People closer to the action than I are suggesting that the end is nigh for Sussan Ley. They may be right; momentum is often all in these matters.

But I would be cautious about thinking the walk to the gallows is imminent. There are only so many metropolitan seats that angry old men in the Liberal Party can lightly wave away.

No one has yet nominated which assassin will pitch her from her perch. It ought to matter, because they have different pitches, different social and economic philosophies, and different, if not very inspiring, records in politics. They share only a distinct lack of charisma and capacity through speech-making to inspire and enthuse others to finer, more noble things.

Whether against Angus Taylor or Andrew Hastie, one can expect that Ley is at least as wily and cunning in head-on battle, and probably more merchantable to the general electorate than those ambitious for her job. And more desperate and less resigned, I would think, than Malcolm Turnbull when he came to the position Ley is said to be facing.

Turnbull would have liked to think he faced his fate like Sir Thomas More but, in the way he hung on to power by making endless accommodations with his enemies and later assassins, he might be better compared with More’s contemporary, Cardinal Wolsey. (Wolsey, according to Shakespeare, remarked near his undignified end that had he but served his God with half the zeal he served his King, God would not have abandoned him to his enemies.)

Ley has not so far traded feebleness for the pretence of power. She may have made unwise choices and understood that her party is a broad church. But she has not repudiated her principles or her instincts. She is rather more likely to fight for survival with every weapon at her disposal. After all, if she loses, she loses everything.

The party is virtually unelectable if it abandons its moderate umbrella at the whim of angry white men

Ley, her faction, her broad philosophy and the party she has long known and served face oblivion if she loses. It appears that there are enough moderates who understand the electoral impact of abandoning net zero in the metropolitan seats. They may well be joined by more conservative forces who recognise the electoral damage that would be caused by sacking a leader, a female leader, or by picking alternatives with charisma deficits and nutty views.

The battleground — positive action on climate change — could hardly be better chosen for symbolic importance, particularly to voters who have walked away from her party. It is by no mean the only issue of principle and philosophy separating one end of the party from the other. Strictly, it would not be difficult to find some form of positive climate action which fell short of complete adherence to the net zero target. That might seem to provide her opponents with a concession in a win-win case. But Ley might well ask why she would weaken her position (and horrify her own constituencies) by adopting such a squib. Her opponents are not looking for a compromise, a mutual position both sides could promote with dignity. They are looking for surrender, indeed for rubbing the noses of people who want climate action in complete humiliation.

It has been her opponents in both the Liberal Party and the National Party who have chosen repudiation of the Morrison and Dutton policy on net zero emissions as the issue. They are the ones who have sought to sabotage her leadership, not least by embarrassing her at inopportune moments. They are the ones moreover who refuse to accept the lessons of recent elections, or who think that a reshaped conservative party without a moderate wing can hope to win government. They are the ones who do not seem to regret or care about the party’s incapacity to win support in the centre ground of politics. Who seem to think that the response to defeat should be to go further to the right, and to dispense with “Liberal light”.

Even the arithmetic of lost inner and outer suburban seats does not seem to move those seeming to want only a pure party, now finding most of its support in regional areas

The louder members of the conservative wing, and many of their media backers, particularly in the Murdoch press and on Sky TV, would rather have the Liberals lose than have a party led by Ley in power. They are not focused on bringing back disillusioned Liberals into the fold, other than on terms of complete surrender. They are adamant that the Liberals and the Coalition must reject net zero, either as a target or guide to policy.

This may be the battle, but the war itself is about the future directions and philosophy of the Liberal Party, about its very existence. It is almost inevitable that either of the two “conservative” challengers will be incapable of reuniting the party, or of much improving its representation after the next election. Nor will they succeed in cajoling moderate Liberals — former or present — into accepting the “realities”. For many moderate Liberals and middle-ground voters, and many on the centre left, net zero is not a value-free option, to be chosen on pragmatic grounds, but a moral obligation.

They have learnt, if only from the humiliation of Turnbull that it is not a matter for constant compromise, whittling down or effective emasculation. They have tested the goodwill and the good intention of those of conservative mien, and the jeering of Nationals such as Barnaby Joyce, and they realise that more is at stake unless they stand fast. The moderates insist they will not be pushovers this time. Even if they prove to be, because they have a seemingly endless capacity to prop at the jump, they know from bitter experience that the wider electorate simply will not wear it. The Coalition lost the last two elections, successively badly, by being progressively weaker on climate change.

Most voters accept that the science of climate change is settled and that denial or refusal to do anything effective should be punished. That unwillingness to act, and the widespread perception that it is because the Coalition is hostage to hydrocarbon interests, will not attract more support. More likely it will reduce the Liberal Party to the lowest support it has yet received. It may be a hard thing that voters will not listen to the sweet reason of Joyce or Matt Canavan on matters of science, but it’s a fact of life. Likewise with a widespread perception that climate change policies are set in the backwoods of the National Party, rather than by Liberal professionals acting on scientific advice and evidence, international consensus or the views of a high proportion of urban voters.

The Nationals face being squeezed between the Liberals and One Nation

Although the National Party has been somewhat more steadfast in opposing any form of effective climate action at all, it too may be at great risk from its stand. The Nationals are being squeezed by One Nation, whose purely populist slogans are even more opposed to climate action. The Nationals, so far, have held onto seats because their vote — only about one million (if one splits the Queensland NLP vote between the Nationals and the Liberals) — is only marginally greater than that of One Nation. But One Nation runs in many more seats and stands to gain more from preference swaps. The Nationals are finding it hard to sustain a brand claiming to represent agriculture and regional economies when it is effectively controlled by mining and coal interests.

The polling evidence suggests that votes that once went to the Liberals are drifting to One Nation, not to the Nationals. If that polling support continues, One Nation could become a party acting on the Liberals somewhat like Greens on the Labor Party: gingering up the Liberals (and the Nationals) on pet One Nation themes and slogans and occasionally threatening to take seats away from the Nationals or from the Liberals. Even assuming a day when the combined Liberal, National and One Nation vote exceeded the Labor-Green vote, the result would not be a model for conservative government as most economic or social conservatives see it. Nor would it be a model for small government, or for open, transparent and accountable government.

Labor’s response to Ley’s crisis has been two-faced. It adheres to sound noises about its commitment to net zero and effective climate action, even as it develops policies that show many of its promises as empty. It may well be that right of centre parties will dissolve and reorganise as they have in many other industrialised countries, such as in Trump’s America, in Britain (where Reform threatens to supplant the Conservatives) and in many Western nations of Europe, now dominated by increasingly authoritarian right-wing populist parties, anti-immigration and more protectionist. Australia has not been immune from such changes in the political temperature, but does not have the same levels of the politics of resentment, grievance and blame.

But there are some Australian institutional protections which should slow the influence of such worldwide movements, particularly if they are a phase. First, Australia has compulsory voting, strong institutions of government and the law, and private bodies such as banks, churches, and sporting and cultural organisations. While there are groups keen to divide the population, including by violent language and anti-immigration rhetoric, they are balanced by a general social and economic stability, and relative physical isolation from unstable countries.

Australia also lacks effective and charismatic political leaders, adept in the ways of inflaming and dividing audiences, using the politics of finding “others” (such as immigrants, refugees or people on welfare) to blame and hate for any of the general or sectional disadvantages felt by some citizens. Australia has its own extremists, but they do not command large followings, even after efforts to co-opt ordinary Australians in anti-immigration activity. The borrowing of foreign complaints particularly draws on a sense that white Australians have declining influence. Pauline Hanson, the head of One Nation, has considerable public support, in part by appealing to the same feelings, but has been unsuccessful in drawing mass movements onto the street.

Right of centre parties might reorganise and reform, perhaps into a few parties representing different views about the role of government, attitudes to big and little government, and about individual freedom, the marketplace and the influence of religion and social values: the libertarians as against the social conservatives. It could be a recipe for chaos and changing coalitions. But it could also increase choice and reduce the sense that many voters have that mainstream parties no longer represent their views.

Ten years from now, the Australian party system may be quite different from now. But we will not be like Europe, or Trump-land

Something similar could well happen with left of centre parties, particularly as fewer Australians are active trade unionists or focused on industrial issues. Labor has, in effect, not only lost its left wing, but also much of the activity which made it a centre of debate, ideas and ideals. The engine room for ideas is, increasingly, not the party itself, but party professionals, advertising and lobbying groups. It has produced more limited visions, extreme political caution and a much-reduced willingness to take risks, all to the detriment of good government, public involvement in decision making and an active traffic in ideas and alternatives.

If Ley is to be pushed out, she would not have achieved enough, whether as leader or, earlier, as a minister. No one will remember anything she said, or any new idea with which she enthused her colleagues. She has made errors of judgment in nit-picking criticisms of Albanese. Her departure will be significant, primarily for its representation of a turning point at which a broad-based party decided to commit electoral suicide. That’s a story which could almost be told without mentioning her by name.

But she could well grow in the job if she is given the chance. She’s a trier. She’s consultative. She has some guts and dignity, and a thick hide. She has much more capacity to reach out to people in One Nation who want substance rather than shadow, uncommitted voters, people in the middle ground of politics and even, perhaps, to Labor voters disaffected by its achievements or lack of them. She has never given much sign of being destined to lead the Liberal Party or the Coalition out of an abyss of its own making, but perhaps her very ordinariness, like John Howard’s, provides hope for Liberal Party success one day. It will probably not be soon other than by accident or a disaster of Labor’s own making. Fortunately, from her point of view at least, Labor’s lack of energy, will and ambition, and its repudiation of its promised style of government, gives her more chance than her party deserves.

Republished from The Canberra Times, November 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.