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SBS Australia
a day ago
- Politics
- SBS Australia
'I didn't feel that way': Sussan Ley on the Coalition alienating migrants at the last election
The new Liberal leader sat down with the Feed to discuss how the party got it so wrong. Source: SBS Sussan Ley didn't feel the Liberal Party alienated migrants in the last federal election, but accepts that some voters felt that way. "I want to know why they felt that way," she told The Feed. "Because I certainly, as the deputy leader in the last parliament, never, ever felt that way." In an interview with The Feed, Ley spoke about a range of criticism directed at the party, conceding that it was rejected by a number of voting groups. Ley's predecessor, Peter Dutton linked record levels of migration — which peaked at 536,000 in 2022-23, but which Treasury estimates will return to 260,000 next year — with exacerbating demand on housing supply and pushing up prices. Simon Welsh, director of a social and political research firm with connections to the Liberal Party, Labor Party, and The Greens, said that in diverse communities, this rhetoric turned voters away from the Coalition. Ley said it made her "sad" to hear this feedback from voters, adding that "I accept that maybe was the case for a variety of reasons". Ley was born in Nigeria and moved to the United Arab Emirates before she was two, following her father's work for British intelligence services. In a 2014 interview with SBS, Ley said she would often accompany him on MI6 fieldwork around the Persian Gulf — experiences, she says, that helped shape her worldview. She later moved to the UK at age 10, before moving to Australia when she was 13. "I'm a migrant to this country, but I've got the great fortune of, you know, looking white with the same language," she said, acknowledging that the experience wouldn't be the same for "someone who doesn't have that". Nonetheless, she said: "I felt very different and excluded at school. I have a sense, actually, of what that feeling is. And it's not good enough for people to feel like that. I worry about social cohesion." Ley said she wants to understand where feelings of exclusion among multicultural voters came from as the Liberal Party reckons with its devastating defeat at the 2025 federal election. "We have two seats in urban Australia, in the cities," she said. "We have record-low votes with youth and with women. And historically, the scale of this defeat is unprecedented." "So I want to make that point because I accept it. I heard the message." In research by emeritus professor Peter McDonald and professor Alan Gamlen of the ANU Migration Hub, they said that migration was "being weaponised during this election campaign to elicit panic and sway voters". They outlined several reasons for the record migration levels during 2022-23, including an influx of students, backpackers and temporary workers who unable to travel during the pandemic, as well as several visa extensions under the Morrison and Albanese governments. They added that, in the recent budget, Treasury estimated the number will fall and, by 2027, migration levels in Australia could plummet to historic lows. Simon Welsh from RedBridge said: "The Liberal Party cannot form government in this country again until it figures out how to talk to young Australians and diverse Australians." And while they've been doing the rounds post-election, he's not sure he's seen anything radically promising just yet. "The only way that the Liberals and the Coalition can reach out to young people is by slaying some of their sacred cows," he said. "While the Coalition is running around talking about opposing net zero and walking away from the Paris Climate Accord, they are never going to win back large numbers of young people across this country, because climate is more than just an environmental issue." "For young people, when they look at climate, they see an economic issue. So they see economic impacts of it on cost of food, cost of living." "Until the Coalition are willing to catch up with young people on that issue. They will never win them over in large numbers, and that's just one issue." Asked why young Australians turned away from the party, Ley said she wasn't sure they "found us relevant at all". "Did we sort of send a message to them in the right way? Maybe. Maybe not. Did we have policy offerings that … resonated with them? Probably not." "Did they look at us and see reflected back the agenda that they wanted? Probably not. So, yeah, I think it was a fail on many levels." Sussan Ley's historic elevation as the first woman to lead the Liberals comes at a moment of reckoning for the party, particularly regarding the issue of women voters abandoning it, Ley said. The disconnect with female voters became especially clear to Ley at polling booths during the final weeks of the campaign. "Often there was a queue, so you had a chance to talk to people in that queue. And it was quite interesting. A lot of the couples, the man was taking the Liberal Party, 'How to vote' card, but the woman was sort of just basically ignoring us," she said. After a while, she said she asked them for their honest feedback. "If you ask someone for their honest feedback, particularly a woman, usually you get it. That's a good thing," she said. "And, you know, they would say, well, yeah, 'No, we're not really, you know, we're not interested in the Liberal Party.'" The Liberal Party has long been plagued by what's often referred to as a 'women problem' — a label given for the ongoing criticism about the number of female MPs (fewer than their male counterparts) and broader concerns over how the party treats women. Prominent figures from within its own ranks, including former deputy leader Julie Bishop and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have publicly called out the culture of misogyny they say exists within the party. "There have been times in that building where women have not been treated well. Women have not been treated appropriately. And women have been let down," she said. Ley said she had, at times, felt dismissed by male colleagues. "I don't say that it was something that was egregious or crossed a line," she said. "It was simply perhaps that feeling that you weren't being taken seriously in a room full of men or that feeling that, if you said something, nobody really paid attention. But then when a man said it, suddenly everybody listened." However, Ley maintained the party's culture had improved and that "misogyny" went far beyond the party to extend more broadly to parliament and other workplaces she'd been in. While her leadership is a historic first for the party and there is some "novelty" in being the first, she hoped the focus would soon shift. "I know I'm the first female leader. I don't sort of think of myself like that, other than to know that it sends a positive signal to women," she said. "I don't mind, in one sense, if the novelty wears off and people would just get on with the job."
ABC News
a day ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Sussan Ley will have to answer some tough questions next week
On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley will front the National Press Club. So why is that a big deal? For one thing, her predecessor Peter Dutton never appeared there as opposition leader. For another, it's a formidable forum for a new leader. It could all go badly wrong, but she's right to make the early appearance. It sends a message she is not risk-averse. Ms Ley wants to establish a better relationship with the Canberra Press Gallery than Mr Dutton had. He saw the gallery journalists as part of the despised "Canberra bubble" and bypassed them when he could. That didn't serve him well — not least because he wasn't toughened up for when he had to face daily news conferences (with many Canberra reporters) on the election trail. Ms Ley's office has set up a WhatsApp group for gallery journalists, alerting them to who's appearing in the media, and also dispatching short responses to things said by the government (such as links to ministers' former statements). This matches the WhatsApp group for the gallery run by the Prime Minister's Office. One of Ms Ley's press secretaries, Liam Jones, has also regularly been doing the rounds in the media corridors of Parliament House, something that very rarely happened with Dutton's media staff. To the extent anyone is paying attention, Ms Ley has made a better start than many, including some Liberals, had expected. She came out of the tiff with the Nationals well, despite having to give ground on their policy demands. Her frontbench reshuffle had flaws but wasn't terrible. She's struck a reasonable, rather than shrill, tone in her comments on issues, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's failure thus far to get a meeting with US President Donald Trump. Her next significant test will be how she handles at the Press Club questions she and her party are confronting. So here are a few for her. One (the most fundamental): How is she going to thread the needle between the two sides of the Liberal Party? Howard's old "broad church" answer no longer holds. The church is fractured. In an era of identity politics, the Liberals have a massive identity crisis. The party's conservatives are hardline, have hold of the party's (narrow) base, and will undermine Ms Ley if they can. Its moderates will struggle to shape its key policies in a way that will appeal to small-l liberal voters in urban seats. Two: How and when will she deal with the future of the Coalition's commitment to net zero emissions by 2050? She has put all policies on the table (but made exceptions for several Nationals' core policies). There is a strong case for her staking out her own position on net zero, and getting the policy settled sooner rather than later. With younger voters having eschewed the Liberals, Ms Ley told The Daily Aus podcast this week, "I want young people to know first and foremost that I want to listen to them and meet them where they are". One place they are is in support of net zero by 2050. If the Liberals deserted that, they'd be making the challenge of attracting more youth votes a herculean one. For the opposition. net zero is likely the climate debate of this term — and such debates are at best difficult and at worst lethal for Liberal leaders. Three: Won't it be near impossible for the Liberals to get a respectable proportion of women in its House of Representatives team without quotas? Over the years, Ms Ley has been equivocal on the issue. She told The Daily Aus: "Each of our [Liberal state] divisions is responsible for its own world, if you like, when it comes to [candidate] selections." This is unlikely to cut it. She needs to have a view, and a strategy. Targets haven't worked. Four: Ms Ley says she wants to run a constructive opposition, so how constructive will it be in the tax debate Treasurer Jim Chalmers launched this week? Ms Ley might have a chat with John Howard about the 1980s, when the Liberals had internal arguments about whether to support or oppose some of the Hawke government's reform measures. Obviously, no total buy-in should be expected but to oppose reforms for the sake of it would discredit a party trying to sell its economic credentials. More generally, how constructive or obstructive will the opposition be in the Senate? This raises matters of principle, not just political opportunism. In the new Senate the government will have to negotiate on legislation with either the opposition or the Greens. If the opposition constantly forces Labor into the arms of the Greens, that could produce legislation that (from the Liberals' point of view) is worse than if the Liberals were Labor's partner. How does that sit with them philosophically? Five: Finally, how active will Ms Ley be in trying to drive improvements in the appalling Liberal state organisations, especially in NSW (her home state) and Victoria? The Liberals' federal executive extended federal intervention in the NSW division this week, with a new oversight committee, headed by one-time premier Nick Greiner. But the announcement spurred immediate backbiting, with conservatives seeing it advantaging the moderates. Ley is well across the NSW factions: her numbers man is Alex Hawke — whom she elevated to the shadow cabinet — from Scott Morrison's old centre right faction, and she has a staffer from that faction in a senior position in her office. The faction has also protected her preselection in the past. In Victoria, the factional infighting has been beyond parody, with former leader John Pesutto scratching around for funds to avoid bankruptcy after losing a defamation case brought by colleague Moira Deeming. Some Liberals think the state party could even lose what should be the unlosable state election next year. That's just the start of the questions for Ms Ley. Meanwhile, the party this week has set up an inquiry into the election disaster, to be conducted by former federal minister Nick Minchin and former NSW minister Pru Goward. Identifying what went wrong won't be hard for them — mostly, it was blindingly obvious. Recommending solutions that the party can and will implement — that will be the difficult bit. Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra and chief political correspondent at The Conversation, where this article first appeared.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Fate of NSW Liberal party to be decided at crunch meeting after federal takeover
The fate of the New South Wales Liberal party will be decided at a crunch meeting on Tuesday, where the party's federal executive will weigh up whether to end or extend its control over the division. The federal Liberal party forcibly took over the NSW division in September last year after the NSW branch failed to lodge nominations for 140 candidates in 16 councils before the local government elections. A committee was appointed to replace its state executive for a period of 10 months. On Tuesday, the Liberal party federal executive will decide the next steps for new Liberal leader Sussan Ley's home state division in one of her first major challenges. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email In the lead-up to the meeting, a small NSW-focused committee remaining in control of the state branch has been firming as the most likely outcome. That would mean replacing the three-person committee backed by Peter Dutton and supported by Tony Abbott. The administrative committee – whose term runs out on June 30 – ignited a internal furore after one of the members, Alan Stockdale, said Liberal women were 'sufficiently assertive' and perhaps men needed a leg up. The federal executive is also expected to agree to launch two separate reviews after the party's worst election defeat in its 80-year history – a conventional post-election inquiry and a broader probe into the party. Arthur Sinodinos is expected to be among the senior party figures to lead the campaign review, although Guardian Australia understands the former Liberal minister, staffer and US ambassador has yet to be formally approached for the task. John Howard-era cabinet minister and former rightwing power broker Nick Minchin was another name that was floated. The Queensland senator, James McGrath, is the frontrunner to lead the deeper dive into the party, according to multiple Liberal sources. The federal intervention has rankled all three factions in NSW – the moderates, the centre-right and the right – and all are perturbed with the lack of progress and consultation. A three-person committee made up of Victorian party figures Stockdale and Richard Alston and former NSW state MP Peta Seaton was installed to manage the branch, including reviewing the party's constitution, overhauling the administrative machinery and helping to conduct the federal election campaign. As a decision on the future of the intervention neared, a compromise in which the federal executive agreed to continue with a committee but install more NSW members has garnered a level of support across the factions. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The most likely shape of the new committee would be an elder statesperson from NSW as the chair – and the three remaining vice-presidents from the NSW state executive. 'It's very much a Speakman-Ley proposal,' said one senior Liberal, referring to Ley and the NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman. 'They have been working very closely together,' he said. This option would have the advantage of being more acceptable to the NSW party members because local figures would be in control. Ley would not comment before Tuesday's meeting but sources close to the Liberal leader disputed suggestions she was working with any faction on a particular model. The compromise is not certain to succeed as it requires 75% support from the 22-strong federal executive, which is compromised of Ley's federal parliamentary leadership team, state division presidents and federal branch officials. 'We're about two-thirds there,' said one insider, noting that most of the state representatives on the federal executive were instinctively likely to favour more state control. If the vote for either the old or the compromise committee does not achieve 75%, the control of the NSW division will automatically revert to the NSW state executive.
National Post
6 days ago
- Politics
- National Post
Tony Abbott: How Anglosphere conservatives can thrive in the age of Trump
Article content As a consequence of the Trump tariff wars, Canada's conservative opposition leader went from being 20 points ahead in the polls to a narrow loss in April's election. And Australia's conservative opposition leader went from being competitive in the polls to a massive defeat last month. Despite Pierre Poilievre's fierce repudiation of the insults against Canada, and despite Peter Dutton's insistence that he would prevent U.S. tariffs against Australia, voters saw both as guilty by association. Donald Trump was a right-winger, many voters' reasoning ran; Poilievre and Dutton were right-wingers, therefore both were somehow 'mini-Trumps' who might be just as erratic should they gain office. Naturally, the Liberals in Canada, and Labor in Australia, revelled in attacking their 'Trump-like' opponents. Article content Conservative leaders' best response to the president's 'America first,' verging on 'everyone else last,' foreign policy is to declare that their first duty, likewise, is to their own country. After all, seeing one's own country as a 'shining city on a hill' and even as 'the last best hope of mankind,' to use Ronald Reagan's rhetoric, is the hallmark of conservative leaders. A deep patriotism is at the heart of all conservative thinking. Article content Article content A key difference between this president and his predecessors is that his love of America does not so readily extend to an embrace of America's like-minded allies; or to using American soft and hard power to extend American values throughout the world. Loyalty, sentiment, high-mindedness, and a 'love that pays the price' count for little with a transactional administration, even though it's America's readiness, up till now, to keep the world safe for democracy that's made it so widely admired. Article content A smart move by conservatives would be to push for much deeper cooperation between the other members of the Anglosphere. After all, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the CANZUK countries) are all members of the Five Eyes security partnership and are all now members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal. If America's security guarantees are weakening, there's a strong argument for Britain, supported by Canada and Australia, to step up; especially if the wider world is to continue to reflect the long Anglo-American ascendancy rather than a new Chinese one. And there's every reason to think that the current centre-left British, Canadian and Australian governments would be amenable to working more closely together on global issues if Trump's America is starting to go missing. Article content Article content It was always a mistake to see Reagan-Thatcher conservatism as exclusively, or even mainly, economic. Those two conservative titans respected freer markets as the best means of securing individual prosperity and national strength, not as ends in themselves. They supported smaller government and greater freedom because it's strong citizens rather than a nanny state that creates the best society. They saw love of country, a commitment to excellence, and personal responsibility as the key to a strong social fabric; much more so than 'equalizing' taxes and over-generous, incentive-sapping social welfare. Their record was freer trade with like-minded democracies, rather than with geo-political rivals; and of boosting local industry via robust competition and domestic deregulation rather than government subsidy. Article content Whether it's Trump Derangement Syndrome or the almost equally prevalent Trump Fascination Syndrome, the U.S. president's out-sized political personality is denying oxygen to everyone and everything that's not referencing him. Because America matters, and because the president has so much sway over what America does, the wild ride will continue. But what counts, in the end, is less what someone else does, that's up to him; and more what we do, that's up to us. Conservatives should respectfully dissent from any rogue actions by the current administration, while remembering that there will be a new one within four years. Donald Trump is just one manifestation of American conservatism, not the embodiment of it. And in the meantime, conservative leaders should get on with devising a credible policy agenda for their own countries and relentlessly making the case for change with their own voters. Article content
ABC News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Corruption watchdog clears Brittany Higgins's $2.4 million payout
The national anti-corruption body has cleared a settlement paid by the federal government to former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins over corruption claims. Ms Higgins received a $2.4 million payout from the Commonwealth in 2022 as it sought to settle a compensation claim. The former staffer had alleged she was not adequately supported by her then-boss, Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, after she made allegations she was raped at Parliament House. Multiple figures had called for the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) to investigate the compensation payout, including former opposition leader Peter Dutton and Senator Reynolds. Mr Dutton had accused government figures of "duplicity" and "trickery" in organising the government settlement. "I think there are very serious, very serious allegations here. There's a multi-million-dollar payout," he said in mid-2023. Senator Reynolds had reportedly highlighted concerns about the speed of the mediation process and her exclusion from attending mediation. The NACC on Thursday said an "extensive preliminary investigation" found no evidence of corruption. "There is no evidence that the settlement process, including the legal advice provided, who was present at the mediation, or the amount, was subject to any improper influence by any Commonwealth public official," the statement read. "To the contrary, the evidence obtained reflected a process that was based on independent external legal advice, without any inappropriate intervention by any minister of either government. "There is therefore no corruption issue." The anti-corruption body said it made multiple "notices to produce" to various departments and lawyers, and analysed thousands of documents relating to the settlement. It found the initial legal advice on a settlement was provided to the Morrison government before the 2022 election. Advice later obtained by the Albanese government was "not materially different" and there was no difference in the approach taken by either government towards pursuing a settlement. The NACC also took no issue with the mediation conference lasting less than a day, finding that was not unusual given the substantial work done in the lead-up to mediation and efforts to "[avoid] ongoing trauma to Ms Higgins". It also found the $2.4 million settlement amount was "less than the maximum amount recommended by the external independent legal advice".
