Peter Dutton firms as next Liberal leader amid fight over future of the party

The outgoing trade and investment minister, Dan Tehan, and the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, are both touted as potential challengers to Dutton, but conservatives are confident their numerical advantage will guarantee the outgoing defence minister will lead.

That stoush triggered the Dutton spill against Malcolm Turnbull in 2018, in which moderates swung their votes behind Morrison in a successful bid to deny Dutton.

Overlaying the long-term factional tensions over climate policy, others blamed the election defeat more directly on Morrison for short-term decisions such as the takeover of the NSW party and hand-picking a group of NSW Liberal candidates including the controversial Katherine Deves.

During the campaign Morrison defended Deves after she backtracked on an earlier apology for transphobic comments, stonewalling moderates who called for her to be disendorsed.

With the outgoing treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, on track to lose his seat of Kooyong, the almost unbackable favourite for the Liberal leadership is Dutton, who comes from the dominant conservative faction and Queensland, whose MPs and senators could make up one quarter of the party room.

On Sunday both Tehan and Andrews declined to rule out running for the leadership.

Liberal senator Alex Antic said the Coalition must not adopt a more ambitious climate policy, claiming that would only backfire.