From punk rocker to tax policy expert: who is Sussan Ley, Australia's first female opposition leader?
The only time Sussan Ley ever pointed a gun was on the side of a dark road, somewhere between the remote New South Wales towns of Nyngan and Bourke.
It was late at night and the future Australian opposition leader had made a camp fire as she drove through regional NSW to reach the Queensland backcountry, where she would start work mustering livestock in a light plane.
In her early 20s, Ley had bought camping gear and a rifle before leaving home. Her father, a former British military intelligence officer, taught her how to use the weapon, which Ley kept under the passenger seat of her 1969 Holden.
After pulling to the side of the road to sleep one night, a motorbike rider approached Ley threateningly, asking why she was alone. She told the man she had her 'tall skinny mate' for company, pointing the M1 semiautomatic as her hands shook.
'He said, 'crazy bitch,' and the bike wobbled almost as much as I did,' Ley remembered in an interview years later. After the man rode away, she packed up and drove six hours straight to safety.
The new leader of the Liberal party will need to show similarly tough stuff if she is to succeed in rebuilding from the Coalition's historic loss on 3 May. Three years out from the next election, the 63-year-old on Tuesday became Australia's first female opposition leader and the most senior woman in the Liberals' 80-year history. She will face off with a strengthened Labor government and a prime minister, Anthony Albanese, emboldened by a thumping new mandate.
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Despite a quarter of a century in frontline politics, Ley's personal history isn't well known among voters. Born in Kano, Nigeria, Ley is a former wool and beef farmer and tax office executive. Arriving from England as a teenager with her family, she practised her Australian accent in the mirror to fit in better with her schoolmates, later turning to punk rock and then complex tax policy to find herself and her career.
After time as an air traffic controller in Sydney, she worked multiple jobs to pay for flying lessons and was hired to muster livestock on a remote station near Thargomindah, in south-west Queensland. She later worked as a station cook, and then raised her three children on the land, before studying accounting and economics to boost the family's income. Named Susan by her parents, she added an extra 's' in her 20s, a decision guided by numerology.
In her 30s, Ley went to university and arrived at her first lectures with a baby on her arm. Even today, the grandmother declares a Cessna 182 on her declaration of interests.
'I learned the value of a hard day's work in the hot sun,' Ley said in her first press conference, accompanied by newly picked deputy leader, Ted O'Brien. 'I learned the real value and the dignity of manual labour.'
One of the longest serving women in Canberra today, Ley (pronounced 'lee', not 'lay'), cut her teeth in politics by converting the family's caravan into a rolling campaign headquarters. She won the rural NSW electorate of Farrer in 2001 and went on to serve as education, health and environment minister in Coalition governments. She was one of just two women in Tony Abbott's first cabinet, but was forced to quit the ministry under Malcolm Turnbull when she was accused of misusing travel entitlements to buy an $800,000 investment property on the Gold Coast. At the time, Ley called it an 'error of judgment'.
The Coalition needs to win more than 30 seats to be competitive at the next election, due in 2028. To that end, the new leader promised to meet voters 'where they're at' and committed to reviewing policies on immigration, energy, climate and Indigenous affairs. Ley is a moderate in a party increasingly dominated by conservatives, but says she will appoint MPs who supported her rival Angus Taylor to her new-look frontbench, with the lineup to be named in due course.
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The former Liberal National party MP Warren Entsch said he'd had fingers and toes crossed that Ley would win against the former shadow treasurer.
'She's got the experience. She's been the deputy and been in the parliament for a long time and she's very capable,' he told Guardian Australia. 'We lost a lot of bloody good moderates this time. Not because they were bad members but basically because they were tagged as being part of a move too much to the right.'
Ley's supporters have rejected claims she was positioning for the leadership before the former leader Peter Dutton's election loss. One Liberal praised her for convincing Dutton to dump his unpopular work-from-home policy for public servants, after entreaties to other senior frontbenchers had fallen on deaf ears.
Asked who her political idol is, Ley said she took inspiration from everyday people and wanted to win over new voters in the 'sensible centre'. She paid tribute to her mother, Angela Braybrooks, who is receiving end of life care in Albury.
One former Liberal leader, Scott Morrison, sent congratulations to Ley and O'Brien after the 29-25 vote. 'Miracles still happen, and a path is always there, no matter how narrow,' Morrison wrote on social media.
Just whether Ley is tough enough or lucky enough to bring the Liberals back from the brink remains to be seen. She showed little sign of doubt as she fronted the Canberra press pack for the first time on Tuesday.
'One hundred per cent I will be here in three years,' she said. 'But more than that, we will be in a competitive position.'
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The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
A US senator's X posts after the Minnesota shootings were horrific – and predictable
National tragedy used to bring national unity. If only momentarily, partisanship was put aside, and people of all political persuasions came together. No more. The nation received a startling reminder of that sad fact on Sunday when Republican senator Mike Lee went online to share his reaction to the weekend's horrible shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses. 'This is what happens,' Lee wrote in a since-removed post on X, 'When Marxists don't get their way.' Accompanying this ugly, unfounded comment was a photo of the suspect in the shooting, Vance Boelter, wearing what appears to be a latex face mask. As if that wasn't enough, Lee posted another picture of Boelter under the caption 'Nightmare on Waltz Street', an apparent reference to the Minnesota governor and former Democratic nominee for vice-president, Tim Walz. During the 2024 campaign, Republicans accused him of being soft on crime and mishandling the riots after the murder of George Floyd. So why not suggest that he is somehow to blame for the shootings? Shameful. Lee has dishonored the institution in which he serves, and he knows it. Republican Senate leaders should censure their colleague. If they do not, they will further shred whatever dignity is left in that body. Put in context, Lee's posts show how far we have come from the vision and hopes of the founders of the American republic. Recall that James Madison, co-author of the Federalist Papers and fourth president of the US, warned that government by the people could become what he called a 'spectacle … of turbulence and contention', driven by passions to make decisions 'adverse to the rights of others or the permanent and aggregate good of the community'. Madison preferred what he called a republic, a government in which representatives would display the wisdom necessary to 'discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations'. Oddly enough, in October 2020, Lee channeled Madison when he insisted 'that our form of government in the United States is not a democracy, but a republic … Insofar as 'democracy' means 'a political system in which government derives its powers from the consent of the governed', then of course that accurately describes our system'. He continued: 'But the word … is often used to describe … the view that it is the prerogative of government to reflexively carry out the will of the majority of its citizens. 'Our system of government,' Lee noted, 'is best described as a constitutional republic. Power is not found in mere majorities, but in carefully balanced power.' In that system, the job of the Senate, Lee suggested – citing Thomas Jefferson – is to cool 'hot passions … It's where consensus is forged, as senators reach compromise across regional, cultural, and partisan lines.' Perhaps the senator has forgotten those lines. His posts about the Minnesota shootings seem designed to further fuel the 'hot passions' of our political moment, rather than to 'cool' them. They surely do not help build consensus across party lines. Now Lee's agenda seems different. He wants to show his Maga scapegoating bona fides by conjuring leftist plots as an explanation for every problem. And he is not the only member of the Maga crowd to do so. He was joined by Elon Musk, who wrote on X: 'The far left is murderously violent.' Musk reposted the following from a person who identifies herself with these words: 'GOD | #MAGA | Freedom |#Trump2024 | Constitutionalist | America First | Shall Not Be Infringed | USMC Wife'. 'The left kills the CEO of United Healthcare. Kills two Israeli ambassadors staffers. Attempts twice to assassinate the President. Doxes and attempts to murder federal ICE agents and Police - all week. And now kills a MN state rep and her husband and injures a Senator and his wife. The left has become a full blown domestic terrorist organization.' Madison must be turning over in his grave. And, as to the evidence that supports Lee's or Musk's claims about the Minnesota suspect? There is none. Don't forget that the president himself has frequently demonized 'radical left lunatics' and labelled people Marxists. Last September, he blamed a 'violent, radical-left monster' for the second attempt on his life. Using tragedy to demonize others and stoke fears about adversaries has become a new normal. No more rallying around the flag and doing the job that Madison thought political leaders in a representative democracy should and would do. In 2016, the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty, writing in the wake of what was then the deadliest mass shooting in American history, suggested that 'not since 9/11 has a moment like this brought the nation together, and that evaporated quickly. Since then, calamity seems only to drive the left and the right further apart, while faith in the nation's institutions deteriorates further.' We know that Lee knows better than to do what he did on Sunday. He demonstrated that in 2020. So why, five years later, would he go after Walz or Marxists after a national tragedy? We can only speculate. Politicians like Lee live for and on social media. Legislating is hard; accumulating 'likes' with a quick post is easier. Getting attention by being outrageous or provocative is the name of the game in what is now referred to as the attention economy. Madison, who thought that any damage done by what he called 'fractious leaders' would be limited to their local area, could never have imagined the gravitational pull of that economy or its global reach. Sadly, Lee's posts are making him a winner in that economy. By Monday morning, the first of them had been viewed 5.3 million times, and the second attracted 7.8 million views. Not bad for someone with 799,000 followers on X. In a deeply divided nation riven by political sectarianism, Lee did what his partisan supporters expect him to do. Give no quarter. Be on the offensive. Push your point. These are the rules, even when a tragedy occurs. In fact, it increases the 'opportunity for free publicity' that people like Lee crave. But let's be clear. While we can understand the forces that might explain why Lee turned tragedy into disinformation, that doesn't mean we should accept or forgive him for doing so. In the kind of constitutional republic that Madison imagined and Lee once praised, tragedies like the murders in Minnesota should bring out the best in our leaders. Their duty was, when Madison wrote, and remains today: 'to remind us of our shared humanity, not deepen our political divides.' Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty
The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
How a leaked phone call led to the demand for Thai PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra's resignation
Thailand 's prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is facing mounting pressure to resign after a leaked audio recording of her phone call blaming her own military for the dispute with Cambodia set off a huge political row. The leaked phone recording on Wednesday sparked public anger and pushed the coalition government to the brink of collapse as the second-largest party in her government quit the coalition. A part of the 17-minute private conversation between Ms Paetongtarn and Hun Sen, the former prime minister of Cambodia and the father of the current leader, was leaked on Sunday after the Cambodian leader shared it with 80 politicians. Mr Hun Sen then took to Facebook on Wednesday to share the whole 17-minute conversation "to avoid any misunderstanding or misrepresentation in official matters'. During the call, Ms Paetongtarn was heard calling Mr Hun Sen "uncle" as they discussed through translators whether they should lift border restrictions imposed after the deadly clash. She also requested him to ignore 'the opposite side', a reference she apparently made to the Thai military. She said they were trying to look 'cool' by making statements that were not in the interest of anyone. 'Tell him that actually if he wants something, he can say it and we will arrange it for him,' Ms Paetongtarn told the Thai interpreter to tell Mr Hun Sen. Her call came after a border dispute involving an armed confrontation 28 May in a relatively small "no man's land" both countries claim, in which one Cambodian soldier was killed. On Thursday, dozens of nationalist protesters gathered around the Government House, raising Thai national flags and signs calling for Ms Paetongtarn to resign. Ms Shinawatra on Thursday apologised for the phone conversation. She said the call was made from her personal phone and she did not know the conversation would be recorded and made public. She said the government was ready to support the country's military in all ways. Ms Paetongtarm defended her 'sympathetic remarks and softer tone' during the phone call as part of a negotiation strategy to ease border tensions. 'It was just a negotiation technique. I was conducting myself with the purpose of maintaining peace and our sovereignty,' Ms Paetongtarn said. 'It's clear now that his true desire is to win popularity in his country without caring about the impact on bilateral relations.' However, she added she would no longer engage in a private talk with Mr Hun Sen as she could not trust him. "It's now clear that all that he cares about is his popularity in the country, without considering impacts on relations with other countries," she said. Critics and lawmakers, both in her coalition and in the opposition party in Thailand, have particularly lambasted the prime minister for referring to him as 'uncle' as an effort to please Mr Hun Sen and said it made Thailand look weak. The discussion has emerged as the latest flashpoint in the mounting discontent with Ms Paetongtarn's administration and her powerful family. She is the youngest daughter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a dominant figure in Thai politics for over 20 years. However, her subsequent apology and explanation have done little to calm public anger. Hours after the leak, the Bhumjaithai party, the biggest partner in Ms Paetongtarn's ruling coalition, decided to part ways with the coalition because of the leaked phone call. The party's statement said the recording "posed an impact on Thailand's sovereignty, territory, interests and the army". The party called for Mr Paetongtarn to take responsibility for causing Thailand to suffer a loss of national dignity, honour, and the esteem of the people and the military.' The departure of Bhumjaithai left the 10-party coalition with 255 seats, just above the majority of the 500-seat house. Opposition leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut of the People's Party on Thursday called for Ms Paetongtarn to dissolve Parliament and hold a new election. He said the leaked phone call was "the last straw" that destroyed people's faith in her administration. The Shinawatras and Cambodia's Hun have a longstanding friendship. Her father, Mr Thaksin and Mr Hun Sen reportedly regard each other as "godbrothers." Some senators said they will file a motion to impeach her, and several other individuals also filed complaints over the matter with law enforcement agencies. Ms Paetongtarn's comments for the country's military leadership have also raised fears of a potential military coup in a country that has a long history of military rule. Her father was ousted in a coup in 2006, and Thaksin's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became prime minister in 2011 and was ousted by a military coup in 2014. The army said in a statement Thursday that it would like the people to "maintain confidence in the Royal Thai Army's steadfast commitment to the constitutional monarchy and its readiness to execute its constitutional mandate of protecting national sovereignty through established legal frameworks and institutional mechanisms."
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The wild life of Canada's favourite crack-smoking, escort-loving mayor
It is a feature of modern life that many of the world's best-loved politicians, from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson, are colourful, charismatic and deeply flawed characters to whom normal rules of behaviour simply do not seem to apply. The worse their actions are, the more they are beloved by a public who refuse to accept that their idols are not on their side. Yet few have been as swashbucklingly, hilariously outrageous in their buccaneering showmanship as Rob Ford, the one-time mayor of Toronto. Ford came to international attention when he gave a press conference in 2013 in which he not only denied claims that he had smoked crack cocaine – something that the newspaper the Toronto Star had seen video footage of – but then proceeded to attack the media for daring to report verifiable fact as fact. Over the course of Shianne Brown's frequently jaw-dropping new Netflix documentary, Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem, Ford's brief, chaotic and flamboyant life comes into focus once again. There are clear and obvious parallels with both Johnson and Trump, although Ford's hard-living, heavy-drinking ways have little in common with the teetotal president and the largely abstemious former PM. Instead, what is so remarkable about the politician is that he had an innate gift for connecting with his public, despite his outrageous and wildly controversial personal life. The crack-smoking – which under normal circumstances would have finished his career forever – was only the most egregious of the many things that he did. But as one former colleague of his remarks, perhaps hopefully, 'in the long run, history will think of him as a man who had an illness and accomplished things that have never been accomplished before.' Ford's father, Douglas, was a successful self-made businessman and member of the Progressive Conservative party who passed on both his political views and energetic drive to succeed to his four children, especially his sons Doug and Rob. They became known as the 'Ford family enterprise' as a result. Mayor of Mayhem does not explore Ford's initial rise to prominence, which came when he was a city councillor for Ward 2 Etobicoke North in Toronto, but it is a fascinating story. In language which anticipated the rise of Trump and Elon Musk and their cost-cutting exercises, Ford declared in 2001, when the city was facing a budgetary shortfall and necessary rise in taxes, 'I have to give my head a shake because some of the rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of some of these councillors boggles my mind, I swear. ... Get the government out of our backyards. It's ridiculous. Government red tape here. Bureaucratic here. It's nonsense having all this government.' He led by example, refusing to claim expenses and saying that 'all this office budget stuff is self-promotion to benefit yourself. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for it? It boggles my mind.' Ford also had a knack for the quotable insult or jest. He argued against installing suicide prevention barriers on the Prince Edward Viaduct, claiming that the money should instead be spent on prosecuting paedophiles 'who are the main cause of people jumping off bridges.' He referred to political opponents as 'scammers' and 'goons', and when accused of racism, blithely denied it, saying 'I'm a conservative and the majority of people are left-wing and cannot stand my politics.' Ford made many enemies in his early political career, but he, a self-described 'public servant', also was seen as energetic and accessible by voters. Prone to exaggeration – the documentary observes that even from his early campaign appearances, he would claim that a crowd of 2,000 voters was in fact 5,000 – and also to self-mythologising, he had a knack of communicating with the public that resonated with people tired of the same old politicians. As one acquaintance put it: 'Rob Ford gives out his business card out to virtually everyone he meets and says 'if you have any problems, call me'.' This cut through usual expectations of public service, often to unexpected effect. At Ford's funeral, his brother Doug recounted the anecdote of how Ford, picking up a takeaway sandwich, was surprised to learn that there was no delivery driver available to fulfil an order. Ford volunteered to take the sandwich himself, on the grounds that it might endear him to a potential voter. 'They gave me $35 for a $32 order, so I got a $3 tip!' he later recounted. Ford, a large, imposing figure who bore a resemblance to the late actor John Candy, decided to run for mayor in the 2010 election amidst public dissatisfaction with his left-wing predecessor David Miller, who had served two terms in office but had lost his standing amidst a lengthy strike by garbage workers in the summer of 2019. Ford's platform was unashamedly populist, with such slogans as 'Stop the Gravy Train' and 'Respect for taxpayers'. His opponents attempted to draw attention to previous misdemeanours of his, including an arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol in Miami in 1999, but Ford shrugged them off. His popularity only grew with voters, who saw him as an accessible everyman figure, and he was elected mayor with 47 per cent of the vote. As his special assistant Tom Beyer puts it in Mayor of Mayhem: 'We were outsiders and now we were insiders.' The first indications that it would be an eventful mayoralty came on St Patrick's Day in 2012, a little over a year since he was elected. Ford held a 'wild party' in which he was said to be under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, and when the Toronto Star reported that the mayor was a heavy drinker, angrily denounced the story as 'lies, after lies, and lies'. He was said to have hired a blonde sex worker named Alana for this party and to have drunk and taken copious quantities of drugs with her, before announcing that he intended to '[go] out then [get] laid.' The newspaper now redoubled its attempts to find some dirt in Ford's eventful private life, and was rewarded with its vigilance by being informed, in May 2013, that a video existed of the mayor smoking crack cocaine. They were offered its sale for $100k, but as the Toronto Star had a policy of not paying for stories, was unable to back up a hugely significant scoop. It looked as if it could not be printed, until the gossip website Gawker, which got hold of the same information, published their own story first, to be picked up on by the grateful Toronto Star. Even as one of Ford's aides acknowledged 'that's a problem', the mayor simply described the story as more falsehoods, and suggested that the video had been doctored. This may have been a blatant untruth, but it was said with enough conviction to persuade half the citizens of Toronto that the newspaper was biased against Ford and casting around for evidence to discredit him. The mayor blithely admitted things that would have led to any other politician being disgraced – in August 2013, when asked about cannabis use, he announced that 'I won't deny that, I smoked a lot of it' – but he seemed in denial about the damning video. When his chief of staff Mark Towhey suggested, given the inevitability of its becoming public, that Ford should seize the initiative and enter rehab, the mayor simply fired him. And so, when Toronto police chief Bill Blair announced on October 31 that he had seen the video, which had been captured after a gun smuggling raid, Ford refused to admit its existence. In an instantly notorious press conference, he came out fighting: 'I have no reason to resign, I'm going to go back and return my phone calls, gonna be out doing what the people elected me to do and that's save taxpayers money and run a great government.' He then addressed rumours that he had behaved inappropriately towards a young female staffer, Olivia Gondek, who had resigned the previous year. He claimed that '[The newspaper] says that I wanted to 'eat her p----'. I've never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I'm happily married. I've got more than enough to eat at home.' Matters fell apart swiftly. Five days later, Ford was compelled to admit that 'Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine but ... am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Um, probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.' Eventually, the penitent mayor announced 'I will be forever sorry', but a series of embarrassing videos were leaked of Ford claiming he was a 'sick motherf-----' and miming bizarre fight moves. In another, the mayor was filmed shouting 'I need f---ing' ten minutes to make sure he's dead!' When asked in an interview 'have you purchased illegal drugs in the last two years', Ford was compelled to say 'Yes, I have.' By the time a video appeared of him speaking in Jamaican patois, it was all one long-suffering aide could do to say 'it all blurs.' The Toronto mayor was now an international joke, lambasted on chat shows all over America. Jay Leno, observing the latest absurd development, quipped: 'There's not a lot to do in Toronto.' When Ford entered the council chamber, amidst public demonstrations demanding that he resign as mayor, his fellow politicians yelled 'shame' at him, leading Ford to retort that they were 'scumbags' before charging and inadvertently knocking one woman over with his significant bulk. Unabashed, he then announced' 'This reminds me of when Saddam attacked Kuwait…you guys have just attacked Kuwait.' Despite everything, Ford was not only able to remain as mayor, but he announced his intention of standing for re-election ('Why retreat when you can keep pushing ahead?'). Even as yet another video surfaced of him smoking crack, he tried to get his life into some sort of order, albeit on his own, inimitable terms. He entered rehab, lost weight, was seen in the company of Hulk Hogan (who he beat in an arm wrestling contest) and Mike Tyson and once again set about seducing the citizens of Toronto as only he could. Had he not been diagnosed with a rare cancer, pleomorphic liposarcoma, he may even have won re-election. In the event, his brother Doug stood in his stead and came a close runner-up to the eventual winner, John Tory. Ford instead fought and won his city council seat once more, indicating his extraordinary public popularity, and held it until his death on 22 March 2016. He was only 46. In one of the last scenes in Mayor of Mayhem, a bald, pensive-looking Ford is interviewed while going through chemotherapy. 'I'm doing the best I can in the situation,' he says softly. He believed that he would beat his illness, as he had beaten everything else that had come at him in his brief and eventful life. He was wrong. Doug Ford, now Premier of Ontario, has already denounced Mayor of Mayhem and its makers: 'It's just disgusting. Leave the guy alone. Let him rest in peace. Let his family rest in peace. They're just disgusting people. It just absolutely infuriates me, to be honest with you. [If] they want the truth, talk to the real people who absolutely loved him.' Certainly, it offers an unvarnished and at times highly unflattering picture of his younger brother as a Falstaffian, self-centred ruffian whose lack of impulse control meant that what might have been a legendary political career ended up falling apart, mired in scandal and sleaze. But what scandal, and what sleaze! If Rob Ford is to be remembered for anything, more than a decade after his death, it is in taking political wrongdoing to new depths, and making himself immortal in the process. There will never be another politician like him. We hope.
