With Sussan Ley formally announcing her candidacy for the Liberal Party leadership, Dan Tehan saying he won’t contest, and Angus Taylor boasting of obtaining the defection of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as part of his leadership bid, the stage is set for a bitter leadership struggle — as well as a possible long-term battle between moderates and right-wingers. And that’s a battle from which only Labor will benefit.
A Taylor-Price leadership team would be a sharp veer to the Trumpian right, in effect making the Liberals even more a vehicle for culture wars, punching down, strident climate denialism and Gina Rinehart-inspired economic policies. Sky News viewers wouldn’t need to watch the channel anymore, they could just tune in to parliamentary broadcasts.
It’s also a team loaded with risk. As Price demonstrated during the election campaign, she’s a very loose cannon. Not only did she deliberately channel Donald Trump when Peter Dutton was carefully trying to distance himself from the Mad King, but she also overshadowed her leader at one of his media conferences and contradicted him on education policy. As one Coalition MP has since said, it seemed Price “announced whatever she wanted, whenever, day after day”.
If you think that behaviour will abate once she’s deputy leader — especially given Taylor’s decidedly low-energy approach to politics — think again. Price will be the story, day after day, week after week. And good luck to Taylor in dealing with the Nationals after poaching one of their MPs. Any goodwill in resolving the existential tension between the demands of regional and rural MPs and the need to attract urban voters has evaporated.
Related Article Block Placeholder
Article ID: 1206250
The idea of a Taylor-Price leadership team is all the weirder because of the reality-defying narrative being peddled by Tony Abbott and the Sky News crowd: that somehow Peter Dutton wasn’t right-wing enough. A bloke who promised never to stand in front of an Indigenous flag, bagged Welcome to Country ceremonies, demonised Palestinian victims of genocide as potential terrorists, promised a nuclear reactor for every state, and simply made shit up in his quest to tar Labor as antisemitic?
If Sussan Ley is successful, however, she will face similar demands to push rightward, but coupled with a bitterness that she beat the right-wing factions within the party’s federal ranks. The history of the Liberals since the end of the Howard years has been that party moderates are the ones who play by the rules, who fall in loyally even behind right-wing leaders, who stay silent even as policies that could lead them to lose their seats are embraced. The right, meanwhile, will say and do anything to get their way, even if it wrecks the party and risks losing government.
The risk is all the worse given the widespread assumption that the Liberals will be out of power for two terms. Without the discipline of believing that they can win government in 2028, the temptation to focus internally might become too great.
Progressives might delight at the prospect, but a Liberal Party devoted to slitting each other’s throats for the next three years means a mediocre-at-best government will face less accountability and scrutiny. Look no further than Victoria for what happens when you get a clutch of Labor duds in power against an unelectable rabble: taxpayers end up paying the price as hubris, incompetence and corruption take over.
All the ranting and raving from froth-mouthed reactionaries on Sky News won’t change that.
