Sussan Ley heads into Coalition showdown with a victorious David Littleproud, leader of the Nationals

The Opposition Leader’s supporters insist Liberal leader Sussan Ley maintains enough support to defeat any challenge from putative rival Angus Taylor, although his backers flagged a challenge could come as early as this week.

Ahead of the formal return of Parliament on Tuesday, Ms Ley will meet with Nationals leader David Littleproud at 6pm today to discuss a possible re-forming of the Coalition after he survived a leadership challenge during a meeting of Nationals MPs in Canberra on Monday.

An attempt to remove Mr Littleproud by little-known backbencher Colin Boyce failed because of a lack of support, although Nationals MPs agreed, without taking a formal vote, to a proposal by MP Darren Chester to return to the Coalition.

“It’s in the best interests of the nation for the Coalition to reform and hold this government to account,” Mr Chester said.

But with no alternate Nationals leader emerging, Ms Ley will have to negotiate with the man who refused to work with her and suggested she be sacked.

In the meantime Liberal MPs are openly speculating about their own leadership challenge after one of the worst polls in the party’s history put the Liberal and National parties seven percentage points behind One Nation.

Liberals are bracing themselves for the resumption of Parliament when, for the first time, the Opposition will consist solely of the Liberal Party unless a last-minute deal to re-form the Coalition is agreed on.

“Ideally, Sussan would realise her position is untenable,” said one. “There are not that many leaders who form that view.”

Another said: “This week will be a disaster for the Liberal Party in parliament so I suspect Angus Taylor will have the numbers by Friday.”

Safe for now?

Prominent Liberal powerbroker Alex Hawke, who helped Ms Ley win the leadership against Mr Taylor last year, declared she will not be removed during the next parliamentary sitting fortnight.

“No one has rung me and said: ‘We need to change the leader’ and I find that’s the experience of my colleagues as well,” Mr Hawke told reporters. “Now, of course, people are upset about where we are at the moment in the polls and the message that the Australian people are sending us.”

Mr Hawke, who heads the Liberal party’s Centre Right faction and was a key player in Scott Morrison’s rise, has warned the Nationals leader is “on the verge of scoring the biggest own goal on the centre right of Australian politics of all time” if the Coalition cannot be reformed.

“This happened quickly. It can un-happen quickly if people are willing to put aside their personal egos. And so we say to Mr Littleproud, put aside your personal ego here.”

“The reason we’re there is because we have historic disunity in the coalition. The National Party has proposed to break our coalition… we do not want to break the coalition. The Liberal Party would like to stay in coalition with the National Party”.

Another key ally of Ms Ley claimed Andrew Hastie’s decision to withdraw from any Liberal leadership contest has not changed her grip on the job, because “the moderates who backed her originally are not moving yet”.

“Tim Wilson and Andrew Bragg are not moving to Taylor so I can’t see how he could defeat her,” the ally said.

One Nation power

Supporters of Mr Hastie said the backbencher wanted to make a significant contribution to the Opposition if his former rival, Angus Taylor, replaced Ms Ley as leader, and could be utilised in an economics role.

“Angus is the guy for now,” said one Liberal involved in leadership negotiations. “Andrew is the guy for the future.”

Pauline Hanson’s far-right party leads the former Coalition on 35 per cent to 12 per cent among people born from 1965 to 1980, or Generation X, according to a RedBridge Accent poll published Sunday evening.

“It’s the worst” poll for the Liberals ever, pollster Kos Samaras said. “This isn’t a statistical error here. It is a structural shift to One Nation.”.

Mr Samaras said conservative blue-collar voters, once known as the “Howard Battlers” after former prime minister John Howard, had left the party because their living standards had not risen under Coalition governments.

On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to raise interest rates, causing financial pain for millions of voters. While the economy looks likely to dominate politics in coming months, Mr Taylor’s supporters said they would prefer the high-profile Mr Hastie to take on a portfolio such as home affairs or energy because of his lack of economics training.

Ms Ley, the first woman to lead the Liberal Party, has given no indication she will resign, which could force her internal opponents to launch a challenge that would further damage the party.

“They continually underestimate her and that is to their disadvantage, not hers,” one of Ms Ley’s allies said.

Covert operation

Mr Hastie’s office did not respond to a request for comment. In a written statement on Friday withdrawing from the undeclared leadership contest, the 43-year-old Perth MP did not abandon or affirm his long-stated interest in becoming leader.

Senior members of the right faction have told Mr Hastie that his charisma, strong ideals and military record will eventually deliver him the leadership. “He’s the hope of the side,” said one. “There is no doubt about it.”

At a now-notorious meeting last Thursday in Melbourne, Mr Hastie and Mr Taylor met with other Liberals to discuss whether their faction could unite behind one candidate. The confidential meeting was planned as the first of several to settle on a candidate, according to a person involved.

But Mr Hastie, who led a military unit during the Afghanistan war that specialised in covert operations, was followed by photographer and reporter Liam Mendes of The Australian from a private club in central Melbourne to a house in Hawthorn.

Because the meeting took place before the Melbourne funeral of former Liberal MP Katie Allen, Mr Mendes’ photos and video of the men arriving and leaving were deemed so embarrassing that further face-to-face negotiations were cancelled, a source said.

Another person involved said they believed a person with knowledge of the meeting may have shared the time and location with the newspaper, a tactic that backfired.

In a sign of the tensions caused by the leadership jostling, two of Mr Hastie’s supporters, MPs Henry Pike and Garth Hamilton, have upset Mr Taylor’s team by actively campaigning for their candidate. They did not respond to a request for comment.

One question being considered is who would run as Mr Taylor’s deputy. Some right figures believe Mr Hastie would help win back One Nation voters. Others believe a member of the left faction, likely a woman, would be needed to demonstrate the party’s commitment to diversity.

Others say the current deputy, Ted O’Brien, should be allowed to keep the job, which would probably mean that he remains shadow treasurer given the practice of allowing deputies to chose their portfolios.