Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberal Party has become a replica of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s.
She’s already a political corpse; all that remains is the timing of exactly when her colleagues dispose of her as leader.
Ley may yet be carried around as a political dead duck for some time, unless an obvious alternative emerges with an urgency that has yet to materialise.
Even then, the timing and method by which a challenger takes over may be delayed by tactical considerations.
Disposing of Ley too brutally risks tainting the next in line.
So a lifeless Ley might survive into the new year – perhaps beyond the May budget or even the winter recess mid-next year.
But her authority is already shattered. Voters are switched off to any instinct to give her a chance, and even allies are starting to wonder what Ley stands for that could define any sort of substantive comeback.
While political comebacks have defied the odds many times before, it’s impossible to see how Ley can revive her fortunes.
Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberal Party has become a replica of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, writes Peter van Onselen
The latest Newspoll presents her worst numbers yet, continuing the downward trend of previous opinion polls.
The only way back is a well-timed replacement of the leader, coupled with a recalibration to renew political competitiveness.
But for the Coalition, what does that even look like?
It should be centred around the state of the economy and how to revive it, but the Liberals have lost the credibility they once had on that front after years of poor economic stewardship and reform timidity.
According to today’s Newspoll, the opposition leader’s net satisfaction rating is minus 33 – worse than the extreme lows Peter Dutton faced on the eve of the wipeout election earlier this year.
Only a quarter of voters are satisfied with Ley’s performance, compared with 58 percent who are dissatisfied. That dissatisfaction rating is even higher than Labor’s two-party vote, which has the government comfortably ahead of the Coalition at 57–43.
The Coalition’s primary vote is now at an all-time low, a new record for cellar dwelling, at just 24 percent.
That, by the way, is the total vote for both the Liberals and the Nationals. Separately, the Liberal Party’s primary vote is likely in the high teens, catastrophic, to say the least, for a major political party.
Albo’s dissatisfaction rating of 51 per cent would ordinarily be concerning for a government, but not in the context of the Coalition’s woes
For context, the Coalition secured nearly 32 percent of the primary vote when it was bludgeoned into oblivion at the May election less than six months ago.
They are now polling eight points lower than that disaster.
In contrast, Labor’s primary vote is one and a half percentage points higher than it was in May, at 36 percent.
Not great in isolation, but positively brilliant when examined alongside the woes of the official opposition.
Meanwhile, One Nation’s support continues to surge, up to 15 percent according to Newspoll, a new record and comfortably more than twice what it was at the last election.
Ley will not survive as leader. It’s that simple. She has had nothing resembling a political honeymoon since taking over less than six months ago, and even if her numbers improve, they won’t save her from the wrath of colleagues once the election draws closer.
Without a change, the Liberals and Nationals are on course to perform even more poorly at the next election than the last, which is almost incomprehensible.
While there’s a good chance Ley survives the ‘killing season’ of the final two sitting weeks of the year, for the reasons already mentioned, there will be no summer reset when Parliament returns in 2026.
Ley will not survive as leader. It’s that simple. She has had nothing resembling a political honeymoon since taking over less than six months ago, writes PVO
Just more of the same, an uncompetitive opposition unable to unite or develop an alternative agenda worth considering.
The problems on the opposition side are only going to get worse before they have any chance of getting better, another reason why alternative leaders are in no rush to dispose of Ley just yet.
She’s become a useful idiot for now, useful only in that someone has to sit in the opposition leader’s office until someone viable is found to help with a reset.
It’s an understatement to describe the Liberal leadership as a poisoned chalice right now.
The first federal female leader of the conservative side of the major party divide won’t be seriously challenging for the prime ministership.
The optics of how she is disposed of, given the lack of women in Liberal ranks and the party’s poor performance among female voters, are a delicate piece in the puzzle of how to move on from Ley.
The poor standing of the opposition comes despite the Labor government (and the PM) being far from popular themselves.
Albo’s dissatisfaction rating of 51 percent would ordinarily be concerning for a government, but not in the context of the Coalition’s woes.
Voters might not think highly of the Labor government or the PM, but they have zero interest in transferring power to the other side of the major party divide, according to polling results stacking up month after month since the election.
In fact, the weaknesses in the opposition right now are so acute that Australia is a virtual one-party state at the federal level, with minor accountability for Labor coming in the form of the Greens’ control of the balance of power in the Senate.
Talk about small mercies.
While the Coalition continues to consume itself over how to respond to the net zero emissions issue, optimists will remember that things looked similarly grim back in 2009 before Tony Abbott launched a coup against then-opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, shifted the Coalition’s position on emissions trading, and almost pulled off a remarkable win at the 2010 election against Julia Gillard.
However, whatever similarities exist between then and now, the differences are far more defining.
Today’s Coalition is an electoral rump after the 2025 election results. Back then, Labor had only a seven-seat majority to play with.
Equally, as divided as the Liberals were back then, the partnership with the Nationals was nowhere near as fractured as it is today.
And the personality clashes are everywhere, whereas in 2009, the clash was all about Malcolm and Tony.
Today, the conservative parties aren’t just weakened in their fight against Labor, they’re being eroded on both their moderate and conservative flanks by the teals and One Nation.
The right-of-centre vote is splintering, and party strategists have no idea how to pull it back together.
Ley’s only saving grace for now is that the situation is so hopeless, so desperate, and the talent pool within the parliamentary team so shallow, that she might stick around as leader for a while simply because it’s a job not worth taking over.
Who else is there who could do it better? Even those floating around would surely think twice before wanting the job in the current climate.
Most of the next generation didn’t win their seats in 2025 anyway, and those who did are now surely more worried about surviving the next electoral onslaught than thinking about leadership ambitions.
