Punk rocker the frontrunner for Liberal leadership

News.com.au

12-05-2025

Sussan Ley is cautiously confident she's on track to make history as the Liberal Party's first female leader, but the vote is tight and challenger Angus Taylor has significant support.
The Liberal Party will vote on a new leader and deputy on Tuesday and choose who will take the fight to a triumphant Albanese Government that now boasts a stunning majority of 93 seats in the 150-seat parliament.
Ms Ley, a grandmother who has previously boasted of 'a brief punk rock period' in the 1980s was born in England before migrating to Australia in 1973 as a young child.
'I had a brief punk period where I became one of Canberra's original punk rock people,'' she said.
'I remember one day I really excelled myself: no shoes, bright orange glasses that were tinted, spiky purple hair, a dog collar around my neck and a razor blade in one ear with a nose piercing that went to the razor blade, skinny black jodhpurs, petticoat top and black lipstick.'
She is also a trained pilot.
'All through my childhood there was this ribbon of passion about flying and aeroplanes,'' she said.
'I used to read those 'dogfight' paperbacks for the flight scenes, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I could fly. I believed I could not learn because I was shortsighted. I met up with some RAAF pilots and discovered it only mattered if I wanted to join the air force.'
Both candidates hit the phones on Monday as Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who won the seat of Goldstein from independent Zoe McKenzie briefly floated running for the leadership at breakfast before ruling it out before dinner.
The bitter and bruising leadership battle has been marked by a string of extraordinary attacks on Mr Taylor led by outgoing Senator Hollie Hughes and an underground campaign of rumours and counterclaims involving Sussan Ley.
One of the more 'bizarre' rumours – denied by Senator Hughes this week as having 'no truth whatsoever'- was that Ms Ley had offered her a job as her chief of staff if she won the leadership ballot.
Ms Ley's supporters include the majority of moderate MPs and Mr Taylor's supporters are predominantly from the conservative side of the Liberal family.
Liberal Senator drops a bomb on Angus Taylor
Liberal Senator and political kamikaze operative Hollie Hughes dropped another bomb on Angus Taylor on Monday accusing him of plotting to replace Peter Dutton before the election.
Just last week, Ms Hughes accused the shadow treasurer of having 'zero economic policy to sell' and expressed 'concerns about his capability' in a brutal public spray on ABC radio.
But this time Mr Taylor is hitting back, with supporters slamming the latest salvo as 'out of control' and claiming she's 'lost the plot'.
Senator Hughes popped into Sky News on Monday morning to suggest Mr Taylor was already plotting for the leadership before Mr Dutton and his party lost the last election.
She cited the social media musings of former Queensland MP George Christensen, who has been tweeting up a storm suggesting all sorts of malfeasance.
But that's enraged Mr Taylor's supporters who say it's total poppycock.
'She's out of control. Honestly. There was only one side undermining Dutton this campaign (and the entire term frankly) and I can tell you, it certainly wasn't us,' a Liberal source said.
'She's lost the plot.'
An unrepentant Hollie Hughes told news.com.au that she was 'literally just citing George's tweets.'
In one of those tweets. Mr Christensen claims that one of those making calls on Mr Taylor's behalf was the spouse of a senior NSW Liberal MP.
'And one MP told her to grow some balls and tell your husband to call me himself,'' Senator Hughes recounted.
But Mr Taylor denies anyone was calling around on his behalf.
She also criticised Senator Jacinta Price for putting her name up for the deputy leadership.
Senator Hughes said that Mr Taylor had insulted every Liberal MP and Senator by overlooking them for deputy and trying to get outside talent.
'To me, it feels like turning up to an RSL club in a membership form and then saying, by the way, I'm going to run for the board and I want to be president,' she said.
Who's in and who's out
With a number of Liberal seats on a knife edge the Liberal Party director Andrew Hirst has had to decide who can and can't vote in Tuesday's leadership showdown.
He's confirmed Bradfield's Gisele Kapterian who appears to have won with 0.01 per cent of the vote has a golden ticket.
But Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer who failed to unseat Monique Ryan in the Victorian seat of Kooyong does not.
The list provides a few more clues – the Liberals are including the candidate for Longman in the voting class.
There's then a group of three-cornered contest votes in Flinders, the seat of Zoe McKenzie, Monash, Grey and Fischer they are all voting.
The Liberals will be left with 29 lower house seats and 25 senate seats, that's a total of 54 people voting for the leadership.
That doesn't include Nationals MPs naturally and once they are included the Coalitions numbers in the House of Representatives have still undergone a brutal cull but are over 40.
Embarrassing post haunts hopeful Lib leader
As tensions heat up in the lead-up to the Liberal vote on Tuesday, Mr Taylor is getting rinsed on his social media accounts over an embarrassing social media fail from years back.
It was way back in 2019 when the Liberal MP or a staffer operating his account was caught out on his official Facebook page.
He was spotted replying to his own post, telling himself he was 'fantastic'.
The Angus Taylor account then told the Angus Taylor post, 'well done Angus'.
It's been used against him in parliament ever since, with Labor MPs routinely shouting 'well done Angus!' every time he gets to his feet.
The post in question was spruiking an extra 1000 car spots at Campbelltown station, in the electorate next to the New South Wales seat of Hume.
Just hours after the post, the same Facebook account replied to its own post, 'Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus'.
The Facebook whoopsie made international news and was even reported by the BBC.
The UK's former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, also once tweeted his own name ('Ed Balls') instead of searching it, in an event that was so beloved it had its own commemorative day, known as Ed Balls Day.
Another politician does an 'Angus Taylor'
This year, independent MP Andrew Gee was accused of being caught doing an 'Angus Taylor' by replying to a Facebook post from his own account.
He posted a statement on Facebook about the Nationals engaging in 'dirty tactics' on day one of the election, claiming they had called an elderly constituent and spread 'blatant lies about who I was going to preference in this election'.
In a comment underneath the post, Gee then thanked himself for being a 'good guy'.
'Thank you Andrew Gee MP I am new to the area and have received texts from the Nationals and seen nasty ads in the paper from the Teal mob, it has helped me see who is the good guy,' the comment read.
It was later deleted and comments on the post were restricted.
A spokesperson for Mr Gee later blamed the failure on a 'new and inexperienced member of the campaign team who had access to the page'.
Senator Jacinta Price will run for deputy
Meanwhile, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has announced she will run for the deputy Liberal Party leadership and is backing Mr Taylor for the top job just days after joining the Liberal Party room.
Hugely popular with the membership base and political donors, Senator Price has the right as a Country Liberal Party MP to choose which party room she sits in.
Endorsing Mr Taylor's bid for the leadership, Senator Price confirmed on Sunday morning that she would run as his deputy.
'Today I announce my candidacy for Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and my endorsement for Angus Taylor's candidacy for Leader,' Senator Price said.
'As I've said with respect to my decision to change party rooms, these are not matters which I take lightly and this decision today brings with it a great deal of responsibility which I fully accept.
'There is no question that returning to our roots as a party is critical right now. If we want to inspire and empower Australians across our country, we must return to these roots.'
Senator Price said the party must stand for the 'forgotten people' and 'mainstream Australians'.
'I think of my grandparents who were by no means the elite, building their first home by hand with hessian bags and washing their clothes in the creek in Warners Bay, NSW,'' she said.
'But they saw a spark, a vision of a brighter future for generations to come.'
But it's her decision to run for a leadership position before she's even sat in the party room that's raised eyebrows given the deputy has an important pastoral care role.
'She's perfectly entitled to put her hand up. The party room will decide that but people will have different ideas about that I think,'' Liberal Senator Dave Sharma said.
Her big switch to the Liberal Party is being backed by former prime minister Tony Abbott and other conservatives.
A vote on the Liberal leadership will take place in Canberra today.