Who’d be Sussan Ley?<\/p>\n
Granted, opposition leadership is traditionally a grim job \u2014 especially in the wake of an epic election drubbing and in the shadows of a seemingly untouchable government at the peak of its game.<\/p>\n
But when the job is all about keeping the faltering existential flame of the Liberal Party alive, it’s pure misery.<\/p>\n
Ley had one of those stumbles politicians make on Friday that show how strongly the political gales are blowing against her.<\/p>\n
When you’re in trouble, even the trivial stuff-ups cost you. It’s the flip-side of the halo effect that winners enjoy and covet.<\/p>\n
When you’re on top, you can do no wrong.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen speak to media during a press conference in Sydney, Thursday, September 18, 2025. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)<\/p>\n
PM pounces on comment<\/p>\n
Witness the prime minister laughing away a reporter’s question about the dollar impact on energy bills of the new climate target. Lols. Nothing to see here. Next question!<\/p>\n
The latest pain for Ley began on Friday after she told journalists that the Coalition doesn’t support setting climate targets from opposition or from government.<\/p>\n
Within seconds of the press conference coming to an end, Ley was made aware of her mistake and quickly stepped back to the microphone. “Sorry guys, just one sec”.<\/p>\n
“What I meant to say was that I don’t support the targets that the government sets while we’re in opposition,” she clarified.<\/p>\n
“We do of course recognise the importance of targets in government, when we have the full information in front of us which we don’t have now.”<\/p>\n
Ley misspoke and corrected herself.<\/p>\n
But it didn’t stop the prime minister from seizing on the original comment, which he described as “extraordinary”.<\/p>\n
It was indicative, he asserted, of a Coalition that wants to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, reminding voters of the opposition’s ongoing public internal fight over whether to dump its previous support for net zero by 2050.<\/p>\n
Loading…The headlines took off<\/p>\n
Ley has made no announcement (yet) that she wants to take the Liberal Party out of the Paris Agreement, which Australia joined under the last Coalition government.<\/p>\n
But the headlines took off, with most media outlets covering the original remarks, the clean-up.<\/p>\n
She did the right thing, but it all reinforced a central storyline that the Coalition is all at sea on climate.<\/p>\n
It also demonstrates how tiny Ley’s room for error has become. She’s on the thinnest of ice.<\/p>\n
Through no direct fault of her own, she’s had another torrid week, despite delivering a keynote economic speech that was applauded for its emphasis on returning the Liberals to their fiscally prudent roots.<\/p>\n
Sadly for her, few Australians will be all that aware of the speech.<\/p>\n
What they will have heard \u2014 if they’re paying any attention to the opposition’s newsreels, an arguable proposition \u2014 is that Ley presides over a Coalition that just recorded the worst Newspoll result in its history.<\/p>\n
Conducted earlier this month \u2014 as the Jacinta Nampijinpa Price debacle over her remarks about Indian migrants reached its zenith \u2014 the poll showed the Coalition’s primary vote has collapsed to 27 per cent, the lowest since Newspoll began tracking party support in 1985.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If voters thought Peter Dutton was terrible, what do these numbers mean?<\/p>\n
Loading\u00a0No natural allies<\/p>\n
To be fair, much of this is not her doing. She survived a bruising post-election fight that left conservatives seething.<\/p>\n
Then the National Party threw a tantrum after the election and pulled out of the Coalition, only to return a short time later.<\/p>\n