Jeremy Hanson has revealed he lacked the numbers to keep the Liberal leadership, but pledged to be loyal to new leader Alistair Coe and says he plans to stay in politics for the long haul.
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"I wish Alistair well," Mr Hanson said on Thursday in his first interview since the Liberals ousted him as leader in favour of Mr Coe after the election loss. "He was a very very capable, effective and loyal deputy, he's a good friend of mine and he'll get the same friendship, support, professionalism and loyalty from me that he demonstrated in the last term."
Mr Hanson didn't contest the leadership, but concedes the decision was forced on him because he didn't have the numbers.
"I discussed the issue of leadership with my colleagues and it was clear that a majority of my colleagues wanted a change," he said. "... If a majority of the party room had wished me to continue then I would have done so. But that's not the case."
Mr Hanson is shadow attorney-general in the new Liberal line-up, and has already moved to the far end of the corridor from the leader's office, where he has just two staff members.
He says election night was "tough as hell".
"The Liberal Party having been in opposition 15 years, I really really wanted to deliver a victory speech for the 90,000-odd people in Canberra and the supporters and volunteers and the members of the party who had worked so hard and kept the faith with the party for so long," he said.
"I felt that I had let them down. Election-night losing speeches are probably the hardest thing a politician gets to do in their career."
Mr Hanson has already set aside the disappointment and says he intends to contest the 2020 election. He quotes Winston Churchill: Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.
"Yes, I obviously would have liked to be chief minister, but every cloud has a silver lining," he said. "I've had dinner with my family a couple of times since the election, and I've really enjoyed that. Do I lie awake at night tossing and turning? No I don't."
Mr Hanson says he takes full responsibility for the defeat, but he isn't prepared to analyse it in detail, saying that is for a review. In Gungahlin, where the Liberals were comprehensively beaten by Labor, he points to the light rail and lack of a long-term sitting member. He insists the Liberals were a good opposition, ran a strong campaign, and had good policies.
Mr Hanson rejects suggestions that Liberal governments are not trusted in Canberra and that public servants voted Labor. He also rejects the suggestion that he took a Labor policy agenda to the election.
"If I had all the answers in front of me we would have won the election. The reality is we didn't. We won the popular vote in some areas of Canberra and not others. So that needs to be reflected on, why we didn't get the vote that we needed to in Gungahlin."
If Gungahlin residents were swayed by the tramline, Mr Hanson will face the same challenge in his electorate of Murrumbidgee at the 2020 election, as light rail heads south. Asked whether he could sell an anti-light rail message in Woden in 2020, Mr Hanson said the Liberals were yet to decide their stance on stage 2 and would await the business case.
Meantime, he will focus on "probity issues" and the corruption commission.
"I'm going to enjoy this term, I'm not going to wallow in self pity and acrimony and regret, obviously not, what's done is done," he said. "We weren't successful. We'll learn from that. We'll do better next time, and the only way we're going to win the next election is if we're united, if we work hard and we're disciplined and that's what I intend to do."
