This isn’t a culture war. It’s electoral fear, and it’s paralysing

“Have you seen Hastie’s page? It’s mental.”

The line travelled fast on late Tuesday afternoon. First as a text. Then as a knowing aside in the corridors of Parliament House. Then face to face, over a wine, said quietly, with the air of people recognising something they would rather not name.

The social media pile-on of Liberal Party MP and prospective future leader Andrew Hastie was not a curiosity. It was a warning flare – ignited by his decision to vote for Labor’s hate crime and hate speech laws.

The reaction was instant and unforgiving. Hastie’s Facebook and Instagram feeds filled with thousands of accusations of betrayal, claims he had abandoned conservative voters, and blunt promises to shift their votes to One Nation. For many critics, the substance of the legislation barely mattered.

What mattered to them was that a Liberal, regarded as the last great hope, had followed his leader and sided with Labor on a bill many in the opposition had spent days branding dangerous and unsalvageable.

The political fire engulfing the Coalition is not just about hate crime laws. Nor is it about the Nationals quitting the frontbench en masse. Or even about Sussan Ley’s authority, though that is now plainly under siege. This is about a Coalition that no longer agrees on who it is trying to represent – and is increasingly terrified about the votes it is losing.

The online trolls could not all be dismissed as fringe voices shouting into the void. They were Coalition voters – or at least the ones MPs now fear losing most. This is the crowd who think the political centre is dead, the ones the parties have spent the past few months courting, amplifying and indulging, especially online. But now they are angry, mobilised and deeply suspicious of compromise.

Hastie’s response was sharp and unapologetic. Politics, Hastie replied, is “like war”. His critics, he sniffed, were “emotionally incontinent”.

“Purity is for keyboard warriors and paid influencers,” he wrote, inviting them to unfollow.

He argued openly that backing Labor’s bill was the least worst option, warning that refusing to deal would have delivered a far worse outcome shaped by the Greens. In doing so, he asserted a form of leadership that has been in short supply.

It was a spray that revealed far more than irritation. It showed how badly spooked the Coalition’s right flank has become – and how deeply the party’s leadership crisis is now being fought online as much as in the party room.

Sympathy towards Hastie from colleagues was thin, particularly given the view he had actively engaged with this audience. But he did something few others did this week: he confronted them. Others took the opposite path. In the Nationals, especially, the instinct was to soothe rather than challenge.

But looming over every calculation was Pauline Hanson.

The decision by the entire Nationals frontbench to resign over their concerns over the hate laws was framed as a stand on freedom of speech and principle. It was also an act of political self-preservation. Faced with a restless base and rising One Nation support, the Nationals chose to validate anger rather than risk confronting it. Walking out was safer than explaining compromise.

Within the Coalition, there will be no shortage of blame: Ley, for backing laws she once dismissed as unfixable. Littleproud, for escalating a dispute into a full-blown rupture. Anthony Albanese, for rushing complex legislation through parliament in the charged aftermath of the Bondi massacre and daring the opposition to fracture. Each bears responsibility.

When the Resolve Political Monitor poll places One Nation on 18 per cent nationally (Newspoll has the party at 22 per cent, even ahead of the Coalition on 21) fear begins to trump strategy. Two-party preferred numbers lose meaning when the conservative vote splinters. At the last election, 35 seats ended as contests that were not Labor versus Coalition. On these numbers, that becomes the norm rather than the exception.

The risk is greatest where One Nation is strongest: regional and outer-suburban Australia. These are the Coalition’s remaining strongholds and the Nationals’ heartland. In some seats, Queensland MPs think Hanson’s party is now within striking distance of topping the primary vote. Once that happens, preference deals collapse and Labor becomes the unlikely arbiter of conservative survival.

This is why Coalition MPs think figures such as Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan pushed the freedom-of-speech fight this week so relentlessly. But it was not culture-war theatre. It was electoral fear.

The Redbridge/Accent polling for The Australian Financial Review late last year made the point starkly. In that survey, One Nation support jumps to 26 per cent among male Gen X voters and 22 per cent among Baby Boomers.

Translated into blunt political reality: if you are male, over 50 and struggling with the cost of living, there is a one in four chance you would vote for Pauline Hanson today. That voter is central to the Nationals’ base and increasingly important to the Liberals beyond the capitals.

Hastie, belatedly and imperfectly, chose defiance after voting for Labor’s laws. Some of his colleagues in the Nationals chose comfort.

The Coalition split is not really about a single bill. It may cost Ley her job, but it’s not really about her either. So many Liberals and Nationals are paralysed by fear – uncertain whether to lead their voters, confront them or simply follow them as they drift away.

Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra.

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