PERSPECTIVES | How China messaging reveals Liberal Party fault lines

This article appeared in UTS:ACRI's Perspectives on September 16 2025. Perspectives is the commentary series of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI), offering research-informed viewpoints on developments and debates in the Australia-China relationship.

The Liberal Party’s historically low Newspoll primary vote of 27 percent under Sussan Ley has further intensified scrutiny of her leadership. That pressure has been sharpened by Andrew Hastie’s move to scrap the party’s 2050 net zero target and his suggestion that he would resign from the frontbench if overruled. Substantively, this was consistent with his long-held views. Tactically, the resignation threat signalled a willingness to draw sharp lines and in doing so sought to reassure conservatives most hostile to the 2050 target, particularly in resource-heavy regions, and remind colleagues of his leadership ambitions without forcing a spill. 

This episode sits within a broader pattern. Across multiple areas, the Coalition is struggling to reconcile competing instincts, namely, those prioritising caution and tone; those emphasising deterrence and security; and those advancing similar themes in a more populist register. Positions toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) illustrate how these tendencies collide and why message discipline has been difficult to sustain.

As Opposition Leader, Ley has attempted to rehabilitate the Liberal Party’s image following its 2025 election defeat, especially with business and diaspora communities. In June, she anchored this campaign in defence credibility, invoking the Defence Strategic Review’s urgency and questioning  whether Australia is adequately prepared and whether the government is being candid about risks. On the PRC, she adopted a measured middle ground, describing Beijing as an important partner with whom Australia seeks respectful engagement, while arguing that the People’s Liberation Army – Navy’s February-March circumnavigation of Australia fell short of that standard and warranted being called out. She reiterated her support for a constructive relationship – ‘I want Australia and China to have a good relationship. When it comes to our two great countries, there is much to be optimistic about’ – and pointed to her role in concluding the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), while stressing the need to remain clear-eyed about the regional environment.

In July, during a series of ‘listening visits’, she carried that tone into diaspora outreach. At a roundtable in Sydney’s Epping with Australian-Chinese community members she said, ‘We didn’t get it right. We didn’t get the tone right. We didn’t always get the messaging right, and I want to freely acknowledge that we’ve turned the page.’ She presented herself as ‘a new leader with a different tone, different priorities and a different team.’ 

Since then, she has criticised the Albanese government’s response to PRC naval activity, while declining on the ABC to label the PRC a threat and continuing to emphasise the value of the trading relationship. Internally, concerns about authority and frontbench choices persist, contributing to an unsettled leadership environment.

As Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Hastie has staked out a line that resembles leadership preparation. He casts himself as tough but responsible, a pro-deterrence critic of perceived government weakness on the PRC who nonetheless advocates strategic ambiguity over Taiwan rather than pre-commitment. He has also pressed for clarity on the operational consequences of deeper integration with the US, stating that if Beijing attacked Taiwan ‘Australia would be drawn in whether we chose to be involved or not’, and for ‘greater transparency’ about what integrated deterrence means in practice. Coupled with an explicit pro-US stance grounded in operational experience, this blends hawkish substance with frankness about alliance costs, functioning as a broad-appeal pitch. 

Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor has taken a more explicit approach. In August, he stated that ‘authoritarian regimes do threaten us’, citing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as an example, and that the CCP ‘does not share our values and we need to be realistic about the threat that is created.’ He added that the September 3 PRC military parade made it ‘clear’ that ‘the Chinese Communist Party is changing.’ Separately, he suggested Australia and the US should make a ‘joint commitment to the security of Taiwan’, although this was a formulation he later clarified to avoid implying the Coalition had locked itself into pre-commitment to any conflict. Taken together, these interventions push the Coalition toward clearer public signals and have, at times, complicated Ley’s message management.

James Paterson’s move to Shadow Finance and into the formal leadership team matters beyond title. It puts him in the small room where lines-to-take and strategy are set and allows some input into the budget mechanics of economic security. He has spoken less about the PRC since the shift, but there is no sign of a substantive change in outlook. His record stresses the ideological character of the CCP challenge and the security threats it poses, more or less dovetailing with Hastie’s previously articulated views. In practical terms, these roles function as leadership training.

The recently demoted Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has occupied much of the rhetorical space left by the relative quiet of senior figures. During her brief term as Shadow Defence Industry Minister she described the CCP as ‘the great danger of our age’ and warned of its ‘desire to dominate our region and define destinies of free countries,’ and argued ‘appeasement doesn’t work’ – language echoing earlier Hastie and Paterson remarks but with fewer filters. From the backbench, Price faces fewer portfolio constraints and a higher marginal payoff to high-salience media interventions. Participating in the PRC debate can generally deliver that salience. While her influence on formal policy settings is limited, her contributions tend to pull debate toward simpler binaries and more populist frames. That extends to the alliance, which she often presents as a values contrast with the US as a long-standing democratic ally that ‘cares about our sovereignty’ versus an authoritarian CCP that would seek to exploit Australia – resonant, but compressing a debate that also turns on interests, risks and trade-offs.

The same hard-edged register that Price applies to the PRC also shaped the reception of her remarks on immigration. After she claimed that the Labor Party was encouraging Indian migration for political advantage, Pauline Hanson seized on the controversy to reprise her long-standing contention about migration and Labor electoral gain, this time adding new specificity by naming Chinese and Greek migrants. That extension is Hanson’s, not Price’s, but it broadened the target set and blurred distinctions in the public debate, further entangling foreign policy rhetoric with domestic grievance politics.

One Nation’s support tends to rise when the Coalition is under strain, though the relationship is correlational rather than deterministic; that dynamic heightens the temptation for right-flank Liberals and Nationals to sharpen rhetoric to stem leakage to One Nation, even as it raises costs in metropolitan seats and with business-aligned moderates.

In the near term, regardless of who leads the Liberal Party, its centre of gravity is likely to tilt back toward a firmer stance on the PRC. The question is not whether it will speak hawkishly, but whether it can do so while preserving breadth in seats with significant Australian-Chinese communities and business interests, keeping deterrence and economic statecraft at the core rather than letting headline tactics set the tempo.