Is Hastie coming for Ley? Crikey’s six-step guide to offing your leader

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley must be knackered. Having just navigated the drama caused by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s race-baiting, now she has to deal with Canning MP Andrew Hastie.

We’re not making any assumptions about Hastie’s personal aspirations, but the past 16 years or so have given Crikey a very clear idea of the distinct stages of a leadership coup.

Let’s see how his recent activity lines up.

Step 1: Early whispers

The first major challenge is getting yourself described as future leadership material.

This phase can last years. As detailed in David Marr’s Quarterly Essay “Power Trip”, in the early to mid-2000s, Kevin Rudd built his reputation as a loveable wonk on Sunrise and a man of some intellectual heft in a series of profiles. Michael Gordon in The Age called him “the standout performer on the Crean front bench.”

But anyone with a passing interest in Australian politics over the past two decades knows there was a persistent Russian-doll approach to leadership spills. Julia Gillard, having entered parliament at the same time as Rudd — indeed, they gave their maiden addresses on the same day — was being endorsed as a future leader by no less a luminary than, um, Mark Latham. Ipsos polling in 2006 put her at the top of the pile in terms of popularity.

For his part, Hastie has been a “rising star” since at least 2017, and that description started popping up in the media again as Peter Dutton’s 2025 campaign began to falter.

Step 2: Setting out the stall

To move things along, you gotta give the impression you’ve got some big ideas up your sleeve.

Tony Abbott, though consistently less popular than then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, offered his plans for the Liberal Party’s future in his book Battlelines, in July 2009, just under six months before his shock victory — by a single vote — in a leadership ballot against Turnbull.

After a very quiet election — which looks fairly prudent with hindsight — Hastie has been cropping up with a lot of thoughts on how things might be better for the Liberals. He recently added spice by threatening to quit the shadow frontbench if the party remains committed to a policy of net zero by 2050. More on that later.

Step 3: Gather the forces and create chaos

This is the fun part, and if you’re committed enough, this phase can last years too.

Having been offed by Gillard, Rudd set about ensuring she never had a moment’s rest. In February 2012, he quit the foreign ministry. A few days later, Gillard called a leadership spill, which she won comfortably. But that was far from the end of the matter.

The sniping reached an absurd and distasteful peak with a second spill on March 21, 2013 — timed to overshadow Gillard’s apology to victims of forced adoption. Gillard and then deputy prime minister Wayne Swan ended up running unopposed, with Rudd having apparently decided 10 minutes before the match that he didn’t want to play. Gillard sacked ringleader Simon Crean and declared the leadership squabbles settled. They were — and this will shock you — not settled.

But Rudd was busy firming up some buddies to back him. In June of that year, with Labor’s polling plummeting, a pro-Rudd petition started gathering signatures backing him to save the furniture. Gillard called another spill, and this time lost 57 to 45.

This weekend, Hastie put out a slickly produced social media post lamenting the end of the Australian car industry. When anonymous colleagues went to The Australian to idly speculate what the video must have cost, Hastie responded furiously.

“Nameless cowards briefing in the paper,” he wrote on his Instagram stories above a screen cap of the article stating: “It was filmed by competent, patriotic gen Z staffers you muppets.”

Hastie also had buddies ready to “leap” to his defence, with Coalition senators Price and Matt Canavan both cited in the Nine papers calling quotes from Liberal colleagues “pathetic”.

Further, SMH reported that “several MPs unwilling to go on the record said Angus Taylor, the party’s Right faction candidate who lost a leadership ballot to Ley, had been told by close allies inside and outside parliament that Hastie was now the best candidate to take forward the conservative wing of the party, which is sceptical of Ley.”

Meanwhile, the Oz reports on the apparently growing level of support for Hastie in the Liberal Party’s right.

Step 4: Quitters sometimes win

The other great thing about being “leadership material” is that you inevitably get a frontbench position (Hastie became shadow minister for home affairs in May 2025), which you can then quit.

Use Tony Abbott as an example. Following a wild couple of years as prime minister — during which he’d already run against an empty chair, and only just won — Abbott’s reign was finally ended following the disastrous optics of “choppergate”. Malcolm Turnbull swiftly resigned as communications minister and challenged the leadership on September 14, 2015. He won 54 to 44.

It doesn’t always work that way, however. Peter, at the time the home affairs minister, resigned from his position in August 2018 after his first unsuccessful tilt at the Liberal Party leadership. His second challenge was half successful, in that it offed Turnbull, but famously only succeeded in delivering the office to Scott Morrison.

Here’s when you know it’s getting serious for a conservative Liberal candidate trying to unseat a moderate: when the Oz run a piece about what your no-nonsense, hard scrabble, principled journey to get where you are.

While the August 22, 2018, piece “Peter Dutton’s rise and brawls” (subtitled “The Brisbane battler has always been ready to give it a go”) didn’t quite have the desired effect, we will be keeping an eye out for anything similar concerning Hastie.

The Australian would have plenty of material to work from, having already catalogued his journey back to deep religious faith and colleagues’ belief in him as “a leader who offers clarity”.

Step 6: Death or glory

Finally, you pull the trigger.

Sure, it may seem like high stakes, but if there’s anything proven by Gillard’s survival of the attempts on her office in 2012 and 2013, Abbott’s in early 2015 and Turnbull a few days before he was finally axed, it’s that you can always try again.