Liberals are quietly withdrawing support from Sussan Ley, hoping she’ll quit
There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are ‘running dead’ to speed up the process as they abandon their first female leader.
There is even a suspicion that some Coalition MPs are “running dead” to speed the process: not going to question time to leave vacant seats behind the isolated Opposition Leader; publicly not backing her personal attacks on Anthony Albanese; sitting sullen and silent when she is ridiculed; and simply becoming engrossed on smartphones and tablets instead of being actively involved.
Labor ministers who have lived through similar experiences even posit that some of Ley’s “friends” are complicit in letting the ship sink under her.
With only one scheduled parliamentary sitting week before the Christmas break in this 2025 election year it is likely that a slow implosion of Liberal leadership will see Ley limp into next year.
All of this is based on two assumptions: first, that Ley’s leadership is doomed and it is only a matter of time before she is replaced; and, second, it is better for the party and her successor, whoever that may be, if the first female federal leader of the Liberal Party is not removed in a bloody political killing season.
The first assumption would seem to be correct; few MPs say they believe Ley can survive until the middle of next year and some think she could be replaced well before based on when the critical policy decision on a 2050 target for net-zero carbon emissions is made and how it is received.
With a series of Liberal and Nationals meetings next week, the Liberals plan to make a net-zero decision and Coalition position announcement on Sunday, November 16, a full week before the return of parliament for the last week of November.
It is expected that the Liberals will dump the net-zero target – which already has been dumped by the Nationals – but with some caveats.
All this week, as expectation turned to anticipation of a dumping of the 2050 target, Ley made it clear that she had always said “No net-zero target at any cost”, but the process has made her seem captive to the Nationals and conservative Liberal MPs.
“I said when I became leader that we would not have a policy that was net zero at any cost. When it comes to cost, this government has got it all wrong,” she said. “I’ll sit down with the Nationals and we’ll work out a Coalition position together because the objective of this is to hold this government to account for its trainwreck energy policy and right now.”
Some conservatives who support the dumping of the net-zero target have started to argue that Australia’s reduction of carbon emissions of 28 per cent below 2005 levels – a reduction far ahead of most of the rest of the world, including our major trading partners – should allow for a pause to reassess the impact on the economy, especially agriculture, that can’t even be attempted until there is a policy declaration.
This week opposition finance spokesman James Paterson urged a settlement as soon as possible so the Coalition “will be able to scrutinise the government’s failures on energy, which are manifest and significant, as soon as we lock in our own policies and positions on these issues”.
Liberal MP for the Melbourne seat of Goldstein Tim Wilson, the only Liberal to gain a seat in the May election – and from a teal independent – also recognised the need for a decision to be taken to shift the focus from the Coalition and back on to Labor’s energy policies.
“While we are in Coalition, we have our own identity, we represent cities, suburbs and rural and regional Australia. The National Party explicitly says they are there for regional Australia, that’s their slogan,” Wilson said.
“We’re there to build the whole of the country and we have to reflect the full diversity of Australian opinion in how we’re going to build out the future of this country.”
Either way, Ley is not guaranteed support as her own mistakes, splits between the Nationals and Liberals, divisions within the Liberals and a record low 24 per cent primary support for the Coalition and a net personal approval rating of minus-33 for the Liberal leader as well as poor parliamentary performances spur discontent with her leadership.
After three days of ineffective Coalition tactics and strategy in parliament Ley faced the humiliation of a dressing-down from house Speaker Milton Dick and a lecture for beginners on politics and parliamentary procedure.
On Wednesday, the opposition hit a nadir in question time. There were poorly framed questions, name calling, ignorance of parliamentary procedure and pointless points of order.
This led to the first refusal of a point of order by a Speaker in more than a decade.
These silly interjections allowed an already dominant government to get away with murder. Manager of opposition business Alex Hawke, Ley’s biggest supporter, failed the leader on the floor of the parliament and angered even moderate Liberal MPs with poorly crafted questions that let ministers off the hook and wore out the Speaker’s tolerance.
In the dying hours of Thursday’s parliament Dick became even more exasperated as Ley unsuccessfully tried to take on the Prime Minister. Dick sat her down and once again lectured the opposition on politics and procedure.
Ley misused a point of order, after asking a question on food for the poor that gave Albanese room to drive a truck through. “Sledges don’t feed people,” she declared. “Can the Prime Minister give a straight answer?”
After weeks of frustration, forbearance and courtesy beyond the call of any Speaker, Dick told Ley her behaviour was “absolutely unacceptable” and “We just can’t have question time descend to where people just get up and say what they feel like”.
“I’ve been trying to deal with this all week in terms of appropriateness of points of order and I’ve been more than generous with the Leader of the Opposition,” Dick said as he pointed to the failure of the question to limit the Prime Minister at all in his response.
“No more frivolous points of order,” he said the day after refusing Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan the right to a point of order.
But even with this run of losses and inability to get colleagues to back her political stunts – calling for Kevin Rudd to be removed as ambassador to the US or suggesting Albanese was wearing an anti-Semitic T-shirt – the record low polling, divisions and the nightmare of settling a climate change dilemma, the second assumption of Liberal MPs that Ley may resign and avoid a bloodletting is probably wrong.
Liberal MPs concede that removing the party’s first female leader will damage any male successor – and there are only male pretenders – and fervently hope Ley will resign under the weight of failure.
This quiet departure is akin to the removal/resignation of Alexander Downer after a similarly short, tumultuous time as Liberal leader in 1994 when an agreed settlement, implemented over the Christmas break of 1994-95, saw John Howard’s return to the Liberal leadership in early 1995 and election victory in 1996.
This remains unlikely in the Christmas break of 2025.
A likelier scenario is the messy process of the removal of Malcolm Turnbull that began 16 years ago this weekend, an anniversary perhaps more relevant than a 50th political anniversary next Tuesday, where Turnbull’s support for Rudd’s climate change emissions trading scheme led to a revolt in the party room and mass resignations of Liberal members.
Turnbull rejected his party room’s wishes and insisted on supporting the ETS.
Former Nationals’ leader in the Senate Ron Boswell told Inquirer that he had reported mass defections of Liberals to the Nationals and warned the Liberal leadership that Turnbull’s support for the Labor policy would leave them without a party.
“I warned Tony Abbott after the meeting that the issue was turning people off, the Liberals would be left without a party and that he had to stand as leader,” Boswell said.
Despite the party room revolt Turnbull held on, fought two ballots in two weeks and lost to Abbott in a party room that endorsed the dropping of the ETS.
Abbott went on to almost win in 2010 and to return the Coalition with a landslide victory in 2013.
Whichever course the Liberals follow on climate change policy and subsequent leadership choices and challenges, it is likely to be a messy political landscape and an ugly leadership showdown, although Abbott proved it was possible to turn things around in two elections.
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There is a growing gloomy expectation, a forlorn wish and an unlikely hope within Coalition ranks that Liberal Party poll support will sink through the bottom of the barrel, that resignations of Liberal Party branch members will persist and that opposition parliamentary tactics will continue to fail so Sussan Ley will resign as leader.