Canberra Liberals leader Leanne Castley MLA has suspended MLAs Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain from the party room after the two backbenchers broke ranks with their colleagues and voted with the ACT Greens in the Legislative Assembly.

The Canberra Liberals held a closed meeting of all MLAs this morning, and passed a motion that Ms Lee and Mr Cain be suspended pending a meeting to be held next week. The Liberals will “attempt to resolve outstanding issues”.

In a brief statement issued on Tuesday, Ms Castley said:

“Following the actions of Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain, I have suspended them from the Canberra Liberals Party Room immediately and will be seeking to remove them permanently.

“As this is an internal Party Room matter, I will be making no further comment.”

In the previous term, Ms Lee was opposition leader and Mr Cain shadow attorney-general. Ms Lee has been on the backbench since last year’s election, and Mr Cain since June.

Ms Lee and Mr Cain crossed the floor to support a Greens motion to retain a sitting calendar of 13 weeks instead of reducing it to 12 weeks.

Labor and the other Liberals voted together to defeat the motion.

The two suspended backbenchers were notified of their suspension by the party whip, Ed Cocks MLA, not by Ms Castley. According to Ms Lee, she and Mr Cain only found out from from a media release that Ms Castley sought to remove them permanently, and that Mr Cocks did not notify them beforehand.

Ms Lee rejected the claim that Ms Castley had the right to act unilaterally, citing long-standing Liberal Party convention that backbenchers were entitled to vote with their conscience. She pointed to Ms Castley’s own comments on ABC’s Stateline in September, where the leader acknowledged that backbenchers were free to dissent.

Ms Lee said she had flagged her concerns about the sitting calendar in party room meetings last week, and informed the whip of her intentions before voting in favour of the Greens’ amendment.

Ms Lee said she remained committed to the Liberal Party.

The party has not provided further explanation for the suspensions.

Public backlash

The decision to suspend Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain sparked outrage and disbelief on Reddit; many Canberrans viewed it as an act of political self-sabotage by the Canberra Liberals.

“WTF, do they want to stay in opposition?”

“How many more times will the Canberra Liberals shoot themselves in the foot?”

“Labor will be able to spend their campaign funds on a flash lunch, because the Libs are just handing it to them on a platter.”

There was near-unanimous agreement that Lee’s suspension was a mistake. She is perceived as a moderate, community-focused Liberal capable of rebuilding the party’s credibility:

“I don’t agree with many of her policy positions but I’ve always had a lot of respect for Elizabeth Lee. This will surely hurt the Liberal party significantly.”

“Lee is fairly well liked by moderate Liberal voters, I can’t see this going down well with her electorate.”

“Them knifing Lee is knifing themselves. She put in a lot of legwork on engaging with voters, and earned the respect and likely the vote of many.”

“Cain is a fossil, but Lee would have been invaluable in the future of the party.”

Some saw the move as a cynical factional purge, rather than a response to any genuine breach of discipline:

“Clearly Castley is trying to remove political rivals and took this as a convenient excuse.”

“Feeling a little insecure, Leanne?”

The issue that triggered the controversy — a vote over the number of sitting weeks — seemed absurdly trivial:

“What a non-issue to suspend backbenchers over.”

“The best way to hold Labor to account … is to vote with Labor to reduce the number of sitting weeks!”

“Yet again their key policy position seems to be to ride a bus (not the tram) to clown town at every opportunity. I look forward to them whinging about Labor incessantly while having no reflection on why they are further burning down their own party’s electoral chances just because two people thought they should hold Labor to account for 13 weeks a year instead of 12…”

Others suggested the Liberal brand had become toxic in Canberra:

“This is a death spiral for the Canberra Liberals…”

“And people wonder why the government never changes.”

“Liberals are completely irrelevant and have no chance whatsoever with all their front or backbench. They need a complete overhaul.”

Some predicted that a new movement might yet fill the vacuum:

“The Canberra Liberals should just change their name to the Canberra Conservatives and let a new centre-right, small-l liberal party fill the void.”

“If Pocock could find himself at least 25 good candidates and a bit of cash, they would [have] a shot [at] winning government in 2028. No-one in their right mind should be considering voting for either Labor or Liberal in ’28.”

Commenters also speculated that Elizabeth Lee might run as an independent in 2028:

“I can see her winning it as well. That would be a major blow to the Liberals’ funding for future elections, and honestly it would serve them right.”