LATIKA M BOURKE: Are the Liberals facing their do-and-die moment?

The Coalition seems set on cementing itself as an irrelevant waste of space and, more recently, a total laughing stock.

Having demanded that the Parliament be recalled after the Bondi massacre of Jews, only to be brutally wedged on hate speech laws by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Coalition has split and is now cannibalising its remains.

Sussan Ley is left looking more and more like an opposition leader in name only, given the never-ending positioning of her former rival Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie.

The costs of the Opposition’s collective ineptitude are mounting. The RedBridge poll released this week shows that One Nation now has more public support than the official opposition.

Yes, this is one poll, but it reflects a continued pattern of the right-wing vote heading Pauline Hanson’s direction. More worryingly, it is also a mirror of the populist surge in Western Europe and Britain, where the radicalised right has splintered into grievance, bust-the-system movements.

For the first time in two years, the number of voters who think the country is headed in the wrong direction surged into the majority at 55 per cent compared to 43 per cent in June 2025.

The number of people who said the system needed “major changes” was 44 per cent, while a further 15 per cent wanted it “burned down so we can start over.”

Anthony Albanese has been fond of touting Australia as the bulwark against the populist virus sweeping the West, but there are clear signs it is taking root in Australia.

This is more immediately a problem for the right, which has been radicalised by purists who have dragged the party away from where the mainstream of Australia sits. In doing so, they have legitimised One Nation — the movement they once so proudly fought, and now it could consume them. Already, some former Liberals and Nationals, most notably the former Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce, have defected.

Given Australia’s compulsory and preferential voting system, Labor can indulge in the comfort that centrism, however incremental and mediocre, will always prevail against the growing pains One Nation will inevitably experience as it moves from the fringes into the mainstream and begins receiving more rigorous scrutiny and presents its candidates to middle Australia.

But grievance politics is ultimately a drag on both the major parties and very difficult for incumbents to counter.

In the UK, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken to treating Reform’s Nigel Farage, who has been leading in the polls for almost a year, as the real opposition leader. He finds it difficult to rebuff the charge that the country feels “broken” and needs a reboot of the style that yesterday’s politics has never delivered.

When Mr Albanese visited London late last year, he held court with left-wing leaders and met the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, but said he had no interest in meeting Mr Farage. That’s despite polls saying he could end up leading the country.

Avoiding One Nation in the same way won’t work forever.

The Bondi attack exposed the Prime Minister’s vulnerabilities. He is not overly loved by the public. He misjudged the need to call a Royal Commission, exposing the faulty feedback loop that he surrounds himself with, and he couldn’t communicate with any conviction or emotion.

When RedBridge asked voters if they preferred Mr Albanese to Ms Ley, the number who said ‘Neither’ was three points shy of the 37 per cent who nominated the Prime Minister. One-third of voters don’t want what’s currently on offer.

But it was neither Pauline Hanson or Sussan Ley who exposed the prime minister’s shortcomings when faced with the most serious test of his leadership skills. It was the former Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who landed the blows.

Mr Frydenberg relentlessly campaigned for the Royal Commission and whipped various sectors of the community to shame the Prime Minister into action.

None of the pressure came from those inside the federal parliamentary Opposition. Ms Ley once again showed her capacity for overreaching when she initially proposed opposing the Labor Party’s now-passed gun restriction laws.

By mid-January, Mr Frydeberg handed the Coalition a bruised and weakened PM on the ropes, but they collectively proved incapable of landing a punch, let alone a knockout. It is Ms Hanson, who has long campaigned against immigration from Muslim (and before that, Asian) countries, who reaped the political dividends.

The Prime Minister has subsequently rebounded, starting his parliamentary year as he ended the last, cock-a-hoop with his Opposition even weaker and more riven than when they bid Canberra farewell for the summer.

He is right to assess that the Coalition poses no threat under Ms Ley — whatever authority she had has all but ebbed away. But she is preserved in her gelatinous state of political blancmange by the failure of her competitors to show what they can do any better.

“I note that Married At First Sight begins tonight, and it’s a bit like that with the relationships on the other side. You know they’re going to end badly,” Mr Albanese told his caucus on Monday.

To paraphrase the Liberals’ 2022 campaign slogan, it should not be so easy for Mr Albanese, but they have made it so.

Because just like Ms Ley, neither Mr Taylor nor Mr Hastie has yet demonstrated they can land a blow on the prime minister either.

The spectacle of both men hamfistedly vying for the same bloc of votes to oust the ineffectual Ms Ley makes both look like inexperienced amateurs. Forget about not being able to organise a chook raffle; this mob look incapable of taking a dump in a dunny.

The Coalition’s leading cast seem to have forgotten the golden rule of Australian politics — that oppositions don’t win elections, bad governments lose them. Their No.1 job is to set about decommissioning the Prime Minister and present themselves as a credible alternative.

This is also where Ms Hanson is most vulnerable; even those who think her 20 years of campaigning against immigration are now vindicated may struggle to think of her strutting the world stage and representing the country with diligence and class.

While neither Mr Hastie nor Mr Taylor can be judged until they have had a shot at the job, the fact is, if either had used their parliamentary positions to put the prime minister on the ropes, they’d be the leader tomorrow.

Mr Taylor was shadow treasurer in the last opposition but was incapable of mounting an effective cost-of-living attack on Labor, even though it is by far the number one issue for voters.

Mr Hastie promises to campaign on tougher immigration. The post-Bondi One Nation surge shows this instinct is right.

RedBridge showed voters surveyed overwhelmingly think One Nation is the only party capable of dealing with the problem.

But the next leader cannot out-One Nation One Nation. Mr Albanese has prevailed twice over the Greens because he fights them and paints them as extremists. The Liberals would be wise to take note.

The Taylor-now, Hastie-tomorrow tactic that the Liberals appear to have landed upon only sets the Coalition up for another bout of instability. Mr Hastie is widely seen as the leader with prime ministerial potential.

He is the candidate that Labor most fears taking over because of his presentability as a former SAS Captain and youthful looks signalling a new generation of leaders and ideas. However, his colleagues hold serious concerns that he is delving too deeply into the sort of populist politics that drives Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

So it sets Mr Taylor’s leadership, should he proceed with a spill and win, to be a holding pattern for Mr Hastie from the day it begins.

Many Liberals are putting on a brave face. We’ve been here before, we’ve split before, it’s always turned out okay, they say.

Maybe so. But thanks to their worsening results at the ballot box over the last two elections they have very little room left to move and get it wrong, again.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Liberals’ predicament is existential. With little sign they have the focus or talent to reboot, there’s every reason to fear they could be entering do and die territory, a result that would formalise One Nation as the potent opposition force in Australian politics for the first time.