Skye Predavec
Researcher

In a Newspoll published yesterday, voters were asked who they preferred as leader of the Liberal Party. The favourite? “Don’t know” had 31% support among those intending to vote for the Coalition.

In second place was Sussan Ley with 28%, followed by Andrew Hastie with 20%.

The result has heightened speculation of a leadership spill sometime this week – the last chance for one this year.

If that happens, Sussan Ley’s leadership would be cut short before it reached 200 days, making her the shortest-serving leader of the Liberal Party or its predecessors – ever.

But it also prompts another question: If the Opposition is so divided that it can’t offer an alternative government, what is the point of it?

As my colleague Bill Browne wrote last week, having a single opposition party is increasingly out of step with the way Australians are voting – 2025 was the first election where more people voted for independents and minor parties than the Liberal-National Coalition.

When the Nationals (briefly) quit the Coalition earlier this year, the Liberals were left with no more lower house seats than the crossbench, leading Independent Andrew Wilkie to provocatively suggest “The crossbench could become the Opposition, and a crossbencher the Opposition Leader”.

If a so-called Opposition is so divided that its own voter base has no clear preference on a leader and has no serious path to government, does it make sense to call it the alternative government? 

Australians need new language to describe the distribution of power in multi-party democracies, where there are sometimes many oppositions, and sometimes none.

In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether Ley’s leadership will survive the week, or if she can last longer than a head of lettuce.