analysis

Replacing Sussan Ley as Liberal leader isn’t an easy fix to the party’s problems

6 minutes agoSun 9 Nov 2025 at 6:44pm

Pressure continues to build on Sussan Ley’s leadership. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

As the federal Liberal Party embarks on more self-harm over climate change policy this week, the idea seems to have set in among some that tearing down its first ever female leader could be a low-consequence affair.

The party that got smashed in Australian cities only six months ago seems to be on the hunt for a new leader, despite the fact they still haven’t diagnosed why they lost in the first place.

The situation is so bad former Liberal party strategist Tony Barry warned “terrorist cells operating inside the Coalition is not a pathway to electoral success”.

Whatever you make of Sussan Ley’s leadership — her flaws, her own goals, her style — there is alarm in some quarters that the party will dispose of Ley for doing exactly what she said she would do: follow a process to determine contentious policy.

Peter Dutton led the party with an iron fist — he made top-down decisions and captain’s calls.

Ley has a different leadership style to her predecessor, Peter Dutton. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

Ley has given her party room avenues to be part of the process to determine policy but has not been given the respect she deserves for adhering to basic process.

Those who complained about Dutton’s authoritarian style are now privately moaning about the glacial pace of change under Ley. This is not to suggest she is flawless — but it is clear to anyone vaguely tuned into Australian politics that her leadership has been beleaguered by undermining and carping.

‘No short cuts’ for Liberals

Well known and widely respected for his straight talk, Barry is now a director of the RedBridge Group, which studies the public mood through polling and focus group research.

He tells me that when the Liberals hold just nine out of 88 urban seats there are “no short cuts to competitiveness”.

“Sussan Ley was handed a club shit sandwich when she inherited the leadership after the Liberal Party was shirtfronted by the electorate in two consecutive elections,” Barry says.

“The magnitude of the losses we’ve recently seen at state and federal levels point to a more complex explanation that means moving beyond the timeless Liberal pastime of searching for a scapegoat and a Messiah.

“Having terrorist cells operating inside the Coalition is not a pathway to electoral success.”

And he warns that if the party room does “neck” Ley, “you can be certain that Labor figures like Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek and Clare O’Neil will all be elbowing each other to get to a microphone and reinforce an existing prejudice among soft voters that the Liberal Party has a women problem.”

“If the party room were to roll Sussan Ley so soon after the election it would be an act of total madness and stupidity, which is why we can’t rule it out,” Barry tells me.

“The Liberal Party had to work really hard to lose 34 seats in three years. It is going to have to work a lot harder to win them back within the next two electoral cycles.”

Risk in dumping Ley

The dilemma for the Liberals does not disappear with a new leader. In some ways it may compound.

The brand damage of removing its only female leader early carries significant risk.

Inside the party, the two leading contenders are right wingers Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor.

But those worried about the perception of dropping Ley so early are now actively canvassing other options.

Sources tell this column that Melissa McIntosh, who is the shadow minister for communications and has recently declared her position opposing net zero, is angling for a leadership role.

One option, they say, is Hastie running with McIntosh as his deputy — but McIntosh has told colleagues she thinks the optics of a woman being relegated to a support role is problematic and the field of contenders must include women.

Senior Liberals have told this column that if Hastie is seen as an heir apparent, women including McIntosh should be key to the party’s consideration.

The fact that the party is actively canvassing other options does not mean Ley’s leadership is over — but when conversations about the future of the party are so widespread there is a terminal nature to it.

It is naive to underestimate Ley, who has been around since the Howard years and knows exactly how these things play out. Ley is aware that the sharks are circling and is doing everything she can to stay afloat.

Net zero flip risks losing more city voters

Then there’s the substantive issue of the net zero policy itself.

Those who study basic demography in this country and see the hordes of Gen Z voters joining the electoral roll worry that the dumping of the commitment will create a generational problem for the party.

Roshena Campbell, a prominent Liberal who is the deputy mayor of Melbourne, tells me the Liberal party’s moves to reject net zero emissions targets will do “generational damage” to the party.

Campbell warns that move would suggest to young voters that Liberals were not interested in urgent climate action: “For so many young voters that will be a game changer. They will not look at the Liberal party, not at the next election, [or] the next election after, and this is the sort of generational damage that can keep a major party out of government … When we’re talking about softening language, speaking to aspirations instead, speaking to emission reduction over a longer time period, that is so out of step with the views of younger voters, that this is an urgent issue that deserves an urgent response.”

Campbell, who unsuccessfully ran as the Liberal candidate for the outer-suburban Melbourne seat of Aston, says the party would never regain inner-city seats like Kooyong and struggle to hold on to Goldstein if net zero was dumped.

Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, who is a leading moderate and has been pushing for gender quotas and climate action, says the undermining of the opposition leader does have a gendered element.

“The reality is a lot of women are held to a higher standard. Ultimately, Sussan Ley has shown she has worked through lots of difficult issues since she became the leader,” she says.

“I am proud of her for that and the tenacity she has had in dealing with a lot of significant problems and probably one of the worst election defeats that we have had in living memory.”

Kovacic says she is concerned that Australians, particularly in city seats, will think the Liberals are not listening if they ditch net zero.

“We have to ensure we’re thinking about those communities also,” Kovacic says.

Shades of Turnbull

There are echoes of 2009 here when Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership was blown up after he negotiated with the then Labor government for several months, including a last-minute deal with Labor’s Penny Wong on the CPRS — a plan to reduce emissions.

The deal triggered an earthquake inside the Liberal and National parties. Turnbull’s leadership was challenged over his support for the deal and his commitment to climate change action.

As a result of the internal division, Turnbull was challenged and replaced as leader by Tony Abbott in November 2009.

Abbott’s leadership was predicated on opposition to the CPRS, and the Coalition party room subsequently rejected the deal negotiated by Turnbull.

Moderate Liberal Andrew Bragg raised the stakes on Sunday morning, telling the ABC that “most Australians want us to play our role in getting to net zero”.

He then lobbed a political grenade by saying walking away from a serious commitment to climate change would put Australia in a category with “the baddies like Azerbaijan, Syria and Iran”.

He didn’t hold back in making clear that if the Coalition can’t reach a sensible consensus, they will no longer be viable as an alternate party of government.

He was at pains to pivot the debate back to Labor and energy prices — his appearance no doubt intended to send a strong message to his own side that the transactional cost of this public blood fight is to risk relegating his party to the opposition trenches indefinitely.

Ley is playing this differently. She remains on the fence waiting to see where the party takes the policy rather than driving the bus.

This strategy may save her temporarily, but the consequences of looking to have stood for nothing carries political risk too.

Even if she gets through the marathon week ahead, Ley’s problems don’t end with net zero. It just represents the first step in her trying to reassemble a modern Liberal party that looks like an alternative government.

Patricia Karvelas is host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.