Latest news with #SussanLey
SBS Australia
18 hours 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
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Lifetime tax breaks for mothers should be a priority, argues Liberal MP before party review
Special tax breaks for mothers should be considered as part of an overhaul of the tax system to better support 'modern families', a Coalition MP has argued. As Jim Chalmers opened the door to a national debate on tax reform, the opposition backbencher Garth Hamilton said 'everything must be on the table' to redesign the system in favour of families. The new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, will soon outline details of the process her party will use to review its policies – including on tax and net zero – after its thumping federal election defeat. But Hamilton, who was the deputy chair of the house economic committee in the previous parliament, said he was not waiting for the party review process to start, joining other Liberal MPs in publicly floating tax ideas. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The advocacy offers a preview of the types of ideas that will be raised, and how public and contested the internal policy brawl will be, as the Liberals thrash out a platform to fight the next election. Hamilton is planning to run a tax review process of his own, which would bring together like-minded MPs during parliamentary sittings and host events with expert speakers. 'Our tax system must have a purpose and that purpose must be to make life better for Australian families. It's no longer enough to invent new taxes just so governments can have more money to spend,' the Groom MP told Guardian Australia. 'We need a tax system that's inclusive, that supports modern families, whatever shape they may be. If you are looking after each other, Australia should be looking after you.' Hamilton said one of the ideas that should be on the table was lifetime tax rate deductions for mothers, in recognition of the fact they faced lower salaries when returning to the workforce. Viktor Orban's far-right government in Hungary is introducing a radical version of the idea, offering lifetime income tax exemptions for mothers of two or more children as part of a plan to address the country's falling fertility rate. Hamilton understood the fertility rate argument but said he viewed the policy as more of an incentive to work and to help women build their super balances. He is also among the conservative MPs who support income splitting, a recurring policy idea that would allow parents to split combined incomes evenly across two tax returns, lowering the household's overall tax bill. For example, if one parent earned $120,000 and the other earned $40,000 then both would be taxed at the rate of someone on $80,000. One Nation pushed the policy at this year's federal election as a means of supporting stay-at-home parents. The former Coalition senator Gerard Rennick asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to model a similar policy earlier this year, which calculated it would cost roughly $12.5bn over two years. In a sign of widening support in conservative circles, the rightwing Liberal senator and shadow assistant minister for families and communities, Leah Blyth, has publicly argued the case for income splitting over the past week. 'It's not fair. It's not sustainable. And it's time we backed families,' Blyth said of the existing tax settings in a social media post last week. The Australian Financial Review reported Blyth was also working on a proposal to make private school fees tax deductible while cutting taxpayer funding to them. Speaking before Chalmers used a speech to the National Press Club to set the scene for tax changes, the shadow finance minister, James Paterson, reiterated that the Coalition was prepared to work 'constructively' with the government. 'It is self-evident that we do not collect tax in this country as efficiently as we could, and it holds back our prosperity and our productivity and our efficiency as an economy, and there are gains that can be made by reforming the tax system,' Paterson, who is acting shadow treasurer, told Sky News. 'But that is not a blank cheque for this government to increase taxes.'
ABC News
4 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Victorian Liberals dumped from committee running NSW Liberal Party as Nick Greiner takes over
Two senior Victorian Liberals have been dumped from the committee running the troubled NSW Liberal Party, with former NSW premier Nick Greiner called in to take the reins. The Liberal Party on Tuesday decided to extend the federal takeover of the state division by nine months, during a meeting of its top brass in Canberra. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley emerged from the talks to confirm the NSW party would remain in the hands of an appointed panel until March next year — but without former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale and ex-Victorian senator Richard Alston at the helm. "I want to thank them for the work they did in getting the reforming of the rules and constitution within my home state of New South Wales to this point," she said. "The good work that has been done by the previous panel will be transferred to the new panel led by Nick Greiner." The move comes a fortnight after Mr Stockdale was widely criticised for saying Liberal women were "sufficiently assertive" and the party should consider "reverse quotas". Mr Stockdale claimed the remarks were made in jest, but some Liberal sources believe the incident was the nail in the coffin of his tenure — which was already unpopular among some colleagues who believed Victorians should not be in charge of the NSW division. Shortly before today's decision was confirmed, NSW Liberal Leader Mark Speakman told reporters in Sydney he would prefer "not to have a committee dominated by Victorians". "I think everyone who serves on that committee is trying to do their best," he said. The federal takeover was launched last year, after the NSW Liberal Party missed the deadline to nominate more than 140 candidates for local government elections, in an embarrassing administrative bungle. Former NSW MP Peta Seaton was also on the original three-person committee appointed to oversee the intervention. She will also be part of the new seven-member team leading the takeover.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump leaves G7 early; Pheobe Bishop's remains identified; and lingering longer with art
Good afternoon. Donald Trump has dramatically left the G7 summit in Canada a day early to rush back to Washington, skipping meetings with leaders including Anthony Albanese. Trump's abrupt change in plans comes after a series of developments in the Israel-Iran conflict, with Trump and Israeli authorities warning residents in large parts of Tehran to evacuate before imminent bombing of 'military infrastructure'. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, claimed the US leader was returning to consider the prospects of a ceasefire deal between the two countries, but in a social media post Trump denied that was the case. His departure is a blow for Albanese, who had expected to hold his first face-to-face talks with the president, including covering trade issues and the US review of the Aukus nuclear submarines agreement. The federal opposition leader, Sussan Ley, said Albanese should have been 'more proactive' in securing a meeting. Pheobe Bishop: human remains found near Bundaberg confirmed as those of missing Queensland teenager Zachary Rolfe offered speaking services on 'leadership, ethical decision-making' for up to $10,000 Russian strikes on Kyiv kill at least 14 with attacks reported across Ukraine ABC investigates defence correspondent for allegedly not disclosing trip paid for by German ship builder Surge in death cap mushrooms in NSW and SA as scientists warn some deadly fungi look like supermarket varieties Man charged with murder after Leanne Akrap's body found in western Sydney bushland Israel's war with Iran: what does it want? It has been five days since Israel launched attacks on Iran and the war seems to be escalating. The civilian death toll is rising and Israeli forces have issued an evacuation order for parts of Tehran. Meanwhile, Iran has managed to evade Israel's defences with missiles. The Guardian's senior international correspondent, Julian Borger, explains to Michael Safi that Israel's war aims seem to have changed. 'She's told lies upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate.' – Nanette Rogers SC The lead prosecutor has finished her closing remarks to the jury in the triple murder trial of Erin Patterson in Morwell, Victoria. Catch up on all the day's developments. A major study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which surveyed almost 100,000 news consumers worldwide, has revealed a further diminishing of the influence of traditional news organisations, with social media overtaking television as a source of news in the US for the first time. Four in 10 people in the study's global sample also said they sometimes or often avoid the news – up from 29% in 2017 – the joint highest figure ever recorded. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Stop rushing through art galleries. Spend 10 minutes with just one masterpiece instead Science tells us art can expand our minds and bring us happiness. Australians are so lucky our public collections are free, writes Jane Howard – and here's one way to make the most of them. Today's starter word is: CITE. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply. Enjoying the Afternoon Update? Then you'll love our Morning Mail newsletter. Sign up here to start the day with a curated breakdown of the key stories you need to know, and complete your daily news roundup. And follow the latest in US politics by signing up for This Week in Trumpland.
