The far-right threat inside the Liberal Party

The most glorious moment of this year’s federal election was watching Peter Dutton not only lose his long-desired bid to be prime minister, but lose his own seat in parliament as well. It was almost as satisfying as watching former Prime Minister John Howard suffer the same fate in 2007.

Dutton’s spectacular failure represented a thorough rejection of his right-wing agenda. Buoyed by Donald Trump’s US presidential victory last year, Dutton pivoted to include some soft-MAGA styling in his own campaign—attacking Welcome to Country ceremonies, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, work from home arrangements and, at times, immigration. Voters turned away in droves.

The following leadership battle between Sussan Ley—the more moderate candidate—and Angus Taylor—on the harder right—resolved in Ley’s favour. The commentariat renewed the argument that followed the Coalition’s loss of government in 2022: that for the Liberal Party to regain government, it needed to shave down its harder right-wing edges. It also needed to calm the factional warfare and unite behind a leader.

This is not what is happening. The party’s hard right is asserting itself very publicly to try to shape the party in its own image.

First was Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who shot to the head of Australia’s far-right scene as the leader of Peter Dutton’s No campaign during the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. During this year’s election, she told a campaign rally that she wanted to “make Australia great again”. A few days later, a Christmas snap of Price and her husband in MAGA hats hit the media. Following the fascistic March for Australia demonstrations last month, Price fronted the media to share the rally-goers’ concerns about “mass migration”. She singled out Indian migrants, arguing that Labor allowed higher levels into the country to boost its vote. A week of bitter party infighting ensued, culminating in Price losing her spot in the shadow cabinet after she refused to declare confidence in Ley.

Western Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie was the next to break ranks. He threatened to quit the shadow frontbench if the party recommitted to net zero emissions by 2050. Hastie followed this up with a truly MAGA-esque series of posts across social media. In one, he shared a black-and-white picture of a bygone White Australia: mum and dad with their two young sons tending the lawn of a classic 1960s suburban brick home. In the caption, he wrote that the Liberal Party “might even die as a political party” if it doesn’t curb migration, questioning “What is the point of politics, if you’re not willing to fight for something?”.

In a video titled “Australian First”, Hastie poses with a vintage red 1969 Ford Falcon sedan, bemoaning the loss of domestic manufacturing and “Aussie cars, made by Aussie workers, for the Australian people”. And, of course, there are references to the “evil” and “violent” “radical left”, Christian iconography and the need to fight the decline of the West.

This is all widely understood as Hastie’s first moves in a bid for Liberal Party leadership, a campaign that has been publicly endorsed by Price, Liberal MPs Garth Hamilton and Henry Pike, and backed by a number of other Liberals speaking anonymously to the media. Bear in mind that Ley won the leadership by only four votes: 29 to Taylor’s 25.

There’s some confusion about this posture. If Trump-style politics was so thoroughly rejected by the Australian electorate less than six months ago, why double down on it? Sometimes there’s more to politics than immediate electoral victory. These are ideological people with a vision for society—and that vision fits with a rising hard-right norm across the Western world. Even if that hasn’t yet filtered into Australia, people like Hastie and Price can still feel like this is their movement’s historical moment and their duty to propagate it. Politics isn’t just about tailing mass opinion—it’s about intervening to shape it.

It’s worth comparing this to how the Labor Party responded to its loss of government in 2013 and subsequent near-decade in opposition. Party leaders concluded that public infighting had been electorally detrimental, so they needed to present a united front. In practice, this meant the more left-wing figures inside Labor shutting up and backing whatever the leader said. Think of MPs like Ged Kearney, who publicly supported refugee rights for years but, since entering parliament, has shut her mouth on the question. Or think of how the party treated WA Senator Fatima Payman who crossed the floor to support a Greens motion recognising Palestinian statehood.

The far right has failed to enter the mainstream here for several reasons. Primarily, Australia has not experienced the same level of economic and political crisis and chaos as the northern hemisphere. The centre has held—albeit with declining support each election.

But there is a base for harder right politics: in the most recent election, far-right outfits polled a combined 13.6 percent—almost 2 million votes. Recent polling indicates that support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has increased from 6 to 11 percent since the May election and is now at 16 percent in NSW. But the far right has failed to coalesce around a single party or leader, as with the AfD in Germany, National Rally in France or Trump in the US. This hampers its ability to build a movement.

It’s impossible to predict how a more cohered far-right movement could emerge in Australia. But it’s possible that, rather than happening outside the Liberal Party, it could emerge within it, or as a split from it. As the Teal Independents continue to soak up the more moderate Liberal base, this becomes more likely. And people like Hastie are in many ways the more likely candidates. It’s rarely the street thugs who rise to the top. Hastie, with his SAS soldier background and elite Sydney private school education, is far more typical. Trump, after all, is a billionaire born into wealth.

Again, this is not to predict anything. But it should be read as a warning. The far-right threat exists in Australia, not just on the streets but inside the traditional major party of Australian capitalism.