Former New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner warned the Liberal federal executive that burying a review of the 2025 election loss risked backlash from party members and the media, exposing further internal divisions over the move.
As details of the report begin to leak (despite the decision to keep them secret), Guardian Australia can reveal that Greiner raised concerns about the suppression of the report during Friday’s meeting of the party’s top decision-making body.
Greiner, a Liberal Party elder, sits in the federal executive as head of a committee in charge of the New South Wales division. His warnings were confirmed by three sources with knowledge of the meeting’s discussions.
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The executive’s decision to shelve Pru Goward and Nick Minchin’s report in the party’s worst election defeat has angered some MPs, who fear the secrecy could cause more internal damage than the findings would have done had they been published.
Goward and Minchin publicly expressed disappointment in the decision, supported by the majority of those attending Friday’s meeting.
“This is going to turn into a monster,” one senior Liberal said of the decision.
Gisele Kapterian, who narrowly lost the Bradfield seat in last year’s election, said “it’s not doing anyone any favors to keep this report secret.”
“I think it would be much easier to implement a holistic strategy if that report came out to everyone,” he told the ABC.
Guardian Australia has not seen the review, but has spoken to five Liberal sources who have read or been briefed on the findings, which include an assessment that 2025 was the worst campaign the Liberal Party had ever waged.
The review was due to be released before Christmas but was delayed after former leader Peter Dutton raised concerns about some of the findings against him and his chief of staff, including their relationship with campaign headquarters.
Sources confirmed the review was scathing towards Dutton and his team, recommending that the Liberals’ parliamentary leader should never again be allowed to step aside from party headquarters and run the campaign themselves.
Dutton was one of a number of Liberal MPs who lost their seat after a disastrous campaign that was undermined by political gaffes, damaging comparisons to Donald Trump’s “Maga” movement and a thin economic agenda that included a promise to reverse income tax cuts.
Sources confirmed the findings also reflected poorly on current party leader Angus Taylor and his deputy Jane Hume, who as treasurer and shadow finance minister are responsible for the Coalition’s economic agenda.
Taylor was involved in the decision to oppose Labour’s tax cuts, while Hume was the standard-bearer for the disastrous work-from-home policy, which Dutton abandoned during the election campaign. Hume’s comment about “Chinese spies” was also blamed for shifting votes against the Liberals in seats with significant Chinese Australian populations.
Taylor and Hume are both members of the Liberal federal executive.
When asked to explain the reasons for scrapping the review, Taylor said the Liberal Party needed to “look forward, not back”.
“(There have been) a lot of accusations right now about the election, which we know was a bad result. We know there’s a lot to learn from it,” Taylor said, downplaying the leaks.
Greiner was contacted for comment.
