Senior Liberals hope Sussan Ley will temporarily reverse resignation from Parliament

Anthony Albanese was in the Victorian-NSW border town of Albury today, stirring up trouble for the Liberal Party.

Albury is located in the electorate of Farrer, where a by-election will be held to replace Sussan Ley, the former Liberal leader whom the prime minister is determined to portray as a victim of a cabal of ruthless men.

“She was undermined by Angus Taylor and by Andrew Hastie and others from day one,” he told reporters.

There is scant evidence to support Mr Albanese’s assertion. While Mr Hastie’s frontbench resignation on October 3 was designed to wound Ms Ley, there were no significant shadow cabinet leaks during her brief leadership that could indicate either man engaged in an insurgency like the one that brought down Labor prime minister Julia Gillard in 2013.

As for Ms Ley’s loyalty to the Liberal Party, that will be tested in coming weeks. Three NSW Liberal sources said a high-level lobbying campaign is underway to convince Ms Ley to postpone her parliamentary resignation, which she indicated on February 13 will be tendered not long after this week.

The reason: fear within the party it will lose Farrer – which Ms Ley retained last year by 6 percentage points – damaging new leader Angus Taylor’s reputation. A loss might trigger changes to the Liberal Party administration under federal director Andrew Hirst, who has held the job eight years, party sources said.

One Nation threat

The Liberals face a “perfect storm” in Farrer, which extends from Albury to the South Australian border, according to a party strategist.

Flush with donors’ cash, One Nation is becoming a more professional campaign force. Although no seat-specific polling has been made public, pollsters say the right-wing party is likely to have the support of 20 and 30 per cent of Farrer voters, based on national polls.

If One Nation sustains such support, it would likely finish in second or third, giving the party a reasonable chance of winning its first lower house election. One Nation hasn’t chosen a candidate and has a history of campaign gaffes, making predictions difficult.

One Nation’s rise poses a policy challenge for Mr Taylor, party strategists say. If he focused on immigration in a by-election, he could drive voters to One Nation, which is well known for its opposition to immigration.

Mr Taylor might be better off campaigning on inflation and rising interest rates, the strategists said, because there is a clearer connection to government policy.

The teal challenge

Adding to Mr Taylor’s challenge, Ms Ley has built up a following over 25 years in the country electorate. Residents may punish the Liberal Party for the local MP’s downfall, just as 19 per cent of voters in Wentworth turned away from the Liberal Party when deposed leader Malcolm Turnbull quit in 2018.

The Labor Party hasn’t decided whether to contest the seat, although Mr Albanese seemed to be leaning against running on Monday morning. “We haven’t stood candidates where it’s unlikely that we would be successful,” he said.

That’s untrue. Every general election the Labor Party runs candidates in every seat, including ones it has no chance of winning. But skipping a by-election in Farrer would free left-wing voters to support a “teal” independent, Michelle Milthorpe, who came second last time.

She has already started campaigning, according to election analyst Antony Green, who argues boundary changes have made the Nationals are more potent threat to the Liberal Party.

The anti-Liberal forces building in Farrer help explain why the senior figures in the party hope Ms Ley will reverse, temporarily, her resignation. (She didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Learning from mistakes

If Ms Ley quits, the by-election will be a test of whether the Liberal Party has learnt from the mistakes of last year’s general election, which was regarded as one of its worst campaigns.

While the broad problems are clear, including leader Peter Dutton’s confusing decision to oppose income-tax cuts, the detail is hidden in an internal review being written for the Liberal Party federal executive. An early version was reportedly challenged by Mr Dutton, presumably over criticism of him.

A party source said the report was being worked on and would likely be completed next month. It will be given to the federal executive, which is chaired by president John Olsen, a former South Australian premier.

By convention such reports are made public, even though they usually trigger a burst of negative publicity. The delay is a bad sign. Waiting almost a year to acknowledge what went wrong contributes to a sense that the Liberal Party hasn’t had a reckoning with itself over the loss.

Losing Farrer would be seen as further proof the party has lost the knack of fighting elections. Someone will be held accountable, and eyes are already looking down from Canberra’s Capital Hill to R. G. Menzies House, the home of the federal secretariat.