
The Liberal party's appointment of Sussan Ley is an historic moment – but not the one that matters
In 2018, Scott Morrison addressed the Liberal party room with an evangelical Trumpian fervour. Having just blown up Malcolm Turnbull's government to become Liberal leader and prime minister ahead of Peter Dutton and Julie Bishop, he seemed oblivious to the bloodshed he had just caused.
He pointed to the framed photographs of previous Liberal leaders and prime ministers and said, in what I'm sure he thought was a Churchillian tone: 'One day there will be a woman there.' The room was glum with silence, pierced only by Bishop's quiet quip. In which century?
That day marked the beginning of the Morrison and Dutton show. Women centrists such as Bishop, Kelly O'Dwyer and me jumped ship. Kerryn Phelps won Turnbull's seat of Wentworth and Zali Steggall won Tony Abbott's seat of Warringah in 2019, the same year as Morrison's 'miracle' win. In the 2022 election, six women – business leaders, lawyers and doctors among them – pushed men out of 'blue ribbon' seats that had been held by Liberal party since last century.
A slow but steady trail of destruction continued. The reactionary right, emboldened by Trump 1.0, and later Trump's second coming, has continued to flavour their talking points accordingly and develop copycat policies. They consoled climate deniers with a Gina Rinehart-friendly pro-nuclear stance, and reinforced their antiquated attitude to women by preselecting more men, and temporarily telling men and women that they would have to ditch working from home and return to the office.
Women voters deserted the Liberal party in 2022 and fled it again in 2025 – to the Labor party and teal independents.
The Liberals have finally appointed a women, Sussan Ley, as leader. Their excited declaration that this was an important moment in history – Ley is the first woman the party has appointed in its 80 years – contains the subtle implication that the appointment will fix their deep-seated dysfunctional woes and make up for a shocking electoral defeat.
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
The more significant historic moment, which the Liberal Party would prefer we not see, is that the 48th Australian parliament will include a record-breaking number of women and that about 50 of them are likely to be Labor MPs, compared with only about seven Liberals. Added to that number are the five women teal independents who held their seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The Liberals say they are 'the sort of women' who should be in the Liberal party while remaining oblivious to the fact that literally millions of women have demonstrated they wouldn't go anywhere near the Liberal Party – because they are women who care about the climate, about health and education and about the economy for future generations and who share the values of integrity, respect and equality.
After the 2022 election, Ley, as deputy leader of the party and shadow minister for women, often said she was ''alking with women', going on a 'listening tour', and that the party wanted to win back the urban seats lost to the six female teals. During this time, a 60-page post-election review of the Liberal party unsurprisingly found that a decline in support from female voters was an important factor in the loss. After this year's emphatic loss, it appears the review went unheeded; basic things such as the Liberal party's intransigent resistance to quotas remained and the community independents movement grew.
As Ley takes up the leadership, she has vowed to lead from the 'sensible centre'. But how exactly? The Liberals came out of this election beholden to the National party and remain underpinned by a Trumpian support base. They went into this election preferencing One Nation and Family First in electorates across the country – parties with longstanding positions against equality, abortion, LGBTQI+ rights, multiculturalism and renewable energy. There does not appear to be anything remotely 'sensible' or 'centrist' left in that party room, especially when it comes to the issue of women.
It's going to take more than the appointment of a female leader declaring a 'new narrative', and a 'fresh approach' to rebuild the party.
Words alone don't cut it with the Australian people.
Ley declared that her appointment sends a signal to Australian women. But does the party really believe Ley's appointment is going to fix the deeply dysfunctional and embedded problems the Liberals face?
Ley's picture will be hung on the wall with former Liberal leaders, but much more needs to be done to ensure it's not perched on one of the biggest glass cliffs in Australian history.
The most profound and meaningful signal has already been sent, and it is not the one the Liberal party sent by appointing its first female leader. It's the one the Australian people sent on 3 May.
Julia Banks is an author, leadership consultant, keynote speaker, lawyer, and former Liberal and Independent MP
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Long running ABC program Q+A to be axed after 17 years following a painful decline in ratings
Q+A, one of the ABC's flagship current affairs and news programs will not return to air, after taking a break in May. It was scheduled to return in August, but those familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity say it won't return. The ABC is set to announce the decision to discontinue the show later this week. The show has come under fire over the last few years, after churning through different hosts following the departure of Tony Jones, who left in 2019. Q+A has seen several changes in its hosting lineup, first with Hamish Macdonald, David Speers, Virginia Trioli, Stan Grant and most recently Patricia Karvelas taking over as host. The number of episodes was also cut by ABC staff in 2024, going from 40 episodes a year to just 24. Q+A also was shifted from its usual slot of Monday night, to Thursday night, a move that was eventually reversed by the ABC. The show also has seen its ratings collapse in the last 5 years. From a peak 600,000 viewers in 2020, the Q+A crashed to a record low of just above 200,000 viewers across the five major capital cities in April 2021. In August 2023, during the show's 'Garma Special', Q+A received its lowest ratings ever, with fewer than 84,000 metro viewers. Daily Mail Australia's Political Editor Peter Van Onselen said the program would not be missed if it didn't return to ABC's roster in 2024. In an opinion piece for The Australian, Van Onselen said Q&A - hosted by Patricia Karvelas - had received 203,000 views nationally. 'With numbers this woeful coupled with how out of touch with mainstream Australia the program has become, it really needs to be put out of its misery,' he wrote. 'There have been enough failed reboots to justify finally axing it.' The commentator said cracks started to appear after Tony Jones stopped hosting after a decade in the role from 2008 to 2019. 'It wasn't all that long ago that the program was vibrant and interesting, with discussions well led by former host Tony Jones,' Van Onselen wrote. 'I remember appearing on it at the time. Ratings regularly hit the one million mark, which precipitated the discussion about changing its time slot.' Van Onselen lashed the show for not being informative enough and hosting discussions that were 'one-sided, uninteresting and rarely funny'. He claimed it was the ABC's 'stubbornness' that was saving the show from being axed for good but that a replacement would be welcomed.


Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Australia's biggest aluminium smelter on verge of collapse putting up to 6000 jobs in jeopardy
Australia's biggest aluminium smelter is in crisis talks with the federal and state governments to continue operating as crippling electricity bills threaten 6,000 jobs. Tomago, which is majority owned by mining giant Rio Tinto, is negotiating on the design of its 2026 to 2029 electricity contract, The Australian Financial Review revealed last week. The Newcastle smelter employs 1,200 people full-time but its possible closure would joepardise the future of another 5,000 workers in the Hunter region, north of Sydney. Australia's key aluminium smelter, which opened in 1983, is now seeking support from the NSW and federal governments to stay afloat as Australia's only manufacturer of long-steel, in Whyalla, is propped up by the South Australian government. The latest development comes a week after Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium to 50 per cent. Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Ben Fordham suggested taxpayers could be stumping up billions of dollars just to keep Tomago afloat. 'This is not good: Tomago Aluminium, Australia's biggest smelter is on the verge of collapse,' he said on Tuesday. 'Why? Their power bill is too high. They're in emergency talks with state and federal governments asking for billions of dollars just to stay open. And if it shuts, well, we're not just losing a smelter, we're risking 6,000 jobs. 'There are thousands of families, contractors, supplies and regional businesses on the line.' Rio Tinto, which owns 51.55 per cent of Tomago Aluminium Company, in January welcomed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Future Made in Australia plan to provide production credits to alumunium manufacturers. Chief executive Kellie Parker also begged for federal government help to pay for sky-high electricity bills. 'The Australian government's commitment shows strong confidence in domestic manufacturing and the nation's position in the global economy,' she said. 'As traditional energy sources for heavy industry become increasingly uncompetitive, today's announcement is a critical piece in helping future-proof the industry. 'Such support is crucial for sustaining and growing regional economies.' The smelter's big shareholder Rio Tinto also flagged a bailout package from the NSW government to keep Tomago operating. 'Rio Tinto also welcomes ... looks forward to working with the New South Wales Government to help secure the future of that operation,' it said in a media release. Tomago, which is majority owned by mining giant Rio Tinto, employs 1,200 people full-time but its possible closure would jeopardise the future of another 5,000 workers in the Hunter region north of Sydney Rio Tinto also owns the Boyne Smelter in central Queensland, which last year received subsidies from the state government to transition to renewable energy. Albanese in January visited the Tomago plant with the Labor member for the then marginal seat of Paterson, Meryl Swanson. 'This is my third visit to Tomago, because this is such an important facility,' he said. 'And essentially it's about people, it's about the jobs that are created here. Up to a thousand direct jobs. 'But when you look at this local community, there's 5,000 jobs depend on this facility just locally. But more importantly than that, it's the tens of thousands of jobs throughout Australia that depend on us being able to make things here.'


The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Sydney cleric used ‘dehumanising' generalisations designed to intimidate Jewish people, federal court hears
A Sydney Muslim cleric being sued for alleged racial discrimination gave a series of speeches calculated to 'dehumanise' and 'denigrate all Jewish people', the federal court has heard. But ahead of the Tuesday hearing, Wissam Haddad, also known as Abu Ousayd, took to social media to say he rejected the court's authority. Posting a video of Sydney's federal court online, he told followers: 'We disbelieve in these courts, these are the houses of the Taghut,' Haddad said, using an Islamic concept that describes the worship of anyone or anything other than Allah. In modern contexts, the term is used to dismiss, diminish or insult a non-Muslim power as anti-Islamic. Haddad is being sued by two senior members of Australia's peak Jewish body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), over a series of lectures he gave in Bankstown in November 2023 and subsequently broadcast online, in which he is alleged to have maligned Jewish people as 'vile', 'treacherous' and cowardly. The claim alleges Haddad breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which prohibits offensive behaviour based on race or ethnic origin. Peter Wertheim, one of the applicants in this case and ECAJ co-chief executive, told the federal court on Tuesday that Haddad's speeches used 'overtly dehumanising' language. 'Making derogatory generalisations, calling Jews a vile and treacherous people, calling them rats and cowards … are things which I think would be experienced by most Jews as dehumanising,' Wertheim said. His barrister, Peter Braham SC, told the court Haddad's speeches repeated a range of offensive tropes and were designed to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate Jewish people. The court heard Haddad had sound recording and camera equipment installed to record his speeches, for the purpose of disseminating his message far beyond his congregants. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Braham told the court the intent of the five speeches was to 'persuade an audience that the Jewish people have certain immutable and eternal characteristics that cause them to … be the objects of contempt and hatred'. Braham argued Haddad's inflammatory rhetoric was an 'exercise that's so dangerous'. 'It's threatening, it's humiliating and it's offensive. It's calculated to denigrate all Jewish people, including the Australian Jews for whom we appear. 'It involved repeating a large range of offensive tropes about Jews: they're mischievous, they're a vile people, that they're treacherous, and that they control the media and banks et cetera.' But Haddad's barrister, Andrew Boe, argued the cleric's speeches were addressed to, and intended only for, a private Muslim congregation of 40 people and that Haddad was not responsible for them being published online. Boe said it was unlikely a Jewish person would have discovered the speeches, to then be offended by them, if the recordings had not been covered and thus amplified by mainstream media. 'It would be analogous to a person of a prudish sensitivity seeking out pornography on the web and then complaining about being offended by it,' Boe told the court. Boe argued there must be room, in a democratic society, for 'the confronting, the challenging, even the shocking'. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion He said the court should take a 'rigorous and detached approach' in applying the Racial Discrimination Act, and remain careful to uphold the 'intended balance between … proscribing racially motivated behaviour that may be harmful in the Australian community, and … preserving the freedoms of speech and religion that are so essential to the continued existence of a free democracy'. Haddad's defence case argues that his sermons were delivered in 'good faith' as religious and historical instruction. If his sermons are found to breach 18C, then, his defence submission argues, the law is unconstitutional because it restricts the free exercise of religion. The long-running dispute, which failed to find resolution at conciliation, came before the federal court Tuesday, with the case set to test the limits of religious expression and hate speech under Australian law. A directions hearing last week heard expert witnesses would be called to assess whether Haddad's sermons were accurate representations of Islamic scripture, with the court likely to be asked to adjudicate whether Haddad's sermons, in which he quotes the Qur'an and offers interpretation of it, amount to incitement or are protected religious expression. The applicants are seeking an injunction that Haddad's five offending sermons be removed from the internet, and an order that he refrain from publishing similar speeches in future. Wertheim and his co-applicant, Robert Goot, are also seeking publication of a 'corrective notice' on Haddad's prayer centre's social media pages, and to be awarded the legal costs of bringing their action. They have not sought damages or compensation. In his social media posts ahead of the court hearing on Tuesday morning, Haddad said he rejected the court's authority, telling online followers that 'the Jewish lobby' was 'dragging us into [a] court', whose jurisdiction he did not recognise. 'But we're not going to come unarmed, we are going to fight them with everything we have. 'Isn't it about time that somebody stands up to these bullies.' The hearing, before Justice Angus Stewart, is expected to run until the end of the week.