The three gaffes that fuelled Ley’s nightmare fortnight

2 hours ago 4

Sussan Ley did an admirable job exuding a sense of calm as she fronted journalists outside Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel on Friday. It was the end of a shocking fortnight for the Liberal Party leader, but she kept a straight face as she insisted she and her colleagues were on the same page when it comes to the topic that has riven the party for two decades: climate change.

“What I am saying is that every one of my team is absolutely united behind the focus that we have right now, which is to hold this Labor government to account for an energy policy that is destructive of households, businesses and indeed harming the economy,” she said.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley speaks to reporters outside the Hyatt Hotel, Canberra.

It was a sentence that instantly raised eyebrows among the reporters in attendance. After all, the words “absolutely united” sound laughable when thinking about the federal Liberal Party today.

Just hours earlier, one of Ley’s backbenchers, Victorian Senator Sarah Henderson, had issued a withering assessment of the state of the party.

“I’ve been a member of parliament since 2013,” Henderson told the press gallery on Friday morning. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in our party, and I’ve seen a few dramas.”

Moments earlier, Henderson told Sky News: “I do think Sussan is losing support, but I do believe in miracles. We can turn things around, but things are not good. I don’t support things the way they are.”

Henderson’s comments could easily have been dismissed as sour grapes, given she was demoted by Ley after the May election, and she is more conservative than her leader. But her comments were not an aberration, nor a lie. In fact they were a statement of the obvious. The remarkable thing was simply that an MP was willing to put their name to such criticism.

It’s easy to forget now, but Ley started her stint as opposition leader with a fair bit of goodwill from the Australian public. Compared to Peter Dutton’s combative and hard-headed style, the former shearer and punk seemed like a likeable and less intimidating alternative. In August, Ley had a net positive rating of plus 9 in the Resolve Political Monitor survey; that has now sunk to minus 5, a 14 percentage point turnaround.

The last fortnight, when the opposition could have been holding the government to account, has been a nightmare for Ley, with gaffes, divisions and MPs openly discussing when, not if, she will face a challenge.

Her problems are going nowhere.

She has a divided frontbench that increasingly opposes net zero, a policy she privately supports, a miserable backbench and the Coalition’s support in the opinion polls has plummeted to lower depths than it ever reached under Peter Dutton.

Whatever their individual views on Ley, her MPs are returning this weekend to electorates where the voters will want to know why the opposition has become a clown show.

Colleagues are increasingly questioning Ley’s judgment and despairing at the Coalition’s inability to put the government under pressure over any issue of importance.

The core reason is infighting over net zero. The length of time it has taken since the May election to almost finalise a policy has frustrated her supporters as much as her internal opponents.

“Sussan has been incessantly advised that she has to lead the party through this, not follow,” seethes one moderate MP. “That advice has not been acted upon.”

Distrust is rampant among Liberal MPs, who are looking at each other with suspicion. “A cabal around Hastie keep throwing bricks at her,” one says. “The question is whether it’s about the net zero policy or the leadership.”

Feeding into the angst is a series of baffling judgment calls that have damaged Ley’s authority and exposed her to ridicule.

The first blow came on October 21, when Anthony Albanese held his successful-beyond-all-expectations meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. Looking for an area to attack, Ley seized upon Trump’s comments to US ambassador Kevin Rudd that he didn’t like him and probably never will, ignoring the fact Trump quickly said all was forgiven. Within a day, Ley had walked back the comments as prominent Liberals, ranging from Tony Abbott to Jane Hume, backed in the ambassador.

Then, as MPs were strolling in for question time last Tuesday, Ley stood up and gave a 90-second statement that instantly caused parliamentarians and journalists in the chamber to ask “Did she really do that?” Having fumbled the ball on Rudd, Ley returned to Albanese’s DC trip by attacking him for wearing a Joy Division shirt when exiting the prime ministerial jet.

Full of high dudgeon, Ley said the choice of the shirt was offensive to the Jewish community, given the band’s name was a reference to Nazi concentration camps. The problem: leading Jewish groups, who are rarely shy about attacking the government, were more baffled than offended by the shirt and kept quiet, leaving Ley hanging. Aware she has to watch her right flank as a moderate, Ley had overcorrected by falling into a trap set by Sky News, which had gone into apoplexy about the Joy Division shirt the previous night.

Three days later, Ley planned to hold a press conference at the troubled Tomago aluminium smelter in the NSW Hunter Valley, but was banned from doing so at the last minute. The opposition leader suggested political game-playing by the Albanese government may have been behind the decision but this was paranoia creeping in: the government said it had nothing to do with it.

Despite all this, opponents of Ley insist that while she is vulnerable, she is not about to be challenged in the next sitting week and that, essentially, the opposition leader’s internal foes believe she must be given every opportunity to fail, or perhaps even succeed.

Asked about Ley’s prospects, one supporter in the party room says: “The next four days are critical. I can tell you after Wednesday.”

Ley is unlikely to be removed from the top job this year, but by backgrounding against the leader and disagreeing publicly over net zero, the conservative wing of her party is laying the groundwork for a strike early next year at a time and by a method of their choosing.

By then, even if net zero is settled, Ley may prove so weakened that she is unable to fend off her ideological enemies when they are finally ready to strike.