Are opposition leader Sussan Ley and her gang of fellow ‘moderates’ in truth a Labor mole operation? Or are they just completely, utterly, stupidly clueless? Because nothing else could explain their apparent suicidal determination to destroy the Liberal party, which they’re well on the way to doing.
Core support for the coalition has crashed to a record-low 24 per cent, with Sussan Ley’s net approval rating plunging to minus 33 after weeks of Liberal and Nationals infighting, clashes over net-zero emissions by 2050 and leadership rumblings.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for the Australian shows support for One Nation, minor parties and independents has hit new highs, as Pauline Hanson’s conservative party attracted a record-high primary vote of 15 per cent.
Note that: conservative.
The Australian has tracked the bleeding of conservative votes since the first post-election Newspoll in July, which showed the Liberals and Nationals plunging to a primary vote of 29 per cent.
What could be behind it?
After conservatives Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Andrew Hastie resigned from their frontbench positions and ex-deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce quit the Nationals partyroom, Ms Ley has struggled to maintain unity in coalition ranks amid splits over net zero, climate change and migration.
It’s so simple that only a Liberal ‘moderate’ couldn’t see it: the more the party has moved to the left, turning into a paler pink version of Labor and aping all of Labor’s policies, the more voters have deserted them.
The last conservative leader the party had was Tony Abbott, who won a thumping landslide before being knifed by the moderates. Since then, the lettuce-leaf moderates have dragged the party’s fortunes further and further down. Scott Morrison pretended to be a conservative, but, like Christopher Luxon, he was a wishy-washy weathervane, turned this way and that by the chattering of elite opinion. Peter Dutton was a half-hearted conservative and put the party in a winning position, right until the moderates ran the worst election campaign in living memory and blew any chance the Liberals had.
The idea that voters want a choice between left (the ‘moderate’ Liberals), far-left (Labor) and lunar left (the Greens) is demolished by the simple fact that the left vote has collapsed, too. Labor’s primary vote has steadily declined since the 1980s. From a high of near-50 per cent in the mid-’80s, Labor’s primary vote has fallen and fallen. In the past two elections, its primary vote was at record lows not seen since the Great Depression.
Confidence in Anthony Albanese is also collapsing. The only thing making him look even remotely respectable is standing in contrast to Ley’s abysmal leadership of the opposition.
The Greens, whose vote has rarely pegged 13 per cent, have also been on a steady decline over the last 15 years. At the 2025 election, their own leader was unseated in their inner-Melbourne heartland.
Combined support for the coalition and Labor at 60 per cent is now at its lowest level since Newspoll first counted primary votes in November 1985.
So, why is Labor dominating the parliament? Because it’s the coalition who’ve bled the most voters in the past decade, the Liberals most especially, leaving their voters wandering in the wilderness. To date, the lack of a credible centre-right alternative along the lines of Reform in the UK or Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza in Argentina, has ceded the political ground to Labor. The centre-vote has been dissipated among a plethora of minor and micro-parties.
But all that’s looking to change: after decades on the fringe, One Nation are suddenly surging ahead. Pauline Hanson’s conservative party has, on the polling at least, nearly tripled its primary vote since the last election. The party is seeking to capitalise on the surge in the polls by opening multiple branches in states outside One Nation’s base in Queensland. The party is also laying the groundwork for long-term viability, not to mention succession, by dumping the ‘Pauline Hanson’s’ part of its name and rebranding as just ‘One Nation’.
If One Nation emerge as a credible third-party alternative, with broad-based appeal, both Labor and the Liberals have a lot to worry about.
