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ShareAAAOpposition Leader Sussan Ley insists she will lead her party to the next election and that she has the support of her colleagues, as moderate senator Jane Hume demanded change from Coalition leaders, accusing them of dragging the party towards electoral oblivion.

Less than 24 hours after the Coalition reunited following a 17-day split, Ley’s hold of the leadership is back in the spotlight amid record low polling and a potential challenge from right-winger Angus Taylor within the next week.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley in Parliament House last week. Dominic Lorrimer“I’ve been elected by my party room. I’m up for the job. We’re up for the job, and we know that we have to hold this government to account because millions of Australians are being let down by a government that has got it all wrong,” Ley told Nine’s Today on Monday morning.

“Polls are a point in time, and they reflect what Australians have felt frustrated about for quite a few weeks now, as they’ve seen the disunity [from the Coalition split], and that is the one thing that they will always mark us down on, but they know because we’re very much in front of them this week, next week and the week after.”

Coalition MPs have been rattled by repeated drops in opinion polling. The latest blow came from Monday’s Newspoll, published by The Australian newspaper, which captured the Liberal’s primary vote at 15 per cent, and the Nationals at 3 per cent, while One Nation jumped to 27 per cent.

Ley was marked as the least popular major party leader in 23 years. The most recent polling by this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor – published on January 17 – counted the Coalition’s primary vote at 28 per cent.

UpdatedPolitical leadershipTaylor backs Coalition revamp and explores a spill against Ley this weekAllies of right-wing leadership aspirant Angus Taylor have been weighing a move against Ley’s leadership this week, with female MPs Jane Hume, Zoe McKenzie and Melissa McIntosh mooted as potential running mates on a leader-deputy ticket. Ley spent Monday morning defending her leadership and the Coalition’s stance in the polls across multiple media appearances.

Appearing on Sky News, Ley said her job was safe, and she was not expecting a spill. She blamed the drop in polling on “disunity” during the 17-day Coalition split, and said she was ready to advocate for an Australian public that were angry at Labor.

“We are firmly focused on holding this government to account, how, when we tackle this parliamentary week in the House of Representatives, we actually get the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to take responsibility for the pain they’ve caused with 13 interest rate rises,” Ley told Sky. “People are very unhappy with Anthony Albanese, and we will take the fight up to him every single day.”

The appearance came an hour after Moderate senator Hume spoke to journalists at Parliament House, laying the blame for falling polls on the Liberal and National leadership, and warning that no prospective party leaders, including Ley, Taylor and backbencher Andrew Hastie, will hold their seats if the current polling is replicated at the next election.

“You know what I’m really tired of? Gallows humour. Because that’s all we’ve got left right now. That’s all we’ve got left. At some point, we need to put a foot forward and say, ‘How are we going to get ourselves out of this crisis, rather than just sitting in the black hole and complaining about it?’,” Hume told journalists at Parliament House in Canberra.

Senator Jane Hume at Parliament House in Canberra.Dominic Lorrimer“I don’t know what the solution is, and I don’t know who the solution is, but what I do know is that more of the same simply isn’t good enough. Unless we can step up and demonstrate who it is that we’re fighting for, what it is that we’re fighting for, and why we’re doing it. Well, why would Australians listen to us? Why would they listen to us,” Hume said, “We have to do something different, and we have to do it soon because we are running out of time.”

Hume repeatedly stressed an urgency for change within the Coalition, calling Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a “wily operator” who would call an early election if he saw that his primary opponents were in dire straits.

Senator Maria Kovacic, an ally of Ley’s, said Hume was right in calling for some form of change but said a leadership challenge was “the last thing that Australians want to see”.

Federal budgetHey big spenders: Where the budget is blowing out“We absolutely need to stop talking about ourselves and get on with the job of being an effective opposition. And that is something that we have not done consistently since the last election,” Kovacic told Sky News.

Ley’s deputy Ted O’Brien was unable to rule out a spill of the leadership, telling Sydney radio station 2GB on Monday morning: “who knows whether or not there’ll be a challenge … I can’t foretell the future of course”. O’Brien said today’s polling was “not good” and couldn’t be ignored.

“I think a poll taken amidst a split in the Coalition will always reflect not just on a party’s primary vote, two-party preferred, but it also does impact the standing of the leader,” O’Brien said.

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