Ultimate act of revenge could change Australia forever: What happens NOW after a wild start to politics in 2026: PETER VAN ONSELEN
The Coalition’s crisis isn’t just that it’s divided, it can’t even manage its divisions with basic competence or decency.
Leadership aspirants Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor met with their right wing factional fellow traveler’s in Melbourne on Thursday to discuss a leadership move against Sussan Ley.
It was the very same day as former Liberal MP Katie Allen’s funeral.
Stay classy, gentlemen…! There are days when political ambitions should be parked, and a day of mourning for a former colleague is one of them.
Instead, the boys gathered at Senator James Paterson’s home in a leafy Melbourne suburb, and it was caught on camera. It looked amateurish, even somewhat thuggish.
The Liberals are a party trapped in their own bad habits.
And now, having canvassed his support, Hastie has decided he won’t contest the Liberal leadership because he doesn’t have the numbers.
In other words, they were caught plotting, and one of the plotters has already discovered he can’t pull it off.
Anthony Albanese has every reason to lap up the Australian Open from the front row… his opponents are melting down. Above, watching Carlos Alcaraz come back and defeat Alexander Zverev during the semis on Friday evening
The Liberal Party doesn’t need help reinforcing the stereotype that it’s a party women should avoid like the plague.
But the optics of the Hastie-Taylor catch up – with a coterie of hangers-on – on the day a former female colleague was laid to rest, certainly helped solidify the stereotype.
A group of conservative men plotting to knife the party’s first federal female leader before she’s even been in the role for a full year. On a day of mourning.
That isn’t just ruthless, it’s clumsy, self-indulgent and strategically stupid. Albo might be a hopeless PM leading an equally hopeless government, but at least they aren’t this lot!
Labor has been in deep trouble over what happened in Bondi, for its handling of the related issues before and after the tragedy.
The public mood has been sour. Polling has shifted. Yet the Opposition just couldn’t help itself, making it the story for all the wrong reasons.
The Liberals’ leadership mess is being turbocharged by the Nationals breaking their formal coalition because Ley had the temerity to enforce a century old convention that shadow cabinet ministers can’t vote against shadow cabinet decisions.
David Littleproud’s reported behaviour toward Ley, allegedly shouting at her and demanding she resign during a telephone conversation, is ugly, if accurate. The Nationals leader refused to deny it happened when questioned about the call on Sky News.
David Littleproud allegedly shouted at Sussan Ley during the Nationals’ rupture last week – a claim he is yet to deny
Even if the details are contested, the broader pattern is unmistakable: conflict is now performed through threats, tantrums and attempted public leveraging.
And what about the timing of the Nationals theatrics when departing the Coalition? It happened on the very same day allocated as a national day of mourning for the Bondi victims.
Ley enforced a basic rule of frontbench solidarity, and the Nationals responded as if it were an act of provocation.
The Coalition can’t operate if its leaders can’t enforce collective decisions. It also can’t operate if enforcing discipline triggers a public rupture.
The Nationals, having broken the Coalition, should now be left to wither on the political vine, only welcomed back if they admit their actions were out of line. And only once their inadequate leader is turfed out and replaced.
Then there is the hypocrisy amongst the Liberal frontbenchers inside the Melbourne meeting on Thursday.
Hastie, as a backbencher, is entitled to talk about leadership if that is the game he wants to play. Backbenchers can plot.
But Taylor is on the frontbench. So were others at the meeting, namely Paterson and John Duniam.
The last plotter standing: If Angus Taylor can unite the right faction and pick off a few moderates, he’ll take over the leadership from Sussan Ley… Read more below
The idea that senior frontbenchers can participate in an overthrow discussion while serving under the leader they are plotting against is deeply wrong.
And while Hastie has now publicly ruled himself out on the grounds he can’t get the support, the meeting still happened and the intent was still there.
Paterson’s home, of all places, was the venue chosen for a meeting designed to undermine the leader. He is on Ley’s leadership team.
And ironically, the meeting occurred shortly after Paterson appeared on radio to declare that he supports Ley: because he’s on the frontbench and the Westminster tradition demands frontbenchers support their leader.
The meeting also reinforced the perception of a closed male network operating above the formal structures of the party.
Which brings us to another little detail that tells a broader story about the Liberal Party’s woes.
Hastie reportedly attended the Athenian Club while in Melbourne, a men’s only club no less.
The men gather, the men plot, the men decide. Then the party wonders why it has a female voter problem.
No one needs to moralise about this, it’s about cold hard political optics: A party that already struggles with professional women in metropolitan Australia can’t afford visual reinforcement like Hastie and his fellow travelers provided as they sought agreement on how to depose the party’s first female leader.
When voters see a party obsessing over itself in the wake of a tragedy, they rightly wonder: if this is how they behave in opposition, how would they behave in government?
And Labor benefits.
The government has given the public an ample number of reasons to doubt its competence lately, yet the Coalition has handed the PM political cover by making itself look even worse.
So… what happens next?
Irrespective of whether Ley survives the upcoming sitting week of parliament or not, it’s pretty clear she’s a lame duck leader.
But the leadership speculation has already produced a farce: one supposed contender, Hastie, has now conceded he doesn’t have the support to run, while the other, Taylor, is still on the frontbench despite the plotting.
If he soons run against Ley as the unified candidate of the party’s right, he’ll need some of the party’s moderates to walk away from Ley.
That’s entirely possible, sooner or later.
As for the Nationals, if they were smart they would dump Littleproud and come crawling back to the Liberals with a new leader who pledges to work with the senior Coalition partner more constructively.
But this mob of Nationals in parliament don’t seem particularly smart… which is why the Liberals should leave them to be picked off by One Nation candidates one seat at a time at the next election, starting with senators no longer safe as part of Coalition tickets in Victoria and NSW.
