It's the party with the most election wins under its belt in Australian history and the party of Australia's two longest-serving prime ministers.
But where did the Liberal Party come from, and who are they now?
Here's your guide to Australia's Liberal Party ahead of the 2025 election.
A brief history of the Liberal Party
Formed in 1944, the Liberal Party was born in response to the Labor Party.
Dr Jill Sheppard, senior lecturer at The Australian National University's School of Politics and International Relations, said there was a simple idea behind it.
"The Liberal Party really just formed in response to the Labor Party, and that has shaped not only sort of their history, but it also shapes where they are at the moment," she told SBS News.
Robert Menzies, the founding member of the Liberal Party, was very strong on the idea of individual choice.
His assessment was that the Labor Party had been born out of the union movement and that no-one spoke for people who were self-employed and the middle class.
A bunch of other people thought the same thing, so they banded together to form the Liberal Party, as former Liberal Party frontbencher George Brandis explains.
"The Liberal Party was conceived to represent the broad mainstream of Australia in those days, not organised labour, and it certainly wasn't designed to represent the big end of town either," he told SBS News.
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In 1949, the Liberal Party won its first election, partnering up with the Country Party of Australia, making Robert Menzies prime minister.
"He [Robert Menzies] was hugely successful at creating and sort of driving this sense of purpose that represented an Australian society that made sense to a lot of people, and he called these he's forgotten people," Brandis said.
For this reason, the Liberal Party focused on people who were middle-class, owned small businesses, and professionals.
"Menzies said the rich can look after themselves; the working man is often looked after by his trade union," Brandis said.
"But middle-class people, small business people, professional people, farmers, artisans, those sorts of people have no-one to look after them. So that was the original base of the Liberal Party."
Menzies was a strong advocate of the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act — more commonly known as the 'White Australia Policy'.
But in 1966, the Liberal Party changed laws, paving the way to abolish the policy.
Wait, doesn't liberal mean left?
The Liberal Party is considered to be the more conservative of the two major parties, leaning right.
And since the party is more politically conservative than liberal, the name might seem a bit confusing.
While in other parts of the world, parties that oppose labour are often called conservative, Brandis said that was not the original intent of the party.
"Of the various options that Menzies had in choosing the name of his new party, he avoided calling it the Conservative Party, because he wasn't a conservative, he was a classical liberal," he said.
But Sheppard said there is a conservative element.
"There are two core streams of the Liberal Party, and one is what we would call liberal, but we often call that small liberal. What we mean is there is a genuine belief that the government is not here to help you, that you are your best advocate, that you should you can best decide how to live your life, and the less the government does, the better," she said.
"The conservative stream of the Liberal Party does think that government is okay. They're much less resistant to the idea that government can solve our problems."
What does the Liberal Party look like nowadays?
Nowadays, the Liberal Party traditionally seeks a "smaller, quieter Australia", Sheppard said.
"But what they are less happy about are things like same-sex marriage, open borders, you know, international students. They want a smaller, quieter Australia that looks more like it did in the 1960s," she said.
"It's an incredibly different set of principles that the Liberal Party is trying to manage. Under Peter Dutton, the party feels quite conservative. It feels like a party that just wants us to live quietly, does not want to rock the boat too much."
The Liberal Party teams up with the Nationals in a coalition to form a government.
Brandis describes it as a "functional" and "necessary" relationship.
"The National Party, though, is a very different beast from the Liberal Party," he said.
What have been the Liberal Party's biggest achievements?
Sheppard said the party would be proud of its economic achievements.
"Liberalisation of the economy, you know, the ability for anyone in the middle class or working class to move up in society, to own their own business, to go to university if they wish, to live the kind of life that they choose that isn't tied to their occupation or to what their parents did," she explains.
"They would say that is their core achievement over the last 30 years."
Some of the most well-known Liberal Party policies include:
- Resettling Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War in 1976.
- Establishing the Special Broadcasting Service in 1978.
- Bringing in tougher gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
- And creating Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013.
Which leaders have been part of the Liberal Party?
One of the party's best-known leaders is Harold Holt, who famously went missing in the ocean.
John Howard, the second longest-serving prime minister of Australia, was also a member of the Liberal Party.
The party was last in government in 2022 — and Scott Morrison was the last Liberal Party prime minister of Australia.
Peter Dutton is the current leader and will be the prime minister if the Coalition wins the next election.
He's been a politician for 25 years, and before then was a police officer.
What's ahead for the Liberal Party in this upcoming election?
For this year's election, the Liberal Party's slogan is 'Get Australia Back on Track'.
Their policies include:
- Building Australia's first nuclear reactors
- Being tough on crime
- Reducing wasteful spending, including cutting public service jobs
- Reducing migration
So, how does the party stack up to its original manifesto? Pretty well, Sheppard said.
"Weirdly, I think the Liberal Party is probably closer to its original party than the Labor Party is.
"Even though they've never had a strong sense of purpose necessarily, apart from opposing Labor, there's always been tension between conservatives and liberals inside the Liberal Party. That was the case in 1944 when the party was founded and it's the case today."
