Today on the New Politics podcast, we examine the deepening crisis inside the Liberal Party following the leadership elevation of Angus Taylor, and ask whether any change at the top can realistically reverse the Coalition’s dramatic electoral collapse. After the devastating 2025 federal election loss, internal fractures over gun control legislation in the wake of the Bondi terror attacks, and the spectacular breakdown of relations between the Liberal and National parties, the conservative side of Australian politics appears more divided and structurally weakened than at any time in decades, perhaps ever. The Nationals’ mass resignations from the shadow ministry under Sussan Ley, Barnaby Joyce’s defection to One Nation, and surging opinion polls showing Pauline Hanson’s party overtaking the Liberals have transformed what once looked like a routine leadership reshuffle into a full-blown identity crisis for the Coalition.
With the Liberal Party polling as low as 15 per cent in some surveys and now forced to construct a shadow ministry from a drastically reduced parliamentary base, questions of talent, renewal, candidate recruitment and organisational competence are unavoidable. Is this a replay of the revolving-door instability of the mid-1990s, when leaders cycled from Andrew Peacock to John Hewson to Alexander Downer before John Howard restored electoral credibility – or is today’s situation far more serious, with no comparable figure waiting in the wings?
We also explore the implications of One Nation’s rise, Hanson’s Trump-style populism, the strategic role of Gina Rinehart, and whether protest politics can translate into durable parliamentary power in Australia’s electoral system. Can a party that won no seats at the last election suddenly become a decisive force in a fragmented parliament, or is it cannibalising conservative votes without building a governing alternative? And what does this conservative fragmentation mean for the Albanese Labor government, which may be tempted to drift further right to occupy the political vacuum?
Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor in Parliament. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen
