Source : the age
Angus Taylor is the new leader of the Liberal Party, after toppling Sussan Ley in a spill 34-17 shortly after 9am today.
“It’s an immense honour to be elected as leader of the Liberal Party,” he said in a social media post.
Victorian senator Jane Hume will serve as his deputy, after deposing Ted O’Brien 30-20.
After losing the leadership, Ley announced she would resign from politics, which will prompt a byelection in her electorate of Farrer, which she has held since 2009.
“I look forward to stepping away completely and comprehensively from public life, to spend time with my family, to reconnect with my enduring passion for aviation, which taught me [that] if I had an ego, I’d be dead,” she said.
Shortly after Ley announced she would resign, NSW independent MP Helen Dalton said she was open to contesting Farrer. One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said his right-wing party would have a presence at the byelection.
Read more of our coverage of Taylor’s win, Ley’s leadership and what it means for the Liberal Party:
Pauline Hanson says she is confident of the party’s prospects in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer, which the One Nation leader and reporters in Brisbane accidentally referred to as Fowler.
The division of Fowler is in Western Sydney and held by independent Dai Le.
Farrer, a regional seat, includes Albury and swathes of southern and southwestern NSW.
During the opening of her press conference, Hanson said the biggest issues in southern NSW were:
- The Murray-Darling Basin
- Agricultural matters
- The cost of living and doing business, particularly electricity
“I will continue to fight for these rural communities,” Hanson said, adding that One Nation had not yet chosen a candidate for the upcoming byelection. She said she wanted branch members to have a say in who was put forward.
“Look, in that seat we only polled just over 6 per cent at the last election. The party has grown since then.”
As Antony Green has written, Farrer last year came down to a two-way contest between Ley for the Liberals and independent Michelle Milthorpe, who campaigned hard on the issue of a new greenfield site for the local hospital.
Milthorpe won the Albury booths on a two-candidate preferred basis, but Ley won almost every other booth in more rural parts of the electorate.
Staying with Pauline Hanson’s press conference, and the One Nation leader said she would be carefully checking the records of any Coalition MPs looking to follow Barnaby Joyce and defect to her party.
“People may want to come across to One Nation. If they do approach me, they won’t automatically get a foot in the door,” she said.
“I’m going to look at their past record. I want to know what they fought for … are they going to fight for the communities? Do they have the Australian values, or are they just career politicians, but just want to make sure that they don’t lose their seats?”
Hanson said she would not be chasing defectors, and had allowed Joyce to come to her.
“I’m not going out there seeking people, and I didn’t with Barnaby Joyce. He sat on that for a year,” she said.
“He still stood with the National Party, and then after that, he was sidelined. They didn’t want him there. He was told by [then-opposition leader Peter] Dutton that he must go. He felt worthless, that he had no future, and he thought he had more to offer, and I saw that in him. Barnaby is a different person now. He’s got a spring in his step.”
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has wished Sussan Ley well in her retirement, but suggested the former opposition leader was letting down her constituents by quitting parliament after 25 years of service.
“I wish her all the best for the future and where her life takes her and spends more time with family,” Hanson said.
“On the other hand, I’m a bit disappointed she didn’t stay with the party, work for her constituency who only voted her in nine months ago. And of course, a byelection will be an extra cost to the taxpayer.”
The first question at Pauline Hanson’s press conference was whether the One Nation leader was worried about losing votes now that the Liberal Party has, to use the journalist’s words, a “more conservative leader”.
This was Hanson’s response:
They’ve changed the leader, but they’re still on a dead horse. The people have had enough. They are hurting and they want strong leadership. They want to know where the politicians, the political parties, stand.
A lot of the people that come up to me [say], ‘I’ve been a Liberal Party member for years, decades.’ They say no more. And the same is happening with the Labor Party.
The biggest issue was about migration and the mass migration. And neither party have addressed it.”
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is due to speak from Brisbane any moment now.
She is expected to discuss today’s Liberal leadership spill and the upcoming Farrer byelection.
Watch live below.
Opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr says the Liberal Party’s new leadership had an impressive first press conference.
“They spoke very strongly in the party room after being successful in the leadership ballot, and we saw again this afternoon that they’re providing a very strong message to the people of Australia, and I’m sure everyone on the team like myself are 100 per cent behind them,” Scarr told Sky News.
Asked whether he expected to hold his position on the frontbench after publicly backing Ley – and following Taylor outlining his new direction on immigration – Scarr said:
It’s clearly the prerogative of Angus, as the new leader of the Liberal Party, to choose his team to take the Liberal Party forward. In terms of shadow ministry positions, there’s a lot of talent in the Liberal party room.
As the former leader said, we were preparing to release some principles and some initiatives prior to the awful Bondi terrorist attack, and then our focus switched to responding to the Bondi terrorist attack, but timing in relation to those matters is now with Angus and Jane, and it’s their prerogative to work out the team to take these matters forward.”
Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume has delivered what could become a key line for Liberals when asked about their new direction.
“We’re going to take the Liberal Party forward, not left, not right – we’re not moving towards any one party. We’re taking our party, and the people that we want to represent, forward,” she said.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said: “I don’t really think of it as left, right or centre. I think of it as focusing on Australians and the challenges that hardworking Australians are facing every single day – the challenge that they are struggling to pay their bills, the challenge that they can’t see a pathway for them or for their kids to own a home, the challenge they’re seeing in finding a way to get childcare that suits them.
“I mean, that’s got to be the focus mark, and that will absolutely be the focus of Jane and myself and our team.”
Angus Taylor confirmed he had spoken to David Littleproud since taking on the Liberals leadership, but wouldn’t divulge details of how the pair plan to approach the byelection in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer.
The fight for Farrer, after Ley’s resignation from politics, could become a five-way contest if both the Liberals and Nationals run candidates, and will be Taylor’s first big test as opposition leader as One Nation surges in the polls, to the Coalition’s detriment.
“That’s a private discussion, and David and I will talk much more, I’m sure, in the coming days,” Taylor said.
Nor would he say how the Coalition would preference One Nation, saying “that’s a matter for the party”.
Angus Taylor has argued there is a distinction between “good migration” and “bad migration”, saying the former brought cappuccinos to Australia.
Taylor was challenged on his rhetoric on immigration, and what message it sends to Australia’s large multicultural community.
“What I am saying is we want an immigration system that is in the interests of Australians, and the interest of Australians is having people who come to this country who believe in those core values,” he said.
He went on to say:
I have always believed that good migration is good for this country. I’ve always believed that. I grew up in a town not far south of here, which was a migrant town, and I saw what it brought to the country. We had the first great cappuccinos in this country, and it was a wonderful, wonderful thing at Cooma, not far south of here. So I’ve seen what good immigration can do, but we don’t want bad immigration, and … it’s been too high, the numbers, and the standards have been too low, and that must change.”
Jane Hume has been asked how she would restore trust with Chinese-Australians offended by her comments suggesting “Chinese spies” were campaigning for Labor.
“The comments that I made two days before the election were out of line. They were ill-considered, on a breakfast TV program where I said a throwaway line regarding foreign interference – or reported foreign interference – into the Labor Party during an election,” the new deputy Liberal leader said.
“They have been taken massively out of context. Labor did a great job weaponising that against us, and I have, in fact, apologised to those that were offended by that.
“Of course, we are going to build relations with every community. Because, let’s face it, the Liberal Party is a party for all Australians, not a sectional interest like the other parties. We’re not a party of reactionary responses, the way that One Nation is. We’re a party that responds, listens and responds, but doesn’t react.”
