Disunity is death: Liberal Party boss’s warning to MPs after Joyce, Price, Hastie sagas

The head of the federal Liberals has warned senior MPs that Sussan Ley’s leadership is being cruelled by ongoing disunity, as the Coalition moves to end debate on net zero.

Party director Andrew Hirst presented his first polling briefing of the term on Monday afternoon in a marathon shadow cabinet meeting that came on a day dominated by Barnaby Joyce’s mixed messages on his mooted move to One Nation.

“Disunity is death – was effectively the message,” one MP said of Hirst’s briefing, which was confirmed by four MPs not allowed to speak publicly.

Hirst, who ran the Coalition’s last three election campaigns, told shadow ministers that global turmoil – such as war in Europe and the Middle East, the rise of China and turbulence in the US – was marginalising opposition parties and benefiting incumbents.

This was, according to Hirst, because Australians were still enjoying relatively high living standards compared to nations such as the US, where inflation struck even more sharply, and voters were also blaming international events for local outcomes instead of poor government policy.

Additionally, incumbent governments gained political benefit from projecting stability and strength in the face of global uncertainty, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tried to do when confronted with US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats during the election campaign.

Hirst encouraged MPs to appear on a wider range of media, including podcasts, radio and other platforms outside their comfort zone. Last term, Albanese and his ministers started to spend more time on social and independent media.

Hirst was contacted for comment.

Issues such as net zero and immigration have sparked sharp internal debates inside the Coalition since the election, leading to the frontbench departures of Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Ley told her colleagues in Tuesday’s joint party room meeting that the time for consulting on the party’s heavily debated energy policy was coming to an end. This could mean a compromise position on net zero by 2050 could be struck in weeks or months, as opposed to mid-next year as initially flagged.

Senator Jane Hume announced on Tuesday that she would introduce a bill to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy, a key aim for net zero sceptics, as well as entrench a commitment to existing climate targets, in an attempt to thread the needle and bring together warring factions.

Right-wing frontbenchers Angus Taylor and James Paterson have recently called for the navel-gazing to end, as did Hastie in his own long speech laying out his manifesto, first reported in this masthead on Monday.

One variable in the opposition’s political recovery is the Nationals’ review into their own position on the contentious pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Nationals MPs on Monday received a PowerPoint presentation on the draft version of the review led by net zero opponent Matt Canavan and a more moderate senator Ross Cadell.

The review is nearly finished and will allow the Nationals to formally oppose net zero as soon as next week, according to party sources. It is unclear how the Coalition would maintain a singular energy policy if the Nationals ditch net zero as the shadow cabinet tries to achieve a compromise position that retains a loose aspiration to achieve net zero in 25 years. But there is some hope that the two positions can be reconciled.

The Nationals will hold a federal party conference this weekend. It is expected that the conference will pass an anti-net zero motion, putting additional pressure on Nationals leader David Littleproud to dump the target.

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