Ley, scrambling to save her job, turns to Howard for help on migration – and Pauline Hanson

Sussan Ley has tapped former prime minister John Howard for advice on countering Pauline Hanson’s surging populist party as the opposition leader scrambles to tighten her tenuous grip on the leadership by exploiting anxiety over the rate of migration.

A defiant Ley has ordered her shadow ministers to fast-track a new migration policy as conservative Liberals and the Nationals, fresh from a victory dictating the 2050 net zero target, opened up a new internal debate on population.

Ley spent her day in back-to-back interviews to promote the Coalition’s climate and energy policies as the affordable alternative to net zero, appearing to back away from support for new coal-fired power stations after conceding to ABC’s 7.30 that coal was “highly unlikely” to stack up as economically viable.

To be released after parliament rises for the year, the plan is expected to identify migration streams other than international students that the opposition would cut, and build on Peter Dutton’s pledge to bring migration down by 100,000 people a year more than Labor.

The opposition leader blitzed media across the day as speculation about Moderate MPs shifting support to Andrew Hastie forced Ley’s backers, senators Anne Ruston and Maria Kovacic, to rally around her.

“I’ve been underestimated a lot of my life,” Ley told 2GB after she was played a series of listener vox pops calling for Hastie to be the new leader.

“I remember when a lot of blokes told me I couldn’t fly an aeroplane and did a lot to keep me out of the front seat.“

On Monday evening, Ley conceded that new coal-fired power plants were “highly unlikely” to stack up as economically viable sources of electricity, telling ABC’s 7.30 that “we won’t be building coal-fired power stations, and there are no proposals for new coal, recognising that existing coal assets are being kept open for longer”.

Hastie’s camp proactively moved to damp down expectations of a challenge this year, but the atmosphere in the party room is febrile and there is a slim chance of a leadership conflagration in the final parliamentary sessions of the year next week.

Ley’s allies privately admit that she probably has until after her budget-in-reply speech in May to improve in the polls before she is toppled. A new Australian Financial Review/Redbridge poll shows One Nation soaring with a primary vote of 18 per cent, behind the Coalition at 24 per cent.

Hanson’s rise is fed by sharpening attitudes on migration, prompting Ley to seek advice from Howard, according to sources and MPs familiar with the pair’s interactions who described them on the condition of anonymity.

Like Howard did when Hanson burst onto the scene in the late 1990s, Ley intends to make a tough-on-borders approach core to her message over summer while pushing back on Hanson’s racialised tone.

Senior MPs said they hoped they could claw back about half the voters who have drifted to Hanson this term by campaigning on migration and against net zero. The strategy risks blowing up if Foreign Minister Penny Wong is proved correct after she told the Coalition on Sunday that “you can’t be more Pauline than Pauline”.

Asked on Monday how she would make the case to lower immigration levels without isolating or offending groups of voters, Ley said she would do so “by always reminding our wonderful migrant communities of the value that they add to this country”.

“I have my own migrant story. I deeply appreciate communities and individuals who’ve made the choice to come to Australia, to build their homes, to build their families, to build their future, to work hard, to take risks and to give back,” she said on Nine’s Today program.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull blasted the party he once led on ABC Monday afternoon, saying “they’re out of touch with reality. They’re out of touch with the bulk of the electorate, and there’s certainly no way to win in government”.

He added that he felt sorry for Ley, saying “she’s in a fish tank consisting of goldfish that have no memory, that forget everything that they’ve done the last time around”.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Monday welcomed the decision, saying that it was “time for the Liberals to stop pandering to sectional interests like the elite metropolitan universities and big business lobbies” in a social media post.

She said this should involve making significant cuts to certain parts of the migration program, even if this required a temporary freeze on certain visa classes.

Hastie last Friday said immigration “will be the next debate”.

Kovacic warned against a migration policy that was too harsh on new arrivals, telling this masthead that “skilled and balanced migration is vital to our economy, but so too is remembering that many of today’s most successful Australians began as workers, refugees, or families starting from nothing”.

Ley’s big challenge in this area will be avoiding alienating voters from multicultural and migrant backgrounds, given that Price and Hastie have both offended diaspora groups in recent months.

Net migration to Australia soared after borders reopened following the pandemic, and while immigration levels have come down substantially, they remain above pre-pandemic levels.

Repeated polls show that voters have growing concerns about the pace of immigration to Australia, but the Coalition failed to capitalise on the issue during the May election despite Peter Dutton’s promise to bring net migration down by 100,000 people a year more than Labor.

Ley on Monday said her immigration spokesman, Paul Scarr, and home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam were working on a policy to deliver lower migration, but they had not yet worked through the details of which visa classes or migration streams ought to be cut.

“We’ll work through the details of the different streams.”

A report in The Australian that Moderates were shifting support from Ley to Hastie was rejected by Kovacic and Ruston, who said all the MPs she spoke to were backing Ley. But at least two Moderate MPs are known to prefer Hastie to Taylor should Ley go down.

Allies of Hastie, who asked not to be named, said the former soldier was not planning to challenge Ley in the final sitting week of the year. He is about to undergo shoulder surgery for a ju-jitsu injury.

One of those MPs said: “Andrew is interested in it, of course, but he’s not ready yet. We need a program, too, a plan that we can talk about”.

Frontbencher Angus Taylor is also a leadership rival, but there is no consensus in the Right about which candidate should be the person to take over from Ley.

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