Ley breaks with Dutton on immigration, DOGE, but ignites feuding after cull

Liberal leader Sussan Ley has broken from the Dutton era with a reshuffle that rejects Trump-like cuts, goes softer on immigration and proactively reaches out to women in the cities, naming a frontbench that dumped out-of-favour MPs such as Jane Hume and boosted moderates and loyalists.

Ley moulded her first shadow cabinet in a bid to modernise the battered opposition, announcing the team in a joint press conference with Nationals leader David Littleproud just eight days after he split the Coalition when Ley didn’t agree to his demands.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Multicultural issues advocate Paul Scarr took over the immigration portfolio, which Ley said would focus on economic uplift as opposed to border protection; Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had the DOGE-inspired efficiency job taken off her and put it in the hands of productivity and deregulation spokesman Andrew Bragg; and moderate Maria Kovacic was made Ley’s personal assistant minister in charge of rebuilding ties with ethnic communities and women.

Key moderate Julian Leeser returns to the shadow cabinet as shadow attorney-general, while the MPs who beat teals in two of the campaign’s tightest contests – Tim Wilson and Gisele Kapterian – were also given plum gigs, subject to surviving the recounts in Goldstein and Bradfield.

The most eye-catching move was the dumping of Senator Jane Hume, which took even her internal enemies by surprise. Ley told colleagues privately that Hume was not being punished for the party’s work-from-home backflip or her election eve remarks about “Chinese spies” that inflamed the Chinese-Australian community, arguing Hume could one day return to the shadow cabinet.

Credit: Matt Golding

“I promised my leadership would be done differently and it will be,” Ley said in Canberra. “I always said that I would harness the talents of my party room. Everyone has a role to play, even if they are not formally in the line-up.

“I don’t reflect on private conversations. I will say that this, these are tough days and having been through many days like this myself in my parliamentary career, I recognise that.”

But in a sign of simmering disunity, at least three right-wing MPs – Liberals Claire Chandler and Garth Hamilton, and Nationals senator Matt Canavan – rejected offers for more senior positions in order to speak their mind from the backbench.

Ley also pushed out three-right wing women from the shadow cabinet, including Chandler (who rejected a more junior role), Price (moved into a more junior role in charge of defence industry), and former education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson.

In a statement which failed to reference Ley or her ongoing loyalty to the opposition, Henderson lamented her removal and that of other women: “I regret that a number of high-performing Liberal women have been overlooked or demoted in the new ministry.”

They were replaced in the shadow cabinet by Angie Bell (youth and environment) and Kerrynne Liddell (social services and Indigenous Australians). Overall, Ley picked two fewer women than Dutton’s last shadow cabinet.

Right-wing MPs knew Ley would back her allies, but they did not anticipate the extent of the right-wing cull, which included demoting Price, Henderson, Chandler, and Tony Pasin. In their places, former minister Alex Hawke – the head of the small centre-right NSW sub-faction that supports Ley – took over as industry spokesman and manager of opposition business, meaning he is in the leadership grouping within the shadow cabinet.

Promotions were given to MPs this masthead had previously reported were promised roles by Ley when she was jostling with Angus Taylor for the Liberal leadership. They included Andrew Wallace, Jason Wood and Scott Buchholz.

“Three right-wing women out at the same time as giving non-merit-based roles to blokes won’t be forgotten,” one annoyed MP said.

In other notable appointments, Taylor became the defence spokesman, taking over from Andrew Hastie, who moved into home affairs. Hastie’s friend and former home affairs lead, James Paterson, shifted to the key economic portfolio of finance. He will lead the economic team alongside deputy leader Ted O’Brien as shadow treasurer and Bragg as housing and deregulation chief, creating a free-market-minded trio after the party adopted an interventionist, anti-big-business style under Dutton.

Tim Wilson will go straight into the shadow cabinet, as long as he holds on to the seat of Goldstein after a partial recount, handling industrial relations, small business and employment.

Dan Tehan, the former immigration spokesman who fended off a Climate 200-backed independent challenge in the Victorian seat of Wannon, was handed the difficult task of landing the Coalition’s position on energy and climate change.

Ley seemed open to a review of the Morrison-era pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Tehan’s portfolio of “energy and emissions reduction” drops the term “climate change”, taking it back to its pre-2022 terminology.

Asked about her commitment to the net zero pledge, which has the potential to split the party over diverging attitudes to climate change, Ley said: “We’ll have those discussions inside the policy development process.”

Rebel senator Matt Canavan rejected an offer from Littleproud to include him in his shadow cabinet, as reported by this masthead earlier on Wednesday. Canavan was in line for the assistant treasurer spot eventually given to Nationals MP Pat Conaghan, but decided to move to the backbench to continue to argue against net zero.

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce was dumped from the frontbench by Littleproud along with Michael McCormack. Joyce and Canavan, who gave Littleproud a scare when he challenged for the Nationals leadership a few weeks ago, both said they would not let up in their advocacy against the plan they believe is driving up power prices.

Canavan told this masthead that a “flashpoint” was looming on net zero, and added that he did not know whether Littleproud had asked Ley to allow shadow ministers to freewheel on policy as a way to get net zero sceptics on to the frontbench.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.