The incoming Liberal leadership team, Leader Brendan Nelson and Deputy Julie Bishop, has two tasks to do – as soon as possible. They need to fix the party personnel, then fix the party constitution. They need to sack the federal director, Brian Loughnane, then sack all the state directors. They have failed.

The Liberals must put street fighters into the job, people with experience of organising, persuading and campaigning. The positions can’t go to former ministerial staffers. They’ve just lost an election. They were part of a soft and bloated government that relied on public money and public servants to get things done.

The new Liberal leadership team needs to remake the party for the twenty-first century. Genuinely. This is a once in a generation opportunity for reform. With the Liberals out of power everywhere, an enormous amount of power will be vested in the leader. They need to seize it.

Firstly, they need to give the federal executive power of the party the ability to intervene in the state divisions the way Labor head office can intervene.

They have then got to give ordinary Australians a reason to be members of the Liberal Party. The party is in desperate need. Last year, a minister gave me a confidential briefing on the state of the membership in their home state. It had more than halved over the life of the Howard government. In a safe country seat, the numbers were down by more than a third. They had halved in a safe city seat. The same had occurred in “Howard battler” territory, a swing seat won in 1996.

The Liberals need to look to the Tories in the UK. Their rank and file needs a say. How about giving them a vote for the party leader, too. Today’s ballot is a leftover from the days of deference. Does the parliamentary party know best? Saturday’s result suggests otherwise.

The RightThinker blog spelt it out on Monday:

A plebiscite would force the leadership contenders to travel the country and convince the grassroots. It would also sharpen their arguments ahead of what will be a brutal period of opposition. There is no rush to elect a leader in the next week.