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2GB host Ben Fordham didn’t declare open season on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley. He didn’t have to. The run of callers his producers lined up to declare their preference for backbencher Andrew Hastie, her undeclared challenger, did all the talking.
Asked who she preferred as leader, Pattie said: “Certainly Andrew, definitely not Sussan.” No coincidence that Sheena, Narelle, Dominic and Simone all said the same.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is facing the questions that Andrew Hastie won’t, but she’s increasingly selling the same message.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Ley insisted she was unbothered by the stunt on a radio station that conservative leaders tend to favour, and was focused instead on real Australian concerns.
“We had a leadership ballot in the Liberal Party room six months ago,” Ley told Fordham. “I’m the leader and I’m working hard every day to deliver a serious, compelling policy agenda.”
It was the same message she delivered on ABC breakfast radio, Channel Seven breakfast television, and doubtless much the same as the one she will tell youth outlet The Daily Aus and triple j’s Hack program later in the day in a media sales blitz spanning the ideological spectrum.
On Sunrise she insisted too many migrants were coming to Australia but wouldn’t provide her own ideal figure. “Well hang on, you’re not giving a number, so how do you know that their number’s wrong?” Natalie Barr wanted to know. The Liberals were working on a plan, Ley said, that would let Australia’s infrastructure cope better with the number of arrivals.
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ABC AM host Sabra Lane asked Ley to square her energy plan, which relies on more ageing, or even new, coal plants to bring down electricity costs, with a CSIRO finding that renewables are slightly cheaper than fossil fuels to bring online.
“I’m not going to comment on lines from reports. I’m commenting on what’s going on in the real world around me and the real facts,” Ley shot back. The cost of new electrical kit to make renewables reliable, transmission and firming power all made renewables more expensive, she argued.
As Ley tries to flood the zone with her talking points, Hastie is pursuing a very different strategy, which consists largely of Instagram posts, safe interviews and newsletters that read like a mix of a first year course on Western Civilisation mixed with a highly combative TikTok feed.
On Sunday, in an Instagram missive that typifies the genre, Hastie posted a meme of a grinning monkey taking an orange from a motorist. “Net Zero is about transferring your wealth into the hands of green energy grifters to pay for their wind and solar projects,” he wrote.
It is quite the contrast next to his frequent observations such as that Tolstoy offers “something new about people and human nature with every chapter” and quotes from Thomas Aquinas.
But as the Liberal party moves to the conservative side of a succession of ideological fault lines, Ley, the travelling saleswoman facing the questions that Hastie is avoiding, is increasingly selling the backbencher’s wares.
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