{"id":178128,"date":"2025-09-29T18:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/178128\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T18:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:16:15","slug":"ley-brushes-off-hasties-immigration-claims-saying-daily-living-pressures-nothing-to-do-with-any-migrant-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/178128\/","title":{"rendered":"Ley brushes off Hastie\u2019s immigration claims, saying daily living pressures \u2018nothing to do with any migrant\u2019 | Liberal party"},"content":{"rendered":"

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley<\/a>, does not believe Andrew Hastie is after her job and has subtly rebuffed his claims that immigration levels are making Australians feel like \u201cstrangers in our own home\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ley declined to endorse Hastie\u2019s comment when asked about it on Monday, instead blaming the government for not building the infrastructure needed to cope with a growing population.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see for yourself how the lack of infrastructure is contributing to the struggles that people are facing every day,\u201d she told reporters in Albury.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has nothing to do with any migrant or migrant community, but this is a reprehensible failure of government to put the infrastructure and services in place that Australians deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ley refused to be drawn on whether Hastie\u2019s remarks were divisive or unhelpful for the Liberal party<\/a> as it conducts a post-election review of its policy agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very confident that all of my colleagues are expressing strongly held views, and they do that in many ways,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, she faced questions for the first time about Hastie\u2019s recent string of provocative policy statements, which have prompted speculation the shadow home affairs minister is positioning himself for a future leadership challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hastie \u2013 who has repeatedly declared his aspirations to one day lead the party \u2013 last week said he supported Ley and anyone suggesting otherwise was \u201cbeing mischievous\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked on Monday if she was worried the former soldier was angling for her job, Ley told reporters: \u201cNo, I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his most recent policy intervention, the Western Australian MP used social media<\/a> to warn that the Liberal party could \u201cdie\u201d as a political movement if it did not commit to curb net overseas migration, which he blamed for the housing crisis.<\/p>\n

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Hastie claimed the rate of net overseas migration, which has subsided since a post-pandemic surge<\/a>, was making Australians start to \u201cfeel like strangers in our own home\u201d.<\/p>\n

The line echoed the former UK MP Enoch Powell\u2019s <\/a>infamous \u201crivers of blood speech\u201d in 1968, in which he imagined a future multicultural Britain where the white population \u201cfound themselves made strangers in their own country\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer<\/a>, used a similar \u201cisland of strangers\u201d line in a speech<\/a> in June \u2013 for which he later expressed regret.<\/p>\n

Hastie\u2019s remarks have one again exposed the divisions inside the party, with some MPs privately frustrated at his freelancing while others, such as Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, openly praise his outspokenness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, does not believe Andrew Hastie is after her job and has subtly rebuffed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-178128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}