Angry Liberal rebukes rebel Hastie: ‘This is how we become like the Victorians’

First-term Liberal MP Mary Aldred has rebuked rebel colleague Andrew Hastie for quitting his frontbench role and warned the party will turn into a Victorian-style basket case if it continues to navel-gaze and let Labor off the hook.

In Tuesday morning’s Liberal Party room meeting in Canberra, Aldred stood up and said she and other colleagues would lose their seats at the next election if the party did not unite, focus on its core strengths and turn the heat on the government.

Mary Aldred took aim at her Liberal colleagues on Tuesday.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

The new MP for the regional Victorian seat of Monash clipped Hastie in her speech, saying that she disagreed with the way he handled his resignation – reflecting the sentiment of many of his colleagues, including some of his allies.

“This is how we become like the Victorians,” three MPs, unable to publicly speak about the closed-door meeting, quoted her as saying. The Victorian Liberal division has been a basket case for years, having won a single election since 1996.

Aldred told colleagues she “came to Canberra to fight Labor”, not to feud internally.

Hastie was sitting in the room but did not speak. It is rare for MPs to criticise colleagues in party room meetings. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley did not address the Hastie drama in her speech to the meeting.

Andrew Hastie after a press conference in Perth on Saturday.Credit: Colin Murty

The opposition’s dirty linen was aired on Monday as this masthead revealed that Dutton, who led the historic election loss in May, was highly critical of Hastie’s work ethic and policy development in his private submissions delivered to the party’s election review in July.

Senior Liberals have called for leaks to stop so the party could focus on policies, including resolving its position on emissions reduction, as Ley inches closer to a compromise to retain net zero as a goal with new economic caveats.

Election reviewer and former senator Nick Minchin – who interviewed Dutton for the review in July alongside former NSW minister Pru Goward – confirmed they talked to Dutton about the party’s defence policy and did not deny Dutton scrutinised Hastie’s role as defence spokesman. The defence policy, announced late and with little detail, was criticised when it was released just 10 days before the election.

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Minchin declined to divulge details of the conversation with Dutton but played down Dutton’s critique of Hastie.

“Peter avoided direct criticism of his shadow ministers in the course of his discussion with us,” Minchin told this masthead on Monday.

“We discussed inter alia the defence policy and the policy formulation process generally.”

Dutton has not disputed this masthead’s report despite being contacted by several journalists on Monday.

Tuesday is the first parliamentary sitting day since Hastie stunned colleagues by quitting the frontbench on Friday night.

more to come…

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