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Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has tapped former prime minister John Howard for advice on countering Pauline Hanson’s surging populist party as Ley scrambles to tighten her tenuous grip on the leadership by exploiting anxiety over the rate of migration.
A defiant Ley has ordered her shadow ministers to fast track a new migration policy as conservative Liberals and the Nationals, fresh from victory dictating the 2050 net zero target, opened up a new internal debate on population.
he Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley takes a tour of the Marley Flow Control facility in Emu Plains with energy and emissions reduction spokesman Dan Tehan.Credit: Wolter Peeters
To be released after parliament rises for the year, the migration plan is expected to identify streams other than international students where the opposition would cut.
The opposition leader blitzed morning radio and TV with net zero interviews on Monday as speculation about Moderate MPs shifting support to Andrew Hastie forced Ley’s backers, senators Anne Ruston and Maria Kovacic, to rally around her.
“I’ve been underestimated a lot of my life,” Ley told 2GB in one of a series of interviews on Monday to sell the Coalition’s energy plan, after she was played a series of listener vox pops calling her hastie to be the new leader.
“I remember when a lot of blokes told me I couldn’t fly an aeroplane and did a lot to keep me out of the front seat.”
Hastie’s camp proactively moved to tamp down expectations of a leadership challenge this year, but the atmosphere in the party room is febrile and there is a slim chance of a leadership conflagration in the final parliamentary sessions of the year next week.
Ley’s allies privately admit that she probably has until after her budget-in-reply speech in May to improve in the polls before she is toppled. A new Australian Financial Review/Redbridge poll shows One Nation soaring with a primary vote of 18 per cent, behind the Coalition at 24 per cent.
Hanson’s rise is fed by sharpening attitudes on migration, prompting Ley to seek advice from Howard, according to sources and MPs familiar with the pair’s interactions who described them on the condition of anonymity.
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Like Howard did when Hanson burst onto the scene in the late 1990s, Ley intends to make a tough-on-borders approach core to her message over summer at the same time as pushing back on Hanson’s racialised tone.
Senior MPs said they hoped they could claw back about half the voters who have drifted to Hanson this term by campaigning on migration and against net zero. Though the strategy risks blowing up if Foreign Minister Penny Wong is proved correct, after on Sunday warning the Coalition that “you can’t be more Pauline than Pauline”.
Asked on Monday how she would make the case to lower immigration levels without isolating or offending groups of voters, Ley said she would do so “by always reminding our wonderful migrant communities of the value that they add to this country”.
“I have my own migrant story. I deeply appreciate communities and individuals who’ve made the choice to come to Australia, to build their homes, to build their families, to build their future, to work hard, to take risks and to give back,” she said on Nine’s Today show.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Monday welcomed the decision, saying that it was “time for the Liberals to stop pandering to sectional interests like the elite metropolitan universities and big business lobbies” in a social media post.
She said this should involve making significant cuts to certain parts of the migration program, even if this required a temporary freeze on certain visa classes.
Hastie last Friday said immigration “will be the next debate”.
But Ley’s big challenge in this area will be engaging in a debate without putting voters from multicultural and migrant backgrounds offside, given that Price and Hastie have both made remarks in recent months that caused offence.
Net migration to Australia soared after borders reopened following the pandemic, and while immigration levels have come down substantially, they remain above pre-pandemic levels.
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Repeated polls show that voters have growing concerns about the pace of immigration to Australia, but the Coalition failed to capitalise on the issue during the May election despite Peter Dutton’s promise to bring net migration down by 100,000 people a year more than Labor.
Ley on Monday said her immigration spokesman, Paul Scarr, and home affairs shadow, Jonno Duniam, were working on a policy to deliver lower migration, but they had not yet worked through the details of which visa classes or migration streams ought to be cut.
“Within the different streams of migration to this country, we have working holidaymakers, we have skilled visas, we have a humanitarian intake, and we have a family reunion intake, and there’s a range of different visas for different purposes,” she said.
“We’ll work through the details of the different streams.”
Amid speculation about Ley’s political future, two MPs backing Hastie to be the next party leader and who asked not to be named, said the former soldier was not planning to challenge Ley in the final sitting week of the year. He is about to undergo shoulder surgery due to a Jujutsu injury.
One of those two MPs said that “Andrew is interested in it, of course, but he’s not ready yet. We need a programme too, a plan that we can talk about”.
Frontbencher Angus Taylor is also keen to become leader. There is no consensus in the Right about which candidate should be the person to take over from Ley.
A report in The Australian that Moderates were shifting support from Ley to Hastie was refuted by Kovacic and Ruston, who said all the MPs she spoke to were backing Ley. But at least two Moderate MPs are known to prefer Hastie to Taylor should Ley go down.
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