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.

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 Nampijina 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

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