Demands for quotas as three post-Dutton leadership options firm

Three senior Liberals are courting support among their colleagues to take over from Peter Dutton as both conservative heavyweight Tony Abbott and leading moderate Simon Birmingham urge the Liberal Party to democratise how it picks candidates.

Deputy leader Sussan Ley, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and immigration spokesman Dan Tehan were all speaking to colleagues on Sunday about a leadership role, according to half a dozen MPs unable to speak publicly about the private discussions.

Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor are potential replacements for Peter Dutton.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Whoever wins the leadership contest will run a party that has recorded the worst result in its history and is now facing calls for dramatic action, including Birmingham’s demand for the party to introduce “fast and ambitious” quotas to recruit women.

As the party reels from a generational loss, two sources close to defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said the West Australian, who had been touted as “leadership material” by colleagues, was unlikely to run and would instead bide his time.

Taylor, 59, has the support of the large national right-wing faction and is therefore in the box seat to seize control of the party, even though he has received severe criticism for the opposition’s economic agenda.

Tehan managed to fend off a Climate 200-backed challenge in his regional Victorian seat of Wannon, which could bolster his credentials, while Ley’s path to the leadership could be assisted by the NSW moderate faction’s aversion to Taylor, from the state’s right.

MPs loyal to Taylor claimed on Sunday that he was not to blame for failing to win the economic argument because, they said, Dutton and his office blocked Taylor’s wishes to offer income tax cuts and pursue a more ambitious agenda.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton lost the election, and his own seat of Dickson.Credit: James Brickwood

Ley released a statement on behalf of the party on Sunday afternoon, saying MPs would meet to elect new leaders after counting in tight seats, including the Victorian electorate of Goldstein where Tim Wilson is confident of defeating teal Zoe Daniel, was finished.

Ley praised Dutton for his “outstanding service to Australia”. “Today, our thoughts are also with many Liberal colleagues who have lost their seats,” she said in the written statement that did not explicitly address the leadership question.

Talented MPs and prominent frontbenchers such as Michael Sukkar and David Coleman lost their seats in the bloodbath, with top party sources expecting the party’s pollster Freshwater Research to be dumped after a major polling miss.

The moderates’ power in the Coalition could fall further after this weekend because five of their members have lost their seats, while the more conservative Nationals lost only one seat, entitling it to increase its share in the shadow cabinet.

Abbott, whose big 2013 win is likely to be nearly matched by Anthony Albanese’s effort, told this masthead the party needed to dump its hyper-factional modus operandi, calling for more democratic pre-selections to pick better candidates.

“Quite apart from any issues with the overall strategy of the campaign, close to the heart of our long-term problem is our diminishing and ageing party base,” said Abbott, who is now a director of Fox Corporation in the US. “Yet it’s hard to recall any senior party person ever appealing to the public to join the party and make a difference, presumably because that would shake up current factional arrangements.”

Birmingham, a moderate faction leader who served as a minister and quit the Senate earlier this year, called for “hard, fast and ambitious” quotas to get women into parliament. He made a similar call to Abbott on candidate selection, saying the party should adopt open citizens’ assemblies to let non-party members help decide Liberal candidates.

“Beyond the presentation of ideology, there must be a reshaping of the party to connect it with the modern Australian community. Based on who’s not voting Liberal, it must start with women. Based on where they’re not voting Liberal, it must focus on metropolitan Australia,” he said.

“It must start with the raison d’être. Why do we have a Liberal Party and how is it relevant in 2025 and beyond?”

“Lessons from previous failures, especially the federal failure of three years ago but also many at state levels, have not been learnt and acted upon. Having sat at the party’s federal leadership table for much of the last decade, I must accept my share of responsibility for that.”

“Having allowed a bad problem to worsen so dramatically, the response must now be even more dramatic and touch upon all aspects of the party.”

“Labor’s once institutional weakness – being owned by the unions, or ‘faceless men’ – is now its bulwark in an era where true mass membership of organisations is dead. The Liberal Party has no such option, yet confronts a world where the Australians you need and want to join a political party do not and will not do so as those of previous generations did.”

Keith Wolahan, who may lose his seat, has implored the Liberal Party to turn its attention back to suburban voters.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Keith Wolahan, a Melbourne-based MP who was viewed as a future leadership hope for the moderates, said on Sunday morning he was likely to lose his seat and pleaded with his party to reconnect with the millions of voters in Australia’s major cities. Just four Liberals were set to be elected in urban electorates on Sunday.

Wolahan called for a more thorough election review than after its loss three years ago. “There were chapters and paragraphs in that [2022 review] I think we offended throughout the [2025] campaign,” he said.

Of the nine seats where the opposition appears most likely to lose incumbent members, five are members of the moderate grouping that was also smashed when Scott Morrison lost.

The moderate grouping will now rest mostly on senators, including Jane Hume, Andrew Bragg and Anne Ruston, along with potentially just two in the lower house: Zoe McKenzie from Flinders on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula and Julian Leeser from Berowra in NSW.

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