I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. The Liberal Party is locked in a very public power struggle. The coalition has broken apart, and one nation is on the rise. What's emerging isn't just a shift in support. It's something deeper, a realignment of the conservative side of politics, with broader ramifications for Australian politics that we're only beginning
to understand. Today. Political columnist and former Labor advisor Sean Kelly on what's breaking inside conservative politics, what it means for the government and what comes next. It's Saturday, January thirty one. Sean always good to see. This week, Andrew Hasty and Angus Taylor meant in a leafy album suburb to talk about who might challenge for the leadership.
Andrew Hasty and Angus Taylor have met face to face, flanked by senior members of Susan Lee's front bench. Our political reporter Ruben Spargo is live with me in the studio and the meeting occurs just hours before a memorial for former MP Katie Allen, ye Angus Taylor and Andrew.
Yesterday, Andrew Hasty announced he wouldn't challenge because he doesn't have enough support for now. So what does it say about where the Liberal Party is at that these two were the two men putting their hands up.
Well, I mean, firstly, it suggests what we've known for a long time, which is that Susan Lee was never going to be given a real chance to lead the party, despite the fact that she stood up to the Nationals, which is what all Liberals in fact have been saying is exactly what she should have done. So despite the fact she did apparently the right thing, in the eyes of the Liberals, she's still under a men's pressure. And really this has been the case ever since she took
the job. There was a sense in large parts of the party that this was never going to be a long term proposition. That's a difficult spot for the Liberals because of course she is a female leader. There is a sense that the party has a problem with women and this is certainly not going to help them with that.
The other thing that is worth noting about the contest between Angus Taylor and Andrew Hasty is that there's a little bit of a kind of symbolic split there, and the divide is between an older version of the Liberal Party kind of John Howard version of the Liberal Party, and I should say this, I think is Angus Taylor's to some extent self serving framing of the contest, but nonetheless there is some truth to it. It's that kind of older style of Liberal with a conservative economic approach.
Deficits are up, spending is up, taxes are up. But the one thing that he is down and collapsed is Australian standard of living that's fallen more than ever before any history, more than any of our.
Andrew Hasty representing the new direction of the Liberal Party position further to the right, very conservative, very conservative on social issues, really a kind of cultural war liberal.
We have a problem with radical Islamic theology. And I think one of the areas that we really need to look at is immigration. And numbers are one thing, but I think who we bring into our country is really important.
But also, as some other people have pointed out, I think there is a much more significant rift opening up over exactly the party's relationship to its history and the party's relationship to economics and the current economic model which has really governed Australia for the last few decades.
We'll keep it on that one of the un folds, but let's talk about the Nationals. They're about to have a spill themselves, with one backbencher challenging for the leadership because he says they face political oblivion if they don't get back together with the Liberal Party. Is he writer, the national is basically done if that doesn't happen.
Yes, certainly, that's what we're seeing in the polling. In fact, according to Newspoll, one Nation is polling ahead of the entire coalition, not just the Nationals. But that certainly means they're likely to be very competitive with the Nationals in some seats if an election were held right now. So the Nationals see themselves in this contest with one Nation, and that is driving a lot of their attempts to differentiate themselves from the Liberals. Arguably it's driven this split
within the coalition. But the problem for the Nationals, while trying to differentiate themselves from one Nation, or rather trying to differentiate themselves from the Liberals and compete with one Nation, they're forgotten that their largest advantage over one Nation is that they have been a party of government in the coalition. They could deliver change, they could deliver funding to their electorates.
If they're not in a coalition, that advantage vanishes, and suddenly they simply compete with one nation on how well they appeal to voters on their issues. And the difficulty for the Nationals here is that so much of politics has become about grievance, so much of politics has become about polarization and identity and indicating that you're on one team or another, and in that contest, to go further to the right, to indicate that you are an absolutist
in certain ultra conservative ways. One nation can always do better than the nationals, or certainly it has historically, and so it's hard to see exactly what the Nationals can gain in the long term from this split.
Long the term, Sean, what does the rupture on the right of politics in this country mean for our politics more broadly from left to right? How does this reshape the political landscape in this country?
Well, I mean probably the dominant effect is that it has every chance of meaning that just isn't a viable opposition in the near future. Now I'm not saying that's necessarily the case. Anything can change in politics, but the current environment, and it's been this case for a while, really is that the Liberal Party, the Coalition is not
providing a strong opposition. That means there isn't a lot of pressure on labor, and that means that Anthony Albaneasi is much closer to his professed goal of making labor the natural party of government.
What we're seeing is real indulgence from what used to be called the coalition, but from people who simply don't like each other. And if you can't govern yourselves, I don't see how you can be an alternative government of the country.
Is that a good thing? Lots of people, you know, lots of labor people would of course say yes. Part of the answer to whether that is a good thing comes in whether you think the Labor Party is doing enough. And I think there is always an argument that a country benefits when you have a strong government and a
strong opposition. That actually, whatever your political beliefs, you need an opposition which is taking it up to the government in certain ways, which is holding the government accountable certain ways, and we certainly don't have that at the moment. I think that is an issue for the country overall.
Coming up. Has one nation's popularity peaked sean one nation is reaping the benefits of this shift right now, So why is that? What are the conditions that allow one nation to thrive as they are at the moment.
Well, well, one of them arguably is coalition chaos, but there are also real structural forces which drive support for one nation. David mar wrote a quarterly essay about Paul in House in One Nation ten years ago, and he identified a few causes. Nostalgia was one, concerned for law and order was another. But there were two really big ones, and they're not very surprising. One is being anti immigration. Some of that can be antipathy towards migrants, some of
it might be racism. Some of it is racism, yeah. And then the other is distrust of government. And what we've seen over recent years is rises in both of those things. We know, distrust of government, distrust of institutions has been on a rising trend line for quite some time, you know, some variations, but that's been the overall direction of travel. Migration. Meanwhile, and this is interesting and I think quite disturbing. Ten years ago, one third of Australian
said that migration was too high. It is now over half of us who say migration numbers are too high. Now you could say that some of that is particularly of this moment, and that is because migration numbers were particularly high after COVID. But it meant that retric on the Coalition side really amped up about migration and of course within one nation as well, and it meant that
labor as well. We're talking about bringing down migration numbers. Now, the truth is we do rely on migration in this country. We rely on skilled migration in this country. We know that we have a number of skilled shortages and we are going to continue to rely on skilled migration for
a very long time to come. But you do have the parties, the major parties united really in talking about a general aim of bringing migration down since those years, and of course that tends to amplify that message out to voters as well. That is tied to another issue. It is tied to the economy and very specifically to housing, and you can see really strong efforts by Andrew Hasty in particular to link these issues with quite dramatic rhetoric.
Now Labour talk about how housing supply crisis, but this is a housing demand crisis driven by unsustainable immigration. It's that simple, and Deputy Speaker, we must act that overseas migration must come down. Our first allegiance is to all Australian citizens and making sure they have a roof over their heads.
There was an Instagram post where he was absolutely talking about housing and immigration levels the Coalitions.
Andrew Hasty says high immigration is starting to make Australians feel like strangers in their own home.
Which echoed a famous speech from sixty years ago a British politician in our Powell termed the rivers of Blood speech. I think calling back to rehetrick like that is as a fairly strong thing to do, and we don't know yet whether that's the peak of the rhetrick we're going to hear, or whether it's just the first move and it's going to become much more extreme from there.
It's often said that compulsory voting protects Australia from Trump style politics. Do you think that holds true? Look, I have.
Become more and more suspicious of this argument. I think it makes sense when we simply look at Australia right now, we say, well, Australia hasn't quite gone down the path of Donald Trump and authoritarian far right governments. Yet, therefore, what is different about Australia. We say, well, compulsory voting is different, as strong Australian electoral commission is different, Therefore those things must be the difference. But that's really correlation,
not necessarily causation. And when you turn the question around and you say, well, do we think Donald Trump or somebody like him would not have risen in America if America had compulsory voting, if America had a better American electoral commission, Well, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that those elements would have stopped the rise
of Donald Trump. I think what we're really seeing is a strong reaction in America to a broken system to assist on which inequality has been allowed to run absolutely rampant. And in Australia we become too complacent when we think compulsory voting is going to save us all from a
similar fate. Labor Front bencher Andrew Lee has warned that within a generation we will hit American levels of inequality, and so I just can't see that if we hit those levels of inequality, we won't see a similar reaction here. And we should take that very seriously, especially when one nation are already polling. It's not an election, but still it's significant. Are already polling not in one poll, but in a number of polls now at incredibly high levels.
That is saying something to us, at the very least about the distrust of our major parties. And we should remember as well that while we've been focusing on the coalition of this discussion, public support for the two major parties combined has been falling for years and years and years now. That indicates that people think there is a
problem in the way that we are being governed. And that suggests to me that any party that is in government needs to think very seriously about addressing the economic issues in this country. Yes, they can take short term measures of attempting to bring immigration down, an attempt to meet voters' concerns in those ways to some extent, but that that is a band aid that ultimately issues like housing are going to have to be addressed in a very substantive way.
Sean, I'm an absolutionist when it comes to the quality of your contribution to the show. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks Daniel. Now before you go, I wanted to let you know about an extra episode we've released today. It's an essay I've written about the homemade bomb that was straaten into a crowded protesters at the
Invasion day Ralliant Perth. It's about while we've heard so little coverage on this, when there's been no shortage lately of talk in this country about hate, where it resides, and how it should be named and who should be disciplined for it. But when Ooriginal people are targeted with an explosive device in a public square, the response barely registers. Lives are not valued on the same scale. I hope you'll take the time to listen to it. Seven Am
is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Ari R. Richards, Christine Gate, Crystal Color, Nicole Johnston, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zoonveno and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Portio. This has been seven Am. Thanks for listening.