In the time-honoured tradition of the left wing of the Liberal party, the leaking against leader Sussan Ley began as soon as she abandoned their pro-renewable net zero policies. This should surprise nobody.

The reason bedwetter boudoirs are so soggy has nothing to do with bladder control; it’s because of their uncontrollable urge to advance their ambitions by leaking into the all-absorbent ear of the media.

Malcolm ‘the Miserable Ghost’ Turnbull didn’t bother to conceal the role he would play in ensuring the downfall of anyone threatening the viability of renewable energy. The Liberals, he said, have the memory span of a goldfish and the dining habits of piranhas. Presumably, that makes him the box jellyfish of the party, transparently floating in the warm waters of his Harbourside home, poised to politically paralyse anyone menacing the shoals of renewable rent seekers feeding on taxpayer-funded subsidies.

But why is the left backing Andrew Hastie? Former senator and now former Liberal, Holly Hughes, declared on Sky News Australia that they would have time to install another leftist after he fails, which, as noted above, Big Mal will do everything in his subsidy-driven power to ensure.

If Hastie were to survive all the way into government, despite their best efforts to destroy him, backing him earlier would secure the best possible ministerial or cabinet position, should he succeed.

‘Hastie isn’t my cup of tea,’ said one modest lefty hiding behind the veil of anonymity, ‘but he can have his go and if he’s right, our polls will improve. But if he’s wrong, we need to reassess the decisions already made.’

Who knows what he means, but if the numbers improve there’s no guarantee that Hastie wouldn’t be dispatched like Victoria’s erstwhile opposition leader, Brad Battin, the first to get the better of Labor in the polls since Dictator Dan came to power over a decade ago, and a suburban policeman who speaks to the swinging voters Liberals need to win government in Victoria.

Battin has been replaced by the member for Kew, who, until ten minutes ago, backed the Voice and net zero, voted to expel Moira Deeming, and worked for Josh Frydenberg, that stalwart of the right who reportedly burst into tears in 2019 when Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan insisted that the Coalition support the approval of the Adani coal mine.

The main reason, however, that the left is lining up behind Hastie rather than Taylor is a life-and-death struggle to reform the New South Wales Division of the Liberal party. Its executive wields more power than any other in the country because of its outsized role in candidate pre-selection, and the battle is ongoing, with the executive being run by a committee controlled by the left.

The most prominent person to attempt to reform the NSW division was then prime minister Tony Abbott, who forced lobbyists off the NSW state executive. All that did was compel them to operate through proxies. But what happened to Abbott is a cautionary tale.

The most prominent lobbyist affected was Michael Photios, a founder of several firms that lobby the NSW and the federal government. The Guardian reported in 2018 that Photios had addressed a group called the North Shore Environmental Stewards, who recruited ‘environmentally conscious voters’ to Liberal party branches, reportedly to block Abbott’s pre-selection. That failed, but a spokeswoman for GetUp said they thought the group was ‘great’. The rest, as they say, is history. Abbott went into the election holding Warringah on a two-party preferred margin of 61 per cent, having held it for 25 years, but lost decisively to Zali Steggall.

The reason this history is worth revisiting is that Taylor has taken up the baton from Abbott in the battle to reform the NSW division, expose the exorbitant cost of renewables, and make electricity cheap again.

It was also Taylor who had the policy smarts to put together the winning 2019 election strategy, which exposed the eyewatering cost of Labor’s renewable energy targets, using research conducted by outstanding resource economist Brian Fisher.

Steggall’s 2019 victory, on the other hand, provided the template for the Teals, who, funded by Climate 200, played a critical role in the defeat of the Morrison government in 2022 and the Dutton campaign in 2025.

Both Morrison and Dutton made critical errors; first signing up to net zero and then sticking with it, egged on by Frydenberg and the bedwetters, and refusing to make the case that Taylor had in 2019, that the true cost of renewables would bankrupt the country.

In short, the so-called ‘Photios faction’ prefers Hastie, one suspects, because he is as removed as possible geographically and within the party structure from the NSW Division, lacks Taylor’s proven track record of defeating renewables on economic grounds, and they think he will be easier to destroy, portraying him as an inexperienced, unhinged God-botherer.

Those on the right who back Hastie because they support the National Conservative agenda need to look at how it is backfiring on Trump. That tariffs are taxes paid by domestic consumers and manufacturers, not by foreign producers, has finally dawned on Trump, who announced this month that dividend cheques of at least $2,000 would be paid to every citizen who is not high-income as a result of sweeping tariff revenue. That would cost twice as much as the revenue the tariffs are expected to raise in 2026.

Equally, those who like Hastie’s call to resurrect Australia’s car-making industry using tariff barriers need to take a look at Argentina, where tariff barriers created, as they always do, a stagnant pond for profiteering by substandard manufacturers.

What Australia needs is not to resurrect the failed infant industry policies of the 20th century, but to make electricity cheap enough to keep onshore our elaborately transformed manufacturing of mining products, and our world-class exports of high tech mining and agricultural equipment.

We also need an immigration policy that ensures arrivals don’t outpace the infrastructure needed to absorb them, and people who unequivocally support Australian values. Non-citizens and dual nationals who wave terrorist flags at rallies must be deported.

In the end, the choice before the Liberals is between a revolutionary populist that the left thinks it can break and a commonsense conservative who can break the stranglehold Big Renewable has on Australia.

Let’s hope for all our sakes that they choose wisely.