As the net zero issue blew up on Monday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s two leadership rivals talked politics and the future of the Liberal Party over a pad Thai dinner.

Angus Taylor, Andrew Hastie and a group of conservatives met at Chong Co – a restaurant in the Kingston Foreshore precinct in Canberra, below the penthouse where Malcolm Turnbull once met allies to discuss Tony Abbott’s fate as prime minister.

Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. Their colleague Colin Boyce follows a division through binoculars.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Unlike Abbott, Ley is not facing a co-ordinated, near-daily campaign of destabilisation to install an anointed rival. Instead, personal misjudgements and the populist rebellions of Hastie, Barnaby Joyce and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price have undermined her and sucked confidence from the party room.

The meal on Monday evening masked tensions in the right over which contender – Taylor or Hastie – is next in line to take over from Ley if she sinks further in polls next year.

MPs do not want to challenge before then. Ley may well recover, but authority is difficult to regain once it’s diminished.

Sources familiar with the dinner said the duel between........

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