The Liberal Party is a sinking ship. Sussan Ley’s team have been up late on WhatsApp to journalists who have largely ignored the strange messages reported in a major masthead recently. Normally, I would ignore such background noise, but now the leaks are coming from senior Liberals.

If I were a betting man (fortunately it’s the only vice I don’t have), my money would be on Angus Taylor taking over the leadership at the end of this sitting week.

Yet despite the frenzy, there’s no reason to jump the gun on the leadership spill. Albanese is in top form after the Liberals handed him some mojo. Toppling the Liberals’ first female leader would give Labor the edge when they should be on the ropes for wrecking the economy.

I was speaking to a farmer at church on Sunday who asked me what was going on in Parliament. He was disillusioned by the Liberals, especially Sussan Ley, and hoped that either Angus Taylor or Andrew Hastie would step up and fix things.

It’s always surprising how forgiving Australians can be – I thought Hastie’s strange venom towards his followers had poisoned his chances. But that seems not to be the case.

I mentioned how inflation was not only pushing up prices, but some prices had doubled. The farmer responded that the drought had pushed up feed prices for sheep from $300 per ton to $900 per ton. They’d had to compromise with lower-quality feed at $600 per ton.

I wouldn’t be a farmer for quids, but he said he wouldn’t swap places with me for a million dollars. The disillusionment is palpable – and this kind of grassroots frustration isn’t isolated.

Australians are shifting towards One Nation precisely because of the direction the Liberals are taking. I am worried for Angus Taylor that the moderates will white-ant him as soon as he becomes leader. I don’t see much hope for the Liberals without him, and I don’t see them supporting him either, so it’s a Catch-22.

Pauline Hanson is being seen in a very different light, too. Even former Liberal powerbroker Christopher Pyne, speaking on ageing policy at the National Press Club last week, said that Pauline had 30 years in politics and was not the same inexperienced political operator she was back in 1996. Pyne also said that he and Cory Bernardi grew up in the same street and wished him well with his campaign for One Nation.

No wonder – with One Nation on the rise, and the Liberals pretending to be the Democrats – the traditional base of the Liberal Party has moved camp. I doubt they will be returning anytime soon.

A big problem for the right is that One Nation may make moves on traditionally Nationals’ territory. The Nationals didn’t lose any seats last election, but One Nation and the Nationals, particularly in electorates like New England, may cancel each other out.

Writing in this masthead last week, Graeme Haycroft presented a plan to save the Liberal Party through a grassroots movement. This makes a good deal of sense. Before they disappeared altogether, the former Queensland Division was run into the ground by the state executive. Much like we are seeing now in NSW and Victoria, the state executive ran roughshod over the membership. This process began at the Queensland Division’s annual convention in Cairns in 1997. By 2008, the Queensland Division was merged into the Liberal National Party.

The NSW Division, the biggest problem child for the federal party, was meant to be reformed by Peter Dutton. However, this was put off until after the 2025 federal election and then disappeared altogether. The last I heard of the NSW Division was an on-again, off-again quota system for female candidates. You couldn’t get more out of touch with a political base.

These internal failures stem from a perpetual problem for conservatives: individuals on the right tend to think for themselves. That’s why Menzies created a successful vehicle in 1944 by bringing together some ten different political parties. John Howard held the ‘broad church’ together, and Tony Abbott romped home in 2013 by being a conservative.

As Gerard Henderson wrote last week, Menzies, Fraser, Howard, and Abbott are the only Liberals to defeat an incumbent Labor government. They did so by focusing on conservative policies, not trying to be Labor light.

Yet recent leaders have strayed from this formula – with disastrous results. Scott Morrison’s performance in the debates with Albanese in 2022 set up the low-risk, no-policy approach that Peter Dutton infamously adopted at the last minute for the 2025 election. After soundly defeating The Voice referendum, Dutton’s uncharacteristic weakness lost an election he should have won.

Conservative policies are key to the Liberal Party turning itself around.

But is it too late? With One Nation on the rise, and some two years to go before the next election, this brings me to the straw that broke the camel’s back: the Hate Speech Laws.

The tipping point was Sussan Ley calling for a special sitting of Parliament, then going in with no idea of what to stand for. Only a handful of conservative politicians were brave enough to stand up for conservative principles and oppose these laws. For various reasons, Angus Taylor, Andrew Hastie, and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price were not among them.

The on-again, off-again No-alition Coalition (which is back together at the time of writing) has seen a reduction in the suspension of three Nationals frontbenchers for doing the right thing. Nationals senators were also targeted for removal from parliamentary committees for no longer being part of the official opposition.

I asked Senator Bridget McKenzie her thoughts on being removed from committees last week. She said:

‘Committees are vital mechanisms in our Parliament helping MPs to keep the government to account, scrutinise legislation and programs, examine issues of community concern and connecting the Parliament with the broader community. The Nationals stood up against Labor’s dangerous, rushed Hate Laws and the over-reaction whilst ‘negotiations’ are ongoing is unhelpful, arbitrary and wrong.’

Matt Canavan tweeted last week that:

‘The motion to remove Nationals Senators from Committees was not moved today because we ran out of time.’

So, while the committee saga may be old news, it is worth remembering that the Liberals brought their problems upon themselves. And it all started with the Hate Speech Laws.

Essentially, Sussan Ley has punished the Nationals for voting the same way as conservative members wanted them to.

If anything, the Liberals should be looking to the Nationals for guidance on standing up for conservative principles.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.