Andrew Hastie is emerging as a candidate to challenge Sussan Ley for the Liberal party’s leadership, as MPs privately push for the party’s first female leader to step aside.
As a defiant Ley declared she would survive the fallout from the latest Coalition split, internal rivals were adamant she had lost the support of the party room. This is despite the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, being blamed for the break-up.
Senior Liberal MPs expected Ley’s fate would effectively be sealed as soon as Hastie and fellow rightwinger Angus Taylor decide on which of them will run.
Guardian Australia has confirmed Hastie – who has previously declared leadership aspirations – was prepared to run for the top job after encouragement from colleagues. His office was contacted for comment.
One conservative source said the former soldier was emerging as the preferred choice inside the faction, partly due to a belief he could win back voters who were switching to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
Multiple MPs who spoke to Guardian Australia were hopeful the party’s first female leader would agree to step aside, avoiding the need for a contested ballot.
“We would like her [Ley] to realise the benefit of a uncontested ballot,” one said.
Hastie or Taylor would need support from MPs in other factions in a potential contested ballot against Ley.
Some MPs had been discussing a spill on the Monday before parliament resumes on 3 February.
Hastie quit shadow cabinet in October after a dispute with Ley on immigration policy.
Taylor was understood to be returning to Australia over the weekend, after an overseas holiday that caused him to miss this week’s special sitting of parliament.
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A day after Littleproud blew up the Coalition and said his party would not serve under Ley’s leadership, the opposition leader told Channel Seven on Friday she expected to remain in the top job.
Asked if she would survive as leader, Ley said: “Yes, I will.”
She said she remained open to the possibility of another reconciliation with Littleproud and the Nationals.
Senior Liberal sources described Ley’s leadership as all but over on Thursday, after a the second Coalition split in eight months, sparked by a dispute on Labor’s hate speech laws.
“My focus is always on the Australian people, so I just want to say the door is not closed, but my eye is not on the door,” Ley said.
In another interview, Ley was asked if she was worried about a challenge from Hastie or Taylor, both conservatives. She said they were “strong, committed members of my team”.
Anne Ruston, a close ally of Ley, stuck by the leader and said she had done a “phenomenal job” navigating tough issues.
“I think that her actions of this week are absolutely fully backed by the Liberal leadership group. But I haven’t heard one person in my party who doesn’t believe that the actions that the leader took this week were not absolutely necessary,” she told 5AA radio.
Littleproud continued to blame Ley for the split on Friday, claiming he had tried to “avert it”.
The Nationals leader said it was not up to him to determine who the Liberal leader is, despite his comments yesterday that he would not work with Ley.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was scathing of the Liberals on Friday, saying the Coalition were focused on their internal politics and predicted “at least one more defection to One Nation over coming weeks”.
“The first woman leader of the Liberal party, undermined from day one and the alternative leaders are worse,” Albanese told ABC radio.
The split followed the Nationals senators Bridget McKenzie, Susan McDonald and Ross Cadell crossing the floor to vote on Tuesday, breaking with the Coalition’s position on the laws drafted after the Bondi terror attack.
Littleproud, who had warned Ley that accepting resignations from the trio would spark a walkout by the Nationals, said the party’s door is “open”.
“What I said is that we couldn’t serve in Sussan Ley’s ministry after she accepted the resignation of three senators that shouldn’t have been accepted. There was an avenue not to,” he said.
Ley’s deputy, the shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien, said he expected her to remain leader.
Privately, several Liberal MPs told Guardian Australia they did not want the Coalition to reunite, and said the National party should be “severely punished”.
“On our side, a number of us are saying, that’s it … I was speaking strongly to keep the Coalition together [the last time], but not any more,” one Liberal MP said.
The firebrand conservative senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who moved from the Nationals party room to the Liberals after the election, continued to criticise Ley’s leadership.
“I made it very clear that obviously the leader had lost trust in me, lost faith in me, and I suppose I felt the same at the time,” she told Sky News on Thursday night.
“I don’t feel like things have improved.”
