’s inefficiency, a lack of initiative, and a government that fails to empower people.

If the Liberal Party is to rebuild, we must do more than repackage old ideas. We must craft policy that reflects today’s middle class reality — addressing housing affordability without undermining existing homeowners, recognising dual incomes as the norm in family life, preparing workers for inevitable technological change, pursuing environmental strategies that ensure both growth and sustainability, and recognising the entrepreneurial contributions of migrant communities as central to our national success.

The potential electoral benefits of doing so are compelling. While our primary vote has fallen to historic lows in WA, the untapped coalition of middle class voters — spanning traditional suburbia, aspirational migrant communities, small business operators and pragmatic rural producers — is a formidable electoral force.

What unites these voters is neither demographic profile nor unchanging policy preferences, but fundamental values: reward for effort, opportunity through education, security for all law-abiding citizens, and compassion without wastefulness.

Menzies understood that electoral success flows from first understanding voters’ personal circumstances, then demonstrating how Liberal principles offer meaningful solutions. We have this precisely backward — starting with ideological pronouncements, hectoring voters to fall in line, and then dismissing them as “woke” or “elitist” when they don’t, even when those labels couldn’t be further from the truth.

The party that first sees middle Australia clearly and speaks to its hopes, not just its frustrations, will dominate politics for a generation.

The only question is: will it be us?

Richard Wilson is a former State president of the WA Liberal Party