Ley replaced Dutton once before. This time is an even tougher task

The making of Sussan Ley as a federal cabinet minister came a decade ago when she was given a classic hospital pass.

Ley was made the minister for health just seven months after Tony Abbott and his government unveiled a deeply unpopular federal budget in May 2014, with $80 billion in cuts to hospitals and schools.

Sussan Ley with then-prime minister Tony Abbott after she was sworn in as minister for health and minister for sport in 2014.Credit: Andrew Meares

The health minister, Peter Dutton, was shifted out of the portfolio in record time and Ley was brought in to change policy and limit the political damage. It was a thankless task. The Coalition never recovered from that divisive budget, but Ley worked hard to neutralise the problems. After a leadership coup brought Malcolm Turnbull to power, the Coalition narrowly won the 2016 election.

Ley is now dealing with an even uglier hospital pass. She is replacing Dutton, once again, but this time on a near-hopeless political mission. She is being asked to rebuild the Liberal Party, demolish the Labor Party and win the next election. It looks impossible.

There is a real truth to the quip that the first woman to lead the Liberal Party has found her way through the glass ceiling, only to be led to a glass cliff. The blokes have finally turned to a woman at the very point when the job seems to come with certain failure.

This overlooks her political nous, however, because she just outsmarted the Liberal right wing and defeated a serious rival, Angus Taylor. She decided she wanted the job, and she knew how to get it.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley: “We did let women down, there’s no doubt about that.”Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong

There has already been plenty of commentary about the scale of her challenge. Ley can lose her leadership at any time if a couple of Liberals shift their support to Taylor. She won the leadership ballot by just 29 to 25 votes. Some of her supporters, such as Hollie Hughes, will leave the Senate on June 30. Her winning margin will shrink instantly on July 1.

This means Ley has strong incentives to ensure some of Taylor’s supporters feel rewarded in the new shadow cabinet. This would buy time to start repairing a broken party.

Ley must win back women to the Liberals after years of decisions that turned them away. She has to revive the party branches so they stop losing members. She has to fill the policy vacuum of the past three years by setting out a coherent plan for the economy – in effect, doing something Taylor could not do with Dutton as leader.

She also has to lead a collective decision about whether to keep nuclear energy as party policy. All the signs are that nuclear will stay, given the party room chose energy spokesman Ted O’Brien as deputy leader.

Dutton kept the Liberals together by smothering debate and keeping the party conservative – even when it drove voters away. Ley has to keep the party together while opening up a debate about what it stands for, in the hope this brings those voters back.

This means challenging the conservative orthodoxy. Dutton crusaded against “woke” agendas and gained acclaim on Sky News at night, only to be smashed at the ballot box on election day. The lesson is obvious: Late Night Sky just lost the election, and the Liberals will not recover if they keep listening to losers.

Ley has such an impossible task that it makes sense to question what success means. One success would be to broaden the membership base for the Liberals so they reflect the community. Another would be to find women who are willing to run for target seats at the next election. A third would be to renew the leadership ranks to ensure the opposition looks totally different at the next election.

Then-opposition leader Peter Dutton and deputy Sussan Ley in 2023. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Ley is destined for years of high pressure and low reward. Even if she succeeded on those three missions, she could be replaced at any time if just a few of her colleagues changed their minds – which, let’s face it, they will do several times over the next few years in the hothouse of that party room.

If she makes the Liberals competitive again, she will turn the leadership into a prize rather than a poisoned chalice.

Even so, she is tougher than many observers think. At the age of 18, she hitched up a horse and a pack horse and rode from Yass in NSW to Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria, traversing the Snowy Mountains. She’s been a punk rocker and a bush pilot. She has three children, six grandchildren and more life experience than most people in parliament.

This does not mean she will win. But she has the guts to give it a go.

Credit: Matt Golding

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