Election 2022: Peter Dutton to lead as Liberal Party focuses on future

Conservative Liberal MPs will push the party to target Labor-held seats in the regions and outer suburbs under the leadership of Peter Dutton.

Liberal sources have confirmed Peter Dutton has the numbers to become leader, with a party room ballot to be held by mid-June. Picture: Zak Simmonds

Conservative Liberal MPs will push the party to target Labor-held seats in the regions and outer suburbs under the leadership of Peter Dutton, in a move that could further redefine the Australian political contest.

Liberal MPs told The Australian they thought the focus should be on winning seats in the NSW Hunter Valley and outer Sydney and Melbourne rather than winning back traditional heartland seats lost to teal independents.

“There is too much obsession with teal seats,” one MP said.

Conservative Liberal MPs say winning the outer Melbourne seat of McEwen at the next election would be easier than winning inner-city Kooyong, in a strategy that would confirm a realignment of the political system if it were successful.

Moderate Liberal MPs said they would oppose the strategy and argue the heartland seats could be won back at the next election through a commitment to economic reform and neutralising the issues of climate change and gender.

Liberal National senator Gerard Rennick said he would take up the internal fight to MPs who argued the party needed to shift to the left. “We have basically been a Labor-lite government for the last nine years,” he said.

“We lose elections when we try and implement Labor policies.”

Sources said there was a genuine contest over the deputy, with the leading options being NSW MP Sussan Ley, South Australian senator Anne Ruston and Victorian senator Jane Hume.

Bass MP Bridget Archer said she would consider running for deputy leader if she believed the party planned on going further to the right.

“I’ve seen some early commentary around that the party should move further to the right and I will certainly work hard to prevent that from occurring,” she told the ABC

Ms Ley also left the door open to running as deputy, saying the party needed to do more on both women and climate change.

“I heard the message about women, I heard the message of climate,” she told Sky News on Monday morning. “We needed to do better on both of those positions.”

Moderate MPs are backing Senator Hume for the position but she is not supported by ­conservatives.

Liberal MPs say it is possible for the deputy leader to be in the Senate, noting former senator Fred Chaney was deputy to former leader John Hewson.

There is a widespread view among Liberal MPs that the party has an image problem with women that needs to be rectified.

There is also pressure growing on Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce after he left open the option of revisiting the party’s commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Nationals MP Darren Chester said Mr Joyce needed to take responsibility for the loss of a ­Coalition government.

“We need to take some responsibility for the Liberal losses in the city, with the more extreme views of some colleagues undoubtedly hurting the chances of our city cousins,” Mr Chester wrote on Facebook.

“It was simple and devastatingly effective to say a vote for those moderate Liberals was a vote for the ‘dinosaurs’ in the Nationals who didn’t believe in climate change.”

Liberal MP Alan Tudge says Mr Dutton “will be leader” of the new opposition and backed a woman to become deputy Liberal leader. “There are people like Sussan Ley, Jane Hume, Michaelia Cash who are all very capable people able to assume that role,” Mr Tudge said.

Liberal sources confirmed Mr Dutton had the numbers to become leader, with a partyroom ballot to be held by mid-June.