Angry Liberal rebukes rebel Hastie: ‘This is how we become like the Victorians’

First-term Liberal MP Mary Aldred has rebuked rebel colleague Andrew Hastie for quitting his frontbench role and warned the party will turn into a Victorian-style basket case if it continued to navel-gaze and let Labor off the hook.

In Tuesday morning’s Liberal Party room meeting in Canberra, Aldred stood up and said she and other colleagues would lose their seats at the next election if the party did not unite, focus on its core strengths and turn the heat on the government.

The new MP for the regional Victorian seat of Monash clipped Hastie in her speech, saying she disagreed with the way he handled his resignation and reflecting the sentiment of many of his colleagues, including some of his allies.

“This is how we become like the Victorians,” three MPs, unable to publicly speak about the closed-door meeting, quoted her as saying. The Victorian Liberal division has functioned poorly for years, having won a single election since 1996.

Aldred told colleagues she came to Canberra to fight Labor, not to feud internally.

Hastie was sitting in the room but did not speak. It is rare for MPs to criticise colleagues in party room meetings. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley did not address Hastie’s frontbench resignation, which happened on Friday, in her speech to the meeting.

The opposition’s dirty linen was aired on Monday as this masthead revealed that Dutton, who led the historic election loss in May, was highly critical of Hastie’s work ethic and policy development in his private submissions delivered to the party’s election review in July.

Senior Liberals have called for leaks to stop so the party could focus on policies, including resolving its position on emissions reduction, as Ley inches closer to a compromise to retain net zero as a goal with new economic caveats.

Hastie sat on the outer rings of the backbench on Tuesday in question time, alongside right-wing powerbroker Tony Pasin.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers roasted the Coalition as Hastie kept a low profile, declining to speak on the record to reporters and not making a contribution to party room meetings.

“If anything, they are more divisive and more divided. No credibility whatsoever. Their record in government and now in opposition makes that clear,” Chalmers said.

Election reviewer and former senator Nick Minchin, who interviewed Dutton for the review in July alongside former NSW minister Pru Goward, confirmed they talked to Dutton about the party’s defence policy and did not deny Dutton scrutinised Hastie’s role as defence spokesman. The defence policy, announced late and with little detail, was criticised when it was released just 10 days before the election.

Minchin declined to divulge details of the conversation with Dutton but played down Dutton’s critique of Hastie.

“Peter avoided direct criticism of his shadow ministers in the course of his discussion with us,” Minchin said on Monday.

“We discussed ... the defence policy and the policy formulation process generally.”

Dutton did not dispute this masthead’s report despite being contacted by several journalists.

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