Updated ,first published
Leadership rival Angus Taylor is gearing up to quit the Coalition frontbench as soon as Wednesday to challenge Sussan Ley for the Liberal leadership, in defiance of warnings against toppling her less than a yea after she got the job.
Expectations of a spill were heightened on Monday when Senator Jane Hume, who may run as Taylor’s deputy, was scathing of the current leadership and warned worsening polling results would lead to the Liberal Party being “wiped out” if an election were held.
“I don’t think that at this point there will be a single member of the House of Representatives from Victoria,” Hume said. “There won’t be a single member of the House … from New South Wales. Something has to give.”
Hume called for urgent change, as did conservative MP Sarah Henderson, who argued the leadership needed to be addressed “very quickly, this week”.
Backers of Taylor, who lost a leadership ballot to Ley last May, believe he already has the support of a majority of the 51 Liberal MPs, who have been rattled by historically low polling and the growth of One Nation’s support.
But Ley’s lieutenants claim Taylor had not secured the support of key centrist MPs who would decide the result, and rejected rumours that a cross-factional group of MPs was preparing to ask Ley to go.
“The timelines have been canvassed and discussed,” one MP, who asked not to be named, said, adding that post-question time on Wednesday was firming as the preferred time for a challenge.
Another right-winger said the spill would definitely be called later this week, with a likely ballot for the deputy position that any one of Hume, Andrew Hastie, Tim Wilson, Melissa McIntosh, Zoe McKenzie or Angie Bell could contest, depending on Taylor’s appetite to do deals and the Moderates’ resolve to stick with Ley.
Critical to the result is the positioning of the Moderates, who were despondent after the embattled opposition leader reunited with the Nationals on Sunday, when they had preferred to maintain the split with the junior Coalition party.
Allies of Taylor claimed Moderates were on Monday trying to negotiate deals to maintain shadow frontbench positions and save themselves from demotion. Moderate MPs denied this, and late on Monday met and decided to do no deals with Taylor.
“We are sticking with Sussan until the end. Taylor’s camp is trying to create momentum by claiming our support. If he had enough support, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because he’d have called a spill,” one top Moderate said.
As it stands, numbers in the party room remain tight and the stigma attached to voting for a spill means Taylor might have fewer votes for an open spill motion than he would for a head-to-head battle with Ley.
A regular party room meeting on Tuesday is not expected to be used for a challenge because senators are in estimates committee hearings. If Taylor decides to challenge, this is more likely during a special party room meeting on Thursday or Friday.
Lengthy estimates hearings have made it difficult for the rival camps to count numbers while senators are stuck in committee rooms.
Several Liberals warned about the electoral cost of knocking off a leader just over nine months after the May election. Ley has served longer than former Liberal leader Alexander Downer, who holds the record for the shortest-serving Liberal leader for eight months.
Influential right-winger Jonno Duniam told ABC TV that changing leaders would not fix the party’s structural problems, while shadow attorney-general Andrew Wallace warned against the political “assassination” of the party’s first female leader.
Frontbencher Andrew Bragg said: “I don’t think anyone having had less than a year in the job deserves to be decapitated.”
Senator Maria Kovacic, an ally of Ley’s, said Hume was right in calling for some form of change but said a leadership challenge was “the last thing that Australians want to see”.
Ley slapped down critics and said they should keep their arguments private.
“I’ve been elected by my party room. I’m up for the job. We’re up for the job, and we know that we have to hold this government to account because millions of Australians are being let down by a government that has got it all wrong,” she told Nine’s Today on Monday.
“Polls are a point in time, and they reflect what Australians have felt frustrated about for quite a few weeks now, as they’ve seen the disunity [from the Coalition split].”
Ley was already under pressure, but talk of a challenge became more serious on Sunday evening after a Newspoll, published by The Australian, showed the Liberal primary vote at 15 per cent, the Nationals at 3 per cent, while One Nation jumped to 27 per cent – a clear second behind Labor.
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Paul Sakkal is chief political correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect via X or email.
James Massola is chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent. He has won Quill and Kennedy awards and been a Walkley finalist. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.
Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
