Put up or shut up, key Liberal tells would-be leader
Conservative MP Angus Taylor is expected to challenge for the Liberal leadership within days, but he is yet to reveal his hand.
Source: AAP
Liberal frontbencher and leadership aspirant Angus Taylor needs to make it clear whether he’s going to challenge Sussan Ley for the party’s top job, a key powerbroker says.
Taylor is widely expected to attempt a leadership change by the end of the week after a string of dire polls showed plummeting voter support for the coalition.
The opposition defence spokesman believes he has the numbers to win a spill, but logistical challenges mean party members are unlikely to vote until Thursday evening or Friday as senators are tied up in parliamentary committee hearings before then.
Liberal senator Jonno Duniam, a leading figure in the party’s conservative faction, urged Taylor to effectively put up or shut up.
“If Angus is interested in… the leadership then he should say so,” Duniam told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday morning.
“That’s something he needs to make clear.
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“Then what events take place after that well-trodden path? That’s all a matter for him.”
Party conventions require any frontbencher who wants to challenge for the leadership to resign from the shadow ministry.
Taylor is yet to do so, despite admitting he’s been having conversations with his colleagues about the Liberals’ future direction.
Duniam also warned a change in leadership wouldn’t be a silver bullet – a sentiment echoed by pollster Kos Samaras.
“The antidote to their problems is not the leader,” the Redbridge Group director and former Victorian Labor strategist said.
“It would be good policy, and that’s a long road ahead of them and isn’t an easy solution.”
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The latest Newspoll for The Australian, conducted during the most recent break-up between the Liberals and Nationals, puts the coalition’s first-preference vote at just 18 per cent, eclipsed by One Nation on 27 per cent.
Samaras doubted the coalition could develop robust policies before the 2028 election while also competing with the rival conservative party.
“They are not only declining in support in regional Australia to One Nation – they’ve historically been losing ground to the Labor Party and to independents,” he said.
“Outside of Queensland, they only hold five urban seats among a cluster of voters to the tune of 14.5 million. So they’ve got a lot of problems.”
To arrest the slide in the polls, a number of Liberals have called for a greater focus on policy development.
“We can talk about leadership ’til the cows come home, but that is not going to be what Australians look at and go, ‘they’ve got the message, we’re on track again,'” Duniam said.
Fellow Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, from the moderate faction, said policies on housing and migration needed to be the focus.
“Politicians are well paid, they’re sent to Canberra to do policy work and to hold the government to account,” he said.
“We are in control of our own destiny, and we will be even more so if we are forthright on policy.”
-with AAP
