As Australians return from an unusually politically charged Christmas period, the question of immigration looms over 2026. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley wants to provide her answer, but she is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Ley is trying to woo hardline Coalition MPs while also appealing to moderate voters who have abandoned the party. The more she leans towards one group, the more she risks alienating the other.
Eager to stamp her authority on a fractured party room, Ley had planned a festive blitz across Australia. But the Bondi terror attack, the deadliest on Australian soil, dramatically upended those calculations.
As we revealed last month, it also forced her to shelve the unveiling of her reworked immigration policy until the new year.
