Sussan Ley’s leadership unlikely to last as Albanese claims Liberals undermined her ‘from day one’

Sussan Ley has declared she will survive as Liberal Leader and has left the door open to reconciling with the Nationals as her team debates its future direction following this week’s spectacular coalition implosion.

With Opposition MPs continuing to canvass their colleagues around party leadership, the Prime Minister is revelling in the deepening crisis, predicting “at least one more defection to One Nation” and accusing Liberal MPs of undermining their first female leader “from day one”.

In her first public appearance since Nationals leader David Littleproud formally broke up the alliance with the Liberals on Thursday, Sussan Ley told Sunrise she intended to remain Opposition Leader.

Pressed repeatedly by host Natalie Barr about her future and whether she would still be leader this time next month, Ms Ley eventually responded: “Yes I will, and I’m backed by my Liberal Party in the decisions that I’ve made to date”.

On Thursday the Opposition Leader shunned media interviews out of respect for the victims of the Bondi terror attack during the National Day of Mourning, but on Friday insisted a coalition reunification was still possible.

“The door between a coalition, between our two parties, from my point of view, is still open,” she said. “But I’m not looking at that door. I’m looking at the Australian people because they’re counting on us to deliver for them.”

Ms Ley did not deny Mr Littleproud had unleashed on her during a phone call on Thursday morning demanding she immediately reinstate three senators from his party who resigned over crossing the floor on hate crime laws.

MPs from both parties believe this split will last much longer than the previous week-long rupture following Labor’s landslide election victory in May, while conservatives Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie are widely seen as Ms Ley’s most likely successors in any Liberal challenge.

Most Liberals are preparing for a challenge to Ms Ley’s leadership, likely when Parliament returns in February, although exact details on the timing remain unclear and continue to be discussed.

Asked on Radio 3AW whether Ms Ley would last as Liberal leader, key right-wing party figure and shadow home affairs minister Jono Duniam gave a lukewarm response.

“Well, no one’s challenged her. There’s no one ringing around. I can tell your listeners, I’ve not had a single solitary phone call from anyone saying: ‘Will you vote for me as leader?’ So that being the case, she will be our leader. I support her,” he said.

This week potential Liberal leadership candidate and Canning MP Mr Hastie declined to comment on a possible challenge to Ms Ley telling The West Australian: “these are complex matters”.

Fellow leadership rival Angus Taylor, who previously served as shadow treasurer, is continuing to sound out colleagues about the party’s direction as he prepares to return to Australia from Europe.

One coalition source claimed many of the names being canvassed to replace Ms Ley had not been doing their jobs properly while she was managing to “hold the team together with duct tape”.

“When the Government released its mid-year budget Shadow Treasurer Ted O’Brien was missing, just like our spokesman Dan Tehan was nowhere when Labor’s latest climate targets were announced, and Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor hasn’t bothered coming back for the response to Australia’s worst ever terror attack,” they said.

During a visit to Western Australia on Friday, the Prime Minister accused the Liberal Party of having “undermined” its first female leader “from day one” and tipped there would be “at least one more defection to One Nation” from the former coalition.

Speaking to ABC radio Perth, Anthony Albanese boasted he led an “extraordinarily united party”, and that the past week of chaos was the result of the coalition having “played politics on themselves”.

“(The Liberals and the Nationals) certainly don’t like each other but they also don’t like each other within their parties – the Liberals don’t like other Liberals and the Nats don’t like other Nats,” he said on Friday.

“I’m in a party of Government because I want to be in a position to make a difference in this country. The coalition had just focused on themselves. It’s all about their internals, and Sussan Ley has been undermined — the first woman leader of the Liberal Party — undermined from day one and the alternative leaders are worse.”

Concern over the prospect of other defections to One Nation are shared by Nationals MPs, with continuing internal nervousness that Queensland MPs Colin Boyce and Llew O’Brien are the most likely to switch parties before the next election.

This week former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce refused to say whether he thought his close friend and former colleague Mr O’Brien could eventually follow him to One Nation, after the Nationals MP briefly moved to the crossbench in 2020 as a protest.