As the Liberal Party’s seismic loss became clear on election night, a handful of students from the University of Melbourne’s Liberal Club trickled into a house party. By midnight, most had left what club president Kai Bowie called a “pretty dull affair, to be honest”.
A public fiasco followed by a subdued after-party might not seem particularly auspicious for young conservatives aspiring to a political future. But in student politics, long the crucible forging the next generation of political powerbrokers, history indicates that adversity in Canberra can sometimes rejuvenate interest.
Bowie says that Liberal Club membership tends to decline when the Liberal Party is in government, observing that it grew in the wake of the party’s 2022 election loss, with membership now sitting around 125 people.
He concedes that most of the club’s members felt dispirited not only by the result, but how the campaign was run. And perhaps perversely, this is driving up membership, he says, despite the party suffering “it’s worst time in its entire history”.
Bowie sees the 2025 defeat as an opportunity for new people to rejuvenate the party and for more centrist values and policies to emerge.
“When there’s a big disaster, there’s a lot of room for people to come in,” said Bowie.
“Overall, young people are quite energised by that, because it’s obvious that change is needed.”
Before they led political parties and fronted national press conferences, many of Australia’s most recognised leaders – including three recent prime ministers – found their initial spark through the politics, protests and parties that are essential to campus life.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese first wielded political influence as a member of the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council (SRC) in the 1980s, a few years after Tony Abbott’s own SRC presidency at the university in 1978.
Around the same time, Julia Gillard’s involvement in student politics, resulted in her election as the University of Adelaide SRC president in 1981-82.
Gillard’s campus campaigns included protesting cutbacks in education, which “spurred [her] activism and engagement in public policy,” she told the Harvard Business Review in 2019.
While some people’s political curiosity is sparked in high school, student interest in politics is often nurtured more broadly at university, says Professor Murray Print, a political education specialist at the University of Sydney.
“Because at university you have so many freedoms, flexibility, and a larger audience.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong was also involved in the University of Adelaide’s political scene, where she was elected general secretary of the Labor Club before joining the national executive of the National Union of Students.
Politicians’ campus activities give them crucial campaign experience – but also political networks. Andrew Crook, senior journalist at online media masthead Crikey, observed on the ABC’s Sunday Extra during Gillard’s leadership in 2013 that “it’s amazing how close some politicians are to the people they were fighting back on student campuses.
“It’s kind of a very weird microcosm that just sort of persists into the present day,” Crook said.
While student politics has long been a launchpad for federal MPs, the influence runs both ways. Shifts at the national level can often reverberate back onto campus, with students’ political ambition shaped by which party holds power at the federal level.
According to Print, in the past, “young people who were supporters of the Liberal Party, and the Nationals perhaps, saw themselves having the government of the day and therefore a more interesting political future.”
Now, Labor’s ascendancy appears to be inspiring some renewed interest on campus according to Alex Gilders, president of the Deakin University Labor Club, which has picked up around 10 new members, adding to a solid, active block of around 20 people.
“We’re stoked,” says Gilders. “It’s put a lot of faith back in [the ALP]”.
The Monash University Greens Society has also seen an increase in membership of up to 10 per cent over the past year, bringing the total to 212 members, according to president Valerie Reeves-Glezer.
The club’s popularity comes despite a lacklustre voter turnout for the Greens, down from four lower house MPs at the last election to a single seat in 2025, a result that has cast a sombre mood over Greens student politics, says Reeves-Glezer.
Despite this frustration, she says members haven’t lost their appetite for fighting for what they believe in.
“[I haven’t] heard a single person in the club talk about leaving the Greens or stepping back from politics.”
