Pauline Hanson is fast becoming the opposition.
The Coalition’s decision to abandon its commitment to net zero emissions as part of a dramatic weakening of its energy policy has failed to arrest its slide in popularity, with a new poll showing support plummeting while the One Nation vote has continued to surge.
The Australian Financial Review/ Redbridge/Accent Research poll shows that amid a tumultuous week, the Coalition’s primary vote fell 5 percentage points in a month to a poll-record low of 24 per cent, while support for One Nation rose 4 points to a poll-record high of 18 per cent.
Some fascinating dynamics are at play.
Hastie is a threat to Labor too because he speaks to the same outer-suburban, patriotic, economically interventionist voters it depends on. A Liberal who says “rebuild industry, control borders sensibly, take culture seriously and reward work” is harder to caricature than a climate-culture warrior from Queensland. That’s also why some Liberals – Brandis and Andrew Bragg – are keen to police his thought. They sense an ideological realignment they can’t control.
…That doesn’t mean Hastie is right on every policy. His hard line on net zero won’t fly in metropolitan electorates. Yet contesting climate policy from the perspective of energy reliability and working-class bills is not extremism – social democrats and liberal conservatives are arguing over this across the West. Then there’s the risk of alienating key “small-c” conservative constituencies of ethnically and religiously diverse Australians by invoking the inflammatory language of becoming “strangers in our own country”. Hastie’s project will fail if it defines these citizens as strangers rather than as allies and fellow builders of our shared national home.
Liberal Party moderates appear set to be pragmatic.
A growing number of moderate Liberal MPs are pulling their support for Sussan Ley and are backing Andrew Hastie to be the next leader, arguing she has caved to his agenda and he has a better chance of lifting the Coalition’s stocks electorally.
The Australian has spoken to senior conservative and moderate MPs who believe there is a growing momentum behind Mr Hastie’s push to become leader, amid fury in moderate ranks that Ms Ley had delivered a climate policy “worse than the Nationals”.
Two senior moderates said a majority of MPs in the faction would vote for Mr Hastie against Ms Ley if a ballot were held this week.
I am of the view that Hastie’s post-liberals could emerge as a serious contender to Albo’s do-nothing government.
But the devil is in the policy detail.
Abandoning net zero is a uselessly self-destructive option. So is the current magic pudding option of contradicting everything you say on energy.
The LNP needs a rational energy policy.
For instance, if it is going to prioritise affordability, it simply must explain how gas prices will be brought down.
If it wants to abandon net zero, then it must explain how it will decarbonise without it.
The other area under Hatie, which is vital at the ballot box, is immigration. Yet it is not clear what the man stands for on this.
He talks a big game but is also persistently vague on numbers: “That means getting immigration to a sustainable level. If we don’t act, we can expect anger and frustration.”
What does “sustainable mean”?
Some commentary has linked Hastie to Peter Dutton’s floated targets:
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Net overseas migration target around 160k per year.
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Permanent migration program around 140k per year.
Some analysis pieces say Hastie has “re-committed” to those numbers, but again: that’s interpretation, not a direct Hastie quote
This is an improvement, but it is still far too high.
Like energy policy, Hastie is so vague that we can’t judge what he actually stands for, which is not electable.
Hastie needs to get this right, or he will condemn post-liberalism in its infancy and hand us over to Chinese illiberalism instead.
