A prominent Liberal conservative has rejected suggestions he’s angling for the party leadership after a series of inflammatory social media posts.
Liberals have privately expressed frustrations at being forced to talk about themselves rather than attack Labor or build voter support, fearing they’re losing more momentum after a dire May election result.
“The vast majority of the party room want to focus on a bad government that’s failing the Australian people, not internal conversations,” one MP said.
Distractions include speculation Western Australian MP Andrew Hastie is angling for the party leadership after publicly pushing for net-zero emissions goals to be dropped and migration to be curbed.
Among a series of social media posts linking immigration to housing shortages, Mr Hastie said: “We’re starting to feel like strangers in our own home.”
He has garnered support from Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was removed from the shadow ministry for failing to support Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and not apologising for comments singling out the Indian community.
Despite previously declaring his wish to one day lead the Liberal Party, Mr Hastie threw his support behind Ms Ley on Thursday.
“I support Sussan. Anyone who’s speculating otherwise is being mischievous,” he told 2GB Sydney.
But Mr Hastie again described net-zero targets as a “con job” despite his party being yet to formalise its stance on maintaining its support for the climate objective.
“The climate is changing. I don’t dispute that,” he said.
“Whether or not we can do anything about it by killing our country is another question altogether.”
Some Liberals and Nationals fear bleeding votes to minor, right-wing parties such as One Nation, which want climate action abandoned, with the net-zero by 2050 objective becoming a totemic issue for coalition conservatives.
Mr Hastie has threatened to resign from the opposition front bench if the emissions policy is retained, although he did not make the same stand under former leader Peter Dutton.
Moderate senator Maria Kovacic told AAP the “the sensible and credible thing to do” was for the coalition to form proper policies that could be taken to the next election “as a legitimate alternative government”.
She noted a recent ASEAN inter-parliamentary assembly, made up of representatives of Southeast Asian nations, featured a “clear focus on decisive action as to emissions reduction, the renewable energy transition and regional energy security”.
Several Liberals have also distanced themselves from Mr Hastie’s most recent comments about immigration.
Independent MP Allegra Spender criticised his rhetoric and pointed to the anti-migration “Rivers of Blood” speech given at a 1968 conservative conference in Britain by white nationalist Enoch Powell, who claimed white Brits were “made strangers in their own country”.
“Is Hastie, who has said he wishes to lead the Liberal Party and the country, harking back to Enoch Powell because he is ignorant of history or is he using Powell’s words deliberately?” she said.
“I don’t know, but we must be very careful in this debate.”
Opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr, a more moderate voice on the issue within the Liberal Party, dismissed any suggestion of racism.
“I completely reject that notion,” he told ABC Radio, although he didn’t back Mr Hastie’s rhetoric when pressed on the social media post.
“We’re all Australians. Anyone who comes to this country from anywhere in the world, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their country of origin, they take that citizenship pledge,” Senator Scarr said.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke called for Mr Hastie to provide specifics about where migration cuts would be made as he defended Australia’s multiculturalism.
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