Aside from one crude caricature distributed in the crowd, Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s name was almost entirely absent from the rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane.
But stripping away the sideshow attractions – Pauline Hanson’s pinball machine, George Christensen’s photo booth props – the thread running through the two-day event was the challenge Ley has to simply hold her party together amid a volatile fracturing of the conservative landscape, let alone for the Coalition to be competitive again.
The major theme from a lineup of Liberal rightwingers boiled down to: please, please don’t abandon the Coalition, especially for a further-right minor party like One Nation.
A second theme: the conservative rump of the Coalition is in no mood to make Ley’s life easy.
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Tony Abbott’s explicit plea was for “one last chance”, urging dissatisfied conservatives against starting a new splinter party like Nigel Farage’s Reform. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the “rock star” of this wing of politics, implored audiences to join the Liberals.
So far, so reasonable. After May’s election drubbing, a further splitting of conservative voters into more fringe parties won’t help the Coalition. As Cpac founder Andrew Cooper said, the Liberals have “hardly any members and the average age is 65”.
The problem for Ley, however, was the solution from speakers including her parliamentary colleagues – Price, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic, Angus Taylor, Bridget McKenzie – was not a call to unite behind her. Indeed, Ley was barely mentioned (except to audience boos during Hanson’s speech).
Instead, Abbott called for party “reform”; Price, recently dumped by Ley from the shadow ministry, asked attenders to help “shaping” the party; several speakers mooted alliances between the Coalition and Hanson.
Cpac, as it always does, wants Liberals lurching further right.
“We’ve got a battle to get the conservative side of politics back together, and this is the beginning,” said Cpac chair Warren Mundine.
Sky News host Rowan Dean floated: “Liberals, Nationals, One Nation working together”.
It’s important to note here: Cpac is not mainstream Australia. It’s not even the mainstream of the Liberals.
Some in the Coalition see the several hundred attenders at Brisbane’s Star casino – overwhelmingly but not exclusively older white people, starstruck by News Corp opinionistas and obsessed with Trump’s Maga America – as the party “base”. But despite being held in LNP heartland of Queensland, most Liberals stayed away.
Outside those on the speaking lineup, there only appeared to be one other Coalition MP in the venue. There were more One Nation parliamentarians in the crowd.
This is the Jacinta Price wing of the Coalition, the Sky After Dark faction, unlikely to praise a more moderate voice like Ley; indeed even hard-right Peter Dutton’s campaign was criticised by speakers for being “Labor-lite”. Some more moderate Liberals are frustrated at continually being dragged off-message by harder-right colleagues, as Ley’s team seeks to chart a more mainstream path to attract “middle Australia” voters instead of focusing on imported culture wars pushed by commentators and former MPs now in media roles.
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But the discussion about the future of the Coalition is a legitimate one. Senior Coalition voices are alarmed at shedding support to moderate “teal” independents, and on their right to One Nation. The recent Newspoll delivered the Coalition’s lowest-ever primary, just 27%, while One Nation had risen to 10%. Dutton left the Coalition a smouldering wreck with just 43 lower House seats. Something needs to shift if the Coalition can survive as a meaningful force.
Hanson, in a lower-profile slot on Sunday afternoon, claimed One Nation was “the real opposition”. Having heard discussion about whether One Nation should link up with the Coalition, she said she would “no longer be the bridesmaid”.
Deputy Liberal leader Ted O’Brien, with the weekend’s toughest assignment in representing Ley’s more moderate position, railed against Labor’s economic policies and claimed “our values are under attack”; but he was constantly heckled, numerous audience members jeering “what are you going to do about it” and “when are you going to start?”
The battle over net zero is now a proxy battle for the Liberal leadership. While Cpac speakers demanded the Coalition talk more about migration, support Australia’s “Judeo-Christian” heritage, and oppose Labor tax changes, many calls for “leadership” to oppose climate targets were top of the agenda.
Sure, the weekend wasn’t all a battle for the Liberal party soul.
Matt Schlapp, Cpac’s American chair, joked “I thought net zero was Biden’s IQ?”; Liz Truss, of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it British prime ministership, claimed she was “cancelled” and removed in a “globalist coup”.
Numerous speakers praised murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, with a tribute wall to write messages.
One Nation unveiled a working pinball machine themed for their Please Explain cartoon series, depicting Hanson as a caped superhero fighting a cyborg version of the energy minister, Chris Bowen. Former Nationals MP Christensen, now with conservative advocacy group CitizenGo, set up a photo wall like a police mugshot for people to pose with a sign reading “eSafety thought police”.
But the conference’s main thread was clear: what now for Liberals?
The answer, according to Cpac, was obvious.
Every Cpac conference has told attendees the Liberals’ mounting election failures are because leaders aren’t rightwing enough. Scott Morrison in 2022, Dutton in 2025, and a string of Liberal state election defeats, according to recent editions of Cpac, came because they were too progressive. Then-Liberal vice-president Teena McQueen said in 2022 they should “rejoice” as teals defeated moderates.
Cpac volunteers walked through the crowd distributing copies of conservative magazine The Spectator, handing out one with a front cover bearing a caricature of Ley and the headline “Leybor Lite”.
The dissonance of the message at Cpac was stark. On the one hand, Abbott, Mundine and others explicitly apologised for a “terrible” election campaign; on the other, speakers praised Dutton, saying the Coalition must double down on his strategy, on nuclear and Trump-style politics and opposing climate action.
Admitting a bad outcome, but repeating the same strategy.
