Hastie refuses to accept that politics, like military service, requires some discipline

Only a few months into her leadership, Sussan Ley is facing an extraordinary insurgency from Liberal frontbenchers.

Last week she had to sack Jacinta Price for refusing to endorse her leadership.

Now she is being warned, bluntly, that if the Liberals don’t drop the commitment to net zero by 2050 – or at least water it down – there will be walkouts by frontbenchers.

Andrew Hastie, the opposition’s home affairs spokesman, told the ABC on Monday if Ley stuck with net zero “that leaves me without a job”.

“I’ve nailed my colours to the mast. If I go out with the tide in two and a half years, that’s great. I’ll get a lot more time with my kids back. My primary mission in politics is to build a stronger, more secure, more competitive Australia. Energy security is a vital input to that.”

Hastie said he felt “quite passionate” about the net zero issue.

For someone with intimate knowledge of military discipline, one would have thought Hastie would have had more understanding of the need for reasonable discipline in politics too. But he has decided to make his own rules.

He is acting in a way that is quite contemptuous of Ley, whose position is weak because her party is fractured into warring factions.

With the Liberals conducting a review of their energy policy, Hastie has spoken out on net zero on multiple occasions since the election. By indicating that if he didn’t get his way he would spit the dummy rather than accept a majority decision, he is presumably seeking to turn up the heat on his leader and his party.

His reference that he wouldn’t really mind if he lost his seat at the next election is also self-indulgent, as if the seat is his personal possession rather than being more appropriately seen as belonging to his party.

On Tuesday education spokesman Jonno Duniam bought into the debate, describing Hastie as “a man of integrity”, and telling Sky News “if we just said net zero at any cost by 2050, I think you’d find there’d be a mass exodus”. This would be “bad policy”.

Duniam is pointing to a likely compromise – net zero with qualifications or conditions – which may be where Ley now hopes to land her divided party.

This would be a weakening of the net zero commitment Scott Morrison took to the Glasgow climate conference in 2021, and would invite criticism from the younger voters and in inner urban seats.

But it would be better, in political terms, than ditching the commitment entirely. It also may be the best Ley could do, given the opposition to net zero that has emerged among many in the rank and file across the country. The Victorian state Liberal council became the latest party body to vote against it last weekend.

In a week when the government is preparing to launch its 2035 target and has put out a major report on the threats posed by climate change, you would have thought the opposition would try to avoid drawing attention to its problems on climate policy.

You would have expected it would have Dan Tehan, its spokesman on climate and energy, out and about.

But no. Tehan is overseas, and has been talking up nuclear energy.

It is a metaphor for the Liberals’ wider problem of finding themselves in the wrong places at the wrong times.