Dead Woman Walking

Sussan Ley may be smiling for the cameras, but behind the scenes, her leadership is on life support.

The Liberals’ first female leader might limp into the new year, but let’s not pretend her days aren’t numbered. She is the political equivalent of a lame horse at Flemington, still on the track but headed for the knackery.

The truth is plain: Ley's leadership is a failed experiment. Installed by panicked moderates after the May 3 election wipeout, she was supposed to reset the Liberal brand. Instead, she buried it. Under her watch, the Coalition's primary vote, according to pollsters Redbridge, has plummeted to a record low of 24%, while One Nation surges to a staggering 18%.

Those numbers herald a political realignment. And unless the Liberals wake up and install someone with backbone and conviction, they’ll bleed votes to the right until the party is nothing more than a husk of what it once was.

Enter Andrew Hastie.

A man of principle. A fighter. A former SAS captain who actually understands the Australia he represents. Hastie is everything Ley is not: decisive, clear-eyed, and unafraid of tackling the hard issues: immigration, energy affordability, and national identity.

The dumping of net zero was more than just a policy pivot for the Liberals. It was mutiny; a conservative revolt against the suffocating climate change orthodoxy that has gripped the Liberals for at least the past four years. I say at least four years because Scott Morrison embraced net zero as policy in October 2021, but the rot actually began when the then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop ratified the Paris Agreement in November 2016, almost a decade ago.

While Hastie didn’t lead the revolt against net zero, he certainly was one of the moral forces behind it. And now, even the Liberal "moderates" know they can’t stop the tide. Some of them, opportunistic as ever, are jumping ship. Not because they agree with Hastie, but because they see the writing on the wall electorally. (Some of those "moderates", though, are sneaky devils who think that a Hastie leadership might be able to be undermined so badly that it will also see off opposition to net zero and commonsense conservatism in the Liberal Party forever and a day.)

I don't believe there will be a leadership spill when federal parliament resumes next week. But in the New Year, Ley will be out. If she lasts to Easter, it will be a minor miracle. One of the main reasons for this will be the absolute shellacking MPs and Senators are going to cop, over the summer break, from their rank-and-file members at Liberal Party branch meetings and Christmas functions.

The Liberal base has had enough of being taken for granted. They're tired of leaders who parrot Labor talking points and then wonder why Pauline Hanson is gaining ground. The outer suburbs and the regions want authenticity, not reheated progressive mush in a blue wrapper.

Normally, the disgruntlement of rank-and-file party members would be papered over and ignored. The grassroots would normally get lectured by the party's faceless men about polling and focus groups. But Blind Freddy can see that the polls are dire for the party. And if the Liberals think they can ride this out with more focus groups, they deserve the electoral annihilation that’s coming.

Britain’s Tories just discovered what happens when you ignore your base. Australia could be next...

... Unless Andrew Hastie. The Member for Canning isn’t just a better option. He’s the only option. Liberal Deputy Leader Ted O'Brien is invisible. Touted frontrunner Angus Taylor has hardly made a dent in the body politic.

And Sussan Ley? She’s a dead woman walking.

“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
– Charles de Gaulle