Director at RedBridge Group Australia, Kos Samaras, has warned that the destabilisation of Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has little to do with election strategy and everything to do with factional control, as pressure mounts after Andrew Hastie’s shock resignation from the Coalition frontbench.
Hastie stepped down as Shadow Home Affairs Minister on Friday, saying he could not stay silent on immigration while shadow cabinet solidarity required him to hold back. His exit added to the sense of instability around Ley’s leadership, coming just weeks after he declared Australians were becoming “strangers in their own country” due to high migration levels. Supporters on the right see him as a standard-bearer for a tougher line, while others fear his departure exposes divisions the Coalition can ill afford.
Samaras said the reaction to Hastie and the anti-immigration rallies was badly misread. “The progressive vote grew after the immigration rallies. So why is Ley being targeted because she is rejecting such policy ideas?” he asked.
“Our post-immigration rally polling revealed that, so did many other polls. The only demographic shift tracked older voters moving from the Coalition to One Nation. Older voters living in the regions. Younger voters didn’t follow. They moved further away. Hence, 87% of Gen Z women do not support the Coalition, no matter where they live.”
For Samaras, the data reveals the real drivers behind the push against Ley. “This matters because it exposes what’s driving the challenge to Sussan Ley. It isn’t about electoral strategy. The politics targeting her has no relationship to winning elections. It’s about control over a shrinking space, the increasingly isolated corner where echo-chamber nationalists reside, a world dominated by bots, and fake online accounts, providing a false impression of support that looks more like a night at the pokies, flashing lights, manufactured excitement, and the certainty of a win that actually never materialises.”
His warning comes just a day after new polling showed One Nation surging seven points to 13 per cent of the primary vote, pulling support from disaffected Coalition voters and exposing fractures on the right. The same survey found 53 per cent of Australians now believe the government’s immigration cap is too high, while the perception of immigration as a positive force has dropped sharply since 2019.
Samaras argues Ley is being destabilised for refusing to embrace a political strategy that alienates more voters than it attracts. “Ley is being destabilised not because she’s ineffective, but because she refuses to validate politics that empirically repel the electorate the Coalition needs. The data is unambiguous: divisive policy doesn’t expand the Coalition’s voter base. It shrinks it.”
The combination of Hastie’s resignation, the polling surge for One Nation, and the internal manoeuvring around Ley highlights the fraught path the Liberal Party faces. As Samaras put it, the forces destabilising Ley are not aimed at winning back government, but at tightening control over a shrinking corner of Australian politics.
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