Liberal leadership ballot days away as recriminations begin over Dutton’s defeat

The looming leadership contest comes as shell-shocked Liberals lay blame at a distracted and ill-prepared Coalition leadership team for Saturday’s crushing election outcome.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Dan Peled / Getty Images

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Acting Liberal leader Sussan Ley says it will take days for a new opposition leader to be anointed after Peter Dutton was turfed from parliament in Labor’s landslide election victory on Saturday night.

In her first public comments following the crushing result, the former deputy Liberal leader – who was automatically installed to the top job following Mr Dutton’s shock loss in his own seat of Dickson – called for party members to reflect on the result “with humility”.

“As per our party rules following an election defeat, the Liberal Party room will meet in order to elect a leader of the opposition and deputy leader of the opposition; these positions will be declared vacant at this meeting,” Ms Ley said.

“Today I have consulted with our party’s senior leadership and it is clear that there are several seats where preferential counting must continue before this meeting can take place.”

Liberal Contenders

The most likely contenders to replace Mr Dutton include opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor, immigration spokesman Dan Tehan, defence spokesman Andrew Hastie and Ms Ley herself.

The looming leadership contest comes as shell-shocked Liberals lay blame at a distracted and ill-prepared Coalition leadership team for Saturday’s election result – a stinging repudiation of Peter Dutton’s bid to become prime minister.

By Sunday afternoon, the Liberals’ numbers in parliament had fallen to less than 25 seats, with those elected describing it as an “absolutely devastating” result which would relegate the party to opposition status for “at least” two parliamentary terms.

Levelling the blame on the Coalition’s leadership team, several Liberal MPs and senators argued that critical policy work had not been completed, while Mr Dutton had allowed himself to stray from the Coalition’s core message on cost-of-living early on in the election campaign.

“People don’t think we believe in climate change, that we’re obsessed with culture wars,” one senior Liberal said. “We needed to put our shoulder to the wheel on economic policy,” said another. “That would have made a big difference.”

The strong and disciplined Labor campaign further amplified Mr Dutton’s personal unpopularity, Liberals said.

Within the party, pressure is now mounting on senior figures.

Andrew Hirst, the Liberal Party’s federal director and campaign chief, was said to be in an “untenable” position, with blame similarly levelled at the Coalition’s pollster Mike Turner of Freshwater Strategy.

On the hustings, Mr Dutton had repeatedly maintained that the party’s internal marginal seat tracking was defying the national swing away from the Coalition, as evidenced by public opinion polling, however that claim ultimately proved to be wildly inaccurate.

The opposition’s economic team has also faced criticism for releasing several detailed policies in the final weeks of the election campaign, only for the proposals to quickly disappear from Coalition talking points.

There was further frustration that the findings of the party’s 2022 election review, co-authored by former federal director Brian Loughnane and Victorian senator Jane Hume, were largely ignored.

The review had urged the party to better connect with female voters and select more women as candidates. But of the 145 Coalition candidates contesting the May 3 election, only about one third were women. One policy, which proposed mandatory office attendance for federal public servants, was later jettisoned after a backlash from female voters.

“There were chapters and paragraphs in that (review) I think we offended throughout the campaign,” said Keith Wolahan, the outgoing MP for Menzies, who was turfed from office on election night, in an interview on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning.

While the Liberals lost a swath of metropolitan seats, the more conservative National Party lost just one, entitling it to increased representation on the Coalition front bench when the formal agreement between the two parties is inked in the coming weeks.

During the previous parliament, National MPs and senators were represented in seven of the shadow cabinet’s 23 positions. On Sunday, members of the agrarian political party were jockeying for increased representation on the Coalition front bench where it is already over-represented, likely prompting a further shift to the right at the risk of alienating voters in urban electorates.