Updated ,first published
Allies of Liberal MP Angus Taylor are plotting to resign as a group from Sussan Ley’s frontbench, as backers of the besieged opposition leader demand conservatives put their names to the revolt.
Taylor is expected to begin the process of a leadership spill on Wednesday by quitting the shadow cabinet, with focus now turning to the logistics of the challenge. According to three sources familiar with lunchtime talks in Taylor’s office on Tuesday, MPs were working out how many Liberals could follow Taylor by quitting shadow ministerial and whip positions to prove the extent of anger towards Ley.
After Taylor’s resignation, two of his supporters are expected to request a special party room meeting for Friday. The 59-year-old would be freed from shadow cabinet discipline to call colleagues and explicitly ask for their support.
MPs on Tuesday were calling on Taylor to declare his hand.
“It has spiralled out of control in the last few days and enough is enough,” Senator Maria Kovacic, from the Moderate faction, told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, addressing Taylor directly. “If you want this, put your name to it and get it over with.”
Influential right-wing Liberal MP Jonno Duniam, the Coalition’s education spokesman, said that Taylor must “make clear” his position.
“If Angus is interested in, as many are speculating, the leadership, then he should say so,” Duniam said.
Duniam wanted Andrew Hastie to run against Ley, but will back Taylor’s bid. Hastie’s backers started the push for a leadership spill just after Nationals leader David Littleproud blew up the Coalition, and they now fear Taylor may delay a challenge until March.
Top Moderate faction MPs on Tuesday determined that just one or two MPs from the 51-member party room might decide the result. Taylor’s backers agree the vote is tight.
A few MPs are facing so much pressure from the warring factions that they are considering abstaining from any vote in a contest that one frontbencher, asking to remain anonymous, described as brutal.
Some Moderates want Ley to reject any request for a special meeting to hold a spill. Instead, they want the opposition leader to demand a majority of MPs put their names to a petition calling for a ballot, as former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull did in 2018.
With expectations firming that Taylor will soon make his move, Moderate MPs and Labor ministers sharpened their attacks on the member for Hume. A backer of Ley described the revolt as “misogynistic” in off-the-record comments to this masthead, while Treasurer Jim Chalmers in Tuesday’s question time mocked Taylor’s tenure as shadow treasurer under Dutton.
“My old mate, the member for Hume, who went to the election with a policy for higher income taxes, bigger deficits and more debt,” Chalmers said
“We saw that in the election campaign and we have seen in the last few days that the member for Hume is not very good with numbers.”
If Ley lost the party leadership this week, she would become the second-shortest serving Liberal leader – of those ousted by their colleagues – after Alexander Downer, who lasted 252 days befoe he was replaced by John Howard in 1995.
If she survives this week, she will almost certainly overtake Brendan Nelson, who was the opposition leader for 288 days immediately after John Howard’s 11-year Coalition government.
Ley’s polling is at such a low ebb that the Coalition is now the third most popular party in many polls, after Labor and One Nation, although this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor still has the Coalition in second place.
Taylor’s key Moderate backer, Jane Hume, had a blunt exchange with Ley in a closed-door party room meeting on Tuesday, demanding to know how the opposition leader would reverse disastrous Coalition polling.
Hume, dumped from the frontbench last year by Ley, is in the mix to run as Taylor’s deputy and raised expectations of a spill on Monday when she was scathing of the Liberals’ electoral chances.
Hume asked Ley in the party room what she would do to avoid “electoral oblivion” in the polls.
Ley responded, according to three MPs in the room unwilling to speak publicly, by saying: “It’s simple. Stop talking about ourselves. Disunity is death.”
Several MPs said Ley’s response fell flat and that she did not take Hume’s concerns seriously.
One Liberal source who supports Ley said they were worried that Hume’s election as deputy leader would hurt the party among Chinese-Australian voters. Hume’s comments about “Chinese spies” during last year’s election campaign was effectively weaponised by Labor attack adds, and MPs blamed the comments for big swings against Liberals in seats with large Chinese-speaking populations.
“The Chinese diaspora has not forgotten,” the source said.
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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.