Politics is a perverse business. When opposition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie last week assured the nation there were no moves to replace opposition leader Sussan Ley, many assumed his comment meant there were.

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Hastie was speaking after Ley kicked Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price off the frontbench after Price refused to endorse her leadership.

Ruffled feathers were anything but smoothed because leadership challenges are always preceded by declarations of loyalty and nothing-to-see-here statements.

So it came as little surprise on Monday night when Hastie further inflamed leadership speculation by saying on Perth radio he'd lose his frontbench gig if the Liberal Party continued its support for net-zero by 2050 because he was dead against it. He was asked again if he supported his leader. "She has my support," he said.

Tuesday rolled around, and another Liberal senator further stoked the leadership fire. Tasmanian Jonathan Duniam warned of a mass exodus from the opposition frontbench if the Libs stuck to their net zero commitment.

There's no surprise in the Liberals eating their own over climate policy. They dumped Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 because he supported the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, replacing him with Tony Abbott, who thought climate change was "crap" but then went on as PM to set emission reduction targets in 2015.

What is surprising is that the Coalition seems incapable of reading the room when it comes to climate. The starkest number they seem intent on ignoring is the election result. They were clobbered, in large part because they lacked a coherent climate policy.

Since the election, they've ignored the numbers that have followed. The Resolve poll out this week, which had their primary vote slipping even further behind Labor's. The YouGov poll, which showed eight of 10 Australians wanted stronger action on climate. The latest Newspoll, which had support for the Coalition at its lowest in Newspoll history.

The one chink of light in all this was reflected in the Resolve poll, which had Sussan Ley's performance as opposition leader in positive territory, remarkable really given the awful time she's had........

© Canberra Times