‘I was completely singled out’: Sussan Ley’s past fuels her determination to fix party’s future

A former shearer, a pilot and a mother of three children with a dark past as a punk in Canberra. For 10 years, Sussan Ley has been one of the few women in the room in successive Liberal cabinets. Now, she’s the federal opposition leader, and one of her first acts has been peeling back the existential scabs of the party itself. But who is Ley, really?

Speaking with host Jacqueline Maley and chief political commentator James Massola in a new Inside Politics podcast episode, Ley opens up about the personal experiences fuelling her to fix the Liberal Party’s infamous “woman problem” from the top, to ultimately tackle the gender-based problems her constituents face with legislation.

Click the player below to listen to the full episode, or read on for an edited extract of the conversation.

Maley: You say that the modern Liberal Party needs to represent all Australians, and it’s, you know, that you have a diversity there, but very famously, it hasn’t really represented women to the extent that it could have, which is why the Liberals’ female vote has been declining so precipitously over the last few decades. Just first of all, before we get into that, would you call yourself a feminist?

Ley: Well, yes, I would. And it’s interesting, because the word feminist isn’t used much. It was used a lot when I was trying to get into the... and I’ll tell you what I mean by feminist, because I used it in the era when, you know, the people who own corporate jets didn’t want me flying them, who said to me, quietly, “We don’t have a job for you because... it’s not us, Sussan, it’s just that the travelling public doesn’t really want to see a woman up the front,” and, you know, “Come back next year.”

Sure, that was something that, you know, burned in me, how I was completely singled out. Never mind my qualifications, my licence, all of the things I’d done... it was simply because of my gender. So, we didn’t do well with women. I just want to confront that. I want to acknowledge that. I want to say that since in 2001 when I came into parliament, more women in Australia voted for us than they did anyone else, and that number has been declining ever since, which is why I am so determined and so insistent that we fix this women’s problem.

Maley: You gave an address to the National Press Club this week, which was really strong, and we both were really interested in it. You talked in that address about coercive control and domestic violence, and you said that you knew what coercive control felt like. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Have you had personal experience with it?

Ley: Look, I have had personal experiences, and I don’t choose to share them publicly, but I want the women of Australia to know that I know, and that I’m with them, and that I understand how it feels and what it’s like, and how sometimes, only looking back, can you really understand what went on.

And when you look at the statistics that I quoted [at the National Press Club] in terms of the number of women in this country who have been affected by sexual harassment, coercive control, violence, workplace harassment, you know, even though, on some indicators, we’re improving, you know, I wonder, when you look at those statistics, are we improving? Are we doing the best we can do? So the very strong message I wanted to deliver [at the National Press Club] about this was that this is above politics. This is something that I want to work with the prime minister on, and we just have to do better.

We can’t have years like last year... I remember reading out the names of women who’d lost their lives to intimate partner violence, and in the time it took us to construct the media communication, that number had increased, and that really brought it home to me. It’s not good enough.

Maley: After 2022, the election result was bad. It was bad, particularly in your female vote. You actually said, “We hear you. We hear you, women of Australia.” And you were tasked with doing a sort of listening tour. This was back in 2022. What policies did you come up with, and were they just not implemented? Were you shouted down in cabinet? What happened?

Ley: We had a lot of discussion about policies, and I think it’s clear that they didn’t land in the right way where they needed to, and there’s lots of evidence for that...

Maley: I’m sorry to interrupt you, but what do you mean when, that’s kind of a vague construction… Do you mean that they weren’t taken up by your male colleagues or your colleagues within shadow cabinet?

Ley: No, I don’t mean that. I mean we supported the government continuing our record women’s safety spending. So remember, when we left government, there was a spending trajectory in place, it included record spending for women’s safety. We supported a plus $500 million policy for women’s health. We came up with individual women’s health initiatives around support for ovarian cancer, about further support for endometriosis. So I was part of quite a lot of the policies that people saw now, in the end, I think this is an important point, Jacqueline, people saw and heard policies, whether it be women’s health or housing or other areas, they weren’t even sure which party was proposing them. That comes back to one of the things we have to do. We have to communicate well to Australians about the things we support, the things we come up for.

Maley: Do you really think that’s all it was? That the Australian voter wasn’t able to distinguish between Liberal policy...

Ley: Not at all.

Maley: … or is it something more along the lines of the cultural environment of the Liberals, or what people, what women, think that that represents?

Massola: There is the perception there that it’s a really blokey party.

Ley: Yeah, and I understand why that perception is there, because that’s what you see, and the picture tells the story. Look, it was many of those different things, and the feedback I got, the anecdotes that I’ve heard, have, you know, fed into my thinking and obviously our review by Pru Goward and Nick Minchin will, you know, articulate more, look at what actually happened and give some further meat on the bone, so to speak.

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