Sussan Ley has been already been required to reshuffle her shadow ministry twice in her six short months as Liberal party leader.
The first was to replace Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whose refusal to apologise for incorrect and offensive claims about Indian migrants, or back Ley’s leadership, made her frontbench position untenable.
The second was to deal with Andrew Hastie, who relegated himself to the backbench to freely champion his nationalist agenda.
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The opposition leader could soon be forced into a third, unwanted reshuffle, as the fight over net zero emissions risks triggering resignations regardless of where the Liberals ultimately land.
As MPs prepare for a series of meetings starting on Wednesday to resolve a position on the contentious climate target, a set of once hypothetical scenarios no longer seem so hypothetical at all.
Before dealing with the potential ramifications of any decision, it’s worth considering how this already fractious debate descended so rapidly into internal political warfare.
In the 24 hours after the Nationals’ 2 November decision to dump its commitment to net zero, senior Liberal conservatives turned aggressively against the target. Not just Scott Morrison’s 2050 target – any target at all.
The united front appeared to corner Ley, for whom net zero emissions is not just a policy question but a proxy battle for the leadership.
Since the right-faction’s coordinated intervention, furious moderate Liberals have waged a public and private campaign to salvage some commitment to net zero – even if not the mid-century deadline promised under Morrison.
“They didn’t realise how pissed off we would be,” one moderate Liberal said.
One goal of the pro-net zero Liberals has been to ensure there is a “transaction cost” – a political price to pay – if the climate target is to be dumped or watered-downed.
On Sunday, the moderate Liberal senator, Andrew Bragg, threatened to quit the shadow ministry if the party walked away from the Paris Agreement and any commitment to net zero.
On Monday, in less explicit terms, Bragg’s factional ally, Maria Kovacic, issued much the same ultimatum.
“As with any area of policy, if the party room decides on a policy that a shadow minister cannot publicly support, they would have to resign and move to the backbench,” she told the Nine papers.
The message was clear. If Ley dumps net zero in its entirety she could pay the price of losing MPs who are propping up her fragile leadership.
How other moderates on the frontbench, including Tim Wilson and Anne Ruston, intend to react to the possible junking of net zero is less clear.
The risks of resignation doesn’t just rest on one outcome.
A senior Liberal source told Guardian Australia that some members of the shadow ministry who want net zero dumped would need to consider their position if a firm target was retained.
Ley may yet be able to escape with a compromise.
Guardian Australia spoke to several MPs on Monday who believe there is some cross-factional support for a position in which the party drops net zero, or preserves it as a vague “aspiration”, but remains committed to the Paris Agreement.
The Nationals would probably accept that approach given it largely reflects their own.
Such a position could keep Ley’s frontbench, leadership and the Liberal-National Coalition in tact – for now.
But it would leave the leader, and what few genuinely climate-conscious MPs remain, saddled with a policy that could barely be less credible.
It doesn’t take an expert in international climate negotiations to know that a future Coalition government would be in flagrant breach of the Paris Agreement if it were to “backslide” on Australia’s existing commitments, which include net zero by 2050.
Australia would not need to formally withdraw from Paris – as Donald Trump has twice done with the US – to make itself an international pariah on climate action once again.