Sussan Ley makes history as the first woman to lead the Liberals, but its future is still in grave doubt
Sussan Ley rejects the glass cliff notion of her rise to the leadership of a decimated Liberal Party.
Yet there can be no doubt that it is indeed a cliff the party has fallen off. And the narrow margin that led to her elevation as the federal Liberal Party’s first female leader suggests that a long period of internal instability on the valley floor of opposition awaits.
Ley’s opening gambit won’t help. As polished as the experienced MP might have been in her first appearance before the media as leader, it may do little to settle the nerves of a partyroom reduced to just 54 members.
She sought to wipe the slate clean on not just the Liberal Party’s entire policy platform but her own record on issues that have alienated her from colleagues in the past.
She no longer opposes live sheep exports and has had a conversion on her previous pro-Palestinian position. She is now a strong supporter of Israel.
But it is policy development that will test her leadership skills. Every policy is now up for review. No policies yet have been adopted or walked away from, Ley says.
Such a repudiation of a past agenda fails to acknowledge some of the central principles that underpinned enduring values that Ley speaks to.
The new leader made no commitment as to whether nuclear would remain a central vehicle of a future Coalition energy policy or whether net zero would even remain a policy position.
Even immigration settings would be reviewed.
There are robust views on all these within the partyroom.
She assured colleagues there would be no captain’s calls. On the numbers as they stand, Ley could hardly afford one. Ley offered a solid resume of her own Liberal pedigree and personal story.
And for a deputy whose past media performances have often been questioned by colleagues, she offered an impressive presentation.
Acknowledging the scale of the election loss and the challenge ahead, Ley’s primary offering, however, was a need to embrace a new economic narrative.
That the party has to ask this question of itself in the first place goes to the heart of a problem. And Ley is not blameless in this, as the former deputy who sat around the shadow cabinet table.
While rightly identifying that the party had a problem with women voters, Ley wouldn’t or couldn’t offer a reason as to the why this was.
Whether Ley is the person with the ability and support to unite and start the rebuild of the party is the searing question.
But for supporters of the Coalition, there were few answers, only more questions.
Ley’s elevation will also be seen as sending a strong statement from the party following its humiliating defeat.
Ley was already considered a natural contender for the job, as much as Angus Taylor. The ideological divide is what separated them. And this is what has changed in the partyroom.
While Ley dismisses the labels of moderates and conservatives, the reality is that the ideological divisions within the Coalition have only deepened.
Ley claims a stake in the ground as a leader for the “sensible centre” – a term often used by Malcolm Turnbull.
But to what length this was a factional and transactional arrangement rather than a plan for rebuild of the party will become obvious soon enough.
Some are likely to regard this as a temporary appointment that in no way resolves the forward pathway.
The election of Ley as the new leader by a margin of only four votes over Taylor opens the strong prospect that the partyroom will return to the leadership issue again before the next election.
Moderates will claim this as a victory over the conservatives. But it is not a decisive win. And this is Ley’s challenge. These divisions are now more finely balanced than they have been in the past.
Only three MPs need to change their mind over the course of the next 12 to 18 months for Ley’s position to be threatened.
That is the precise number of Liberal senators who will be leaving on July 1 and replaced with new ones.
Beyond Ley’s immediate test of trying to unite and rebuild will be her ability to put Anthony Albanese under any pressure at all in the parliament.
Ley has managed to get under Albanese’s skin in the past and the re-elected Prime Minister will have to be cautious in his approach.
He now faces a new and untested opponent who may well have the ability to change the equation if Albanese’s temptation is to try to humiliate the Coalition on its return to parliament in July.
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