The Liberals have a new leader. But do they have stability?

The task facing Sussan Ley, the newly elected federal Liberal leader and first woman to hold the position, is Everest-like in its challenges. After the election, her party has been sent back to base camp.

At the time of publication, 93 seats had been declared for the Labor Party in the House of Representatives, 42 for the Coalition. Only three were still deemed too close to call.

History has shown that victory, in the case of Liberal leaders, can be a false prophet.

Sussan Ley speaking for the first time as opposition leader.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

After Kevin Rudd took Labor to government in 2007, the Liberals went from leader John Howard, (who lost his seat) to Brendan Nelson to Malcolm Turnbull to Tony Abbott in the space of two years. They have since had Malcolm Turnbull again, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton.

Dutton also lost his seat at the latest election. Ley was deputy leader of the party under him and was a cabinet minister in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments.

She won the leadership on Tuesday by 29 votes to 25 from Angus Taylor. Ted O’Brien was elected deputy. This is the first step in a very long march for the party.

Ley would not be drawn on Tuesday on any policy positions or how her shadow ministry would take shape, saying instead that all policies would be thrashed out in the Coalition party room. But she was adamant on one point: “We need more women in our party,” she said. She also said she wanted her opponent, Angus Taylor, to have a senior role and promised to pick her frontbench on merit rather than factional allegiance.

In the interests of the party, the first thing Ley needs to do is to vanquish the image of the poisoned chalice that is associated with Brendan Nelson’s leadership. If she can rebuild the party, and bring it back in from the wilderness to which the electorate consigned it, then she will have climbed Everest.

Angus Taylor entering the Liberal Party meeting on Tuesday.Credit: James Brickwood

John Howard famously opined that disunity is death. With a leadership vote this close, there is no guarantee unity will come easily. At her news conference on Tuesday, Ley said: “I’ve spent a lot of time this week talking to my colleagues, and I’m optimistic that they have the right ideas. And I’m positive about what lies ahead. But on May the 3rd, we faced a significant defeat. And the scale and the size of that defeat is not lost on any of us.”

It is clear from such a drubbing that voters had no interest in what the Liberals had to offer. Their losses were greater than those of their Coalition partners, the Nationals, as they bled votes close to the major cities that once provided the platform for this party of government.

Voters reward stability. Ley must now, for her party, and indeed for the health of Australia’s democracy, bring it to the Liberals. A strong opposition is a strong democracy.

She must also steer the party back to the centre, the place from which most Australians expect to be governed. To paraphrase W.B. Yeats, if you cannot hold the centre, things fall apart. The Liberals fell apart because they had lost sight of the centre under Dutton. They have been virtually expelled from inner-city suburbs. First must come the review of the catastrophic electoral loss, then the rebuild, then the clear articulation to the people of what they stand for.

Nationals leader David Littleproud on Monday threw open the prospect of dumping the party’s support for a pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050. That will make the task of winning back urban voters even more challenging for Ley’s Liberals. The one plus from their loss is that they have time to ruminate and develop coherence of policy and vision. It should be axiomatic of a party’s ambitions, that it speak to, and for all, Australians. They can still do that in a way that accords with Liberal values, once the party agrees on exactly what that means.

The shadow hanging over Ley’s rise to leader is the question, with only a handful of votes in it, did her victory create stability or just delay or foment instability? Indeed, it is reasonable to ask, given the party’s history, will Ley lead the Liberals to the next election in 2028?

Her climb starts now. Everest awaits.

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