Dan Tehan emerges as opposition foreign affairs frontrunner after Sussan Ley’s Palestine trip

Concerns over deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley’s failure to declare a trip to Palestine could spark a major shake-up by Peter Dutton.

Victorian Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan has emerged as the frontrunner for the shadow foreign affairs portfolio after concerns emerged over deputy leader Sussan Ley’s failure to declare a trip to Palestine a decade ago.

The controversy is expected to bolster Mr Tehan’s claim to the job, despite the fact that Ms Ley has the right to choose her portfolio as the party’s deputy.

News.com.au understands Ms Ley has directly signalled her interest in the job, putting opposition leader Peter Dutton in a tricky position given her traditional right to claim her own portfolio.

The reshuffle, which follows the Prime Minister’s announcement of his own changes this week, follows the resignation of Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham, who has a hard exit date of Australia Day. That means the reshuffle, which was originally expected before Christmas, could be announced as early as this weekend.

The reshuffle is also expected to elevate Victorian Liberal Michael Sukkar as manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives.

Other contenders for the foreign affairs job include James Paterson and Dave Sharma. Mr Tehan currently holds the portfolio of immigration, with a number of backbenchers also expected to be promoted to junior roles.

Victorian Liberal MP Dan Tehan. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

‘Airbrushed out of existence’

Ms Ley has backflipped on her position on Palestine in recent years after previously suggesting it was “besieged, contained, and on the brink of starvation” and stating that Palestinians had been “airbrushed out of existence”.

Since taking on the job as deputy Liberal leader, she now describes Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s calls for restraint during Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ indiscriminate terror attack as “disgraceful”.

She was previously the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, an informal cross-party group which aimed to raise the experiences of Palestinian people and was the sole voice in parliament discussing Palestinian autonomy when the House of Representatives celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008.

“Israel has many friends in this country and in this parliament. The Palestinians, by comparison, have few. Theirs is not a popular cause,” she said in 2008.

“But it is one I support, in part out of knowledge that the victors of World War II, including Australia, wrote a ‘homeland’ cheque to cover the sins of the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe.

“But it was the Palestinians who had to cash it.”

Speaking on Sky News, host Sharri Markson said these comments “feed into the narrative that the Jews don’t belong in Israel — when in fact Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and lived there for thousands of years before Islam”.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Supplied

Who is Dan Tehan?

Mr Tehan, who is now the frontrunner for the position, is the son of a former Liberal MP, the late Marie Tehan, and served in the Coalition governments under Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, serving as Minister for Defence Materiel (2016), Defence Personnel (2016–2017), Veterans’ Affairs (2016–2017), Social Services (2017–2018), Education (2018–2020), and Trade, Tourism and Investment (2020–2022).

He was a public servant and political adviser before entering parliament and holds a Master of Foreign Affairs and Trade from Monash University, and Master of International Relations from the University of Kent in England.

He also worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1995 to 1998 and then was a member of the diplomatic service from 1999 to 2001 and was involved in negotiations on the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement in 2004.

Ms Ley had signalled her interest in the portfolio following the resignation of Mr Birmingham who also served as the opposition leader in the Senate.

But after it emerged that Ms Ley had asked for the position, putting Mr Dutton in a tight spot, questions have emerged over his past comments on Palestine given that one of the key issues in the portfolio currently is the rise of anti-Semitism and Labor’s position on Palestine.

Salem village east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Picture: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP

2011 West Bank trip

Markson reported on Thursday night that Ms Ley had failed to declare accommodation, meals and transport funded by the Palestinian Authority over a decade ago.

She also questioned whether or not Ms Ley would have been Mr Dutton’s first choice as deputy other than the fact she was a woman and that at the time Liberal Party was facing criticism from female voters over a range of issues including the handling of the Brittany Higgins rape allegation.

Ms Ley’s expenses were from her trip to the West Bank in 2011. At the time, she was a strong critic of Israel and was given a tour by the Palestinian officials.

But while other MPs who went on the trip including Labor’s Maria Vamvakinou and Jill Hall and Liberal MP Melissa Parke made declarations in their pecuniary interest register about gifted meals, transport and accommodation from the Palestinian Authority, Ms Ley failed to do so.

Her office on Thursday night told Sky News they were examining her declarations.

“Our office will look into the question you have raised regarding a matter of declaration 14 years ago,” the statement said.

“If correct, this would have been an administrative oversight. Sussan has never hid from the fact that she was on the trip, indeed she has spoken about it publicly on a number of occasions.”

Ms Ley told Sky News on Thursday, “As deputy leader, I have consistently held the government to account for their comprehensive and categorical failure to support Israel — and our wonderful Jewish diaspora community — on an almost daily basis since October 7.

“I always strive to be a voice of moral clarity and I never shy away from standing up for Australia. Unlike this Labor government, it will always be Australia’s national interest that dictates the Coalition’s foreign policy thinking, not electoral arithmetic.”

Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Ley previous victim of ALP dirt unit

In 2017, Ms Ley resigned from the frontbench in Mr Turnbull’s government following revelations she used taxpayer-funded trips to buy property and attend New Year’s Eve functions.

Mr Turnbull announced Ms Ley’s resignation after receiving the findings of an investigation into her travel claims from the secretary of his department.

Ms Ley stood aside as Health Minister, dismissing the scandal as a distraction and insisting she had broken no rules.

It later emerged that the controversy over her decision to use a Comcar to travel to an open inspection to buy a house was orchestrated by the Labor Party’s “dirt unit” at the time that specialised in opposition research.

It also helped bring down Bronwyn Bishop over Choppergate, when she used a helicopter to fly to a Liberal fundraiser as Speaker, by discovering the original declaration on the VIP flights register.