Liberals play blame game over Hastie leak as Ley denies it came from her

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has tried to distance herself from a leak of former leader Peter Dutton’s scathing assessment of rebel MP Andrew Hastie as demoted senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called on Ley to stop the Coalition looking like a “clown show”.

Ley held a scheduled meeting of shadow ministers in Canberra on Monday night, hours after this masthead reported that Dutton had been highly critical of Hastie’s work ethic and policy development in his submissions to the party’s review of the May election drubbing, while immigration spokesman Paul Scarr spoke out for the first time since Hastie’s resignation.

Some MPs blamed Ley’s allies for leaking information that cast Hastie, a self-described leadership aspirant, in a bad light.

The news fuelled another bout of Coalition angst as the opposition tried to focus on the government’s handling of the Optus Triple Zero scandal and the return to Australia of the so-called ISIS brides.

Unprompted and without being questioned on the matter, Ley told her lieutenants that neither her office nor MPs had access to any information, verbal or written, provided to the review, which was conducted by Liberal Party elders Pru Goward and Nick Minchin.

Several MPs and another party source, all unable to speak publicly about what was said in the closed-door meeting, said Ley emphasised that only Minchin and Goward knew what Dutton and others had told the review.

Ley’s colleagues took this as an attempt to exonerate herself, with some questioning why she felt the need to defend herself.

Several MPs, including Ley in the meeting, said this week that the review was one of the most important in the party’s history, given the size of the loss in May’s election, in which the Coalition won only 43 seats to Labor’s 94.

Reflecting sensitivity around the leak, particularly among Hastie’s backers, Price said she had written to Ley demanding an end to the leaks. Price previously raised concerns about one of Ley’s key factional backers, frontbencher Alex Hawke, who Price claimed had berated one of her staffers in the week of her being demoted from the frontbench.

“The leaking of a verbal submission to, quite frankly, lazy journalists is ridiculous,” Price, who Ley dismissed from the frontbench last month, said on 2GB.

“I’ve written to our leader about my concerns about backgrounding and about leaking to the media. It’s got to stop. There’s been commentary on the fact that we look like a clown show.”

Scarr was a critical player in Hastie’s resignation as opposition home affairs spokesman. In his resignation statement, Hastie claimed that Ley had handed Scarr full responsibility for immigration policy.

As the senior portfolio holder, Hastie had grounds to believe he should be in charge. But some of Hastie’s closest allies said privately that he knew he retained control of immigration policy, but saw the letter as a convenient excuse to quit Ley’s team.

Scarr is viewed as too left-wing on immigration issues by some on the right of the Coalition. In the same shadow ministerial meeting at which Ley spoke, Scarr delivered an impassioned defence of his positions and arguments that the party needed to reconnect with migrant communities, irking some colleagues.

In comments to this masthead, Scarr emphasised that the net overseas migration figure cited by Hastie and others was 100,000 above the pre-COVID average and nowhere near enough houses were being built to accommodate new arrivals.

While the party’s position was to cut net overseas migration (NOM), Scarr said the conversation “must be based on facts and evidence” and consider a series of economic trade-offs.

Factors responsible for the level of net overseas migration “barely get a mention in the debate”, he said. They included a 26 per cent rise in New Zealanders coming to Australia due to the weak jobs market in that country; a 22 per cent rise in working holidaymakers required by the tourism and farming sector; other agreements with countries allowing working holidaymakers to stay in the country; and a massive surge in onshore protection claims by potentially fake asylum seekers.

“The policy needs detail. You cannot get away from doing the hard work,” Scarr said.

At the election, the Coalition pledged to cut migration without specifying areas that would be reduced.

“When making proposals, you need to provide a breakdown for NOM figures and the Permanent Migration Intake. You need to be clear on proposed policy settings and linking them to how you are going to achieve outcomes. If you do not do that, you have no credibility,” Scarr said.

“In developing the policy, there must be close co-operation with all portfolios and the party room. This is key. Immigration matters are dealt with in a range of different portfolios. There are budget impacts. There are international agreements. Our agricultural sector and aged care sector need workers. There are skills shortages that have endured for years. The regions are still crying out for skilled workers.”

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