EDITORIAL: Forget she’s a woman; Libs have chosen a moderate

Sussan Ley is the first woman to lead the Liberal Party in its 80-year history.

Much will be made of that fact, given the Liberals’ long-running “woman problem” and inability to connect with female voters which has been blamed for much of its electoral failure in recent years.

But more significant than her gender to the party’s direction are her politics.

Ms Ley is the first moderate to lead the Liberals since the Malcolm Turnbull experiment ended in tears in 2018.

Her win is a win for the party’s moderates over its hardliners. But it’s far from a convincing one.

Even after the humiliating election loss which saw the Liberal Party decimated in capital cities and the Coalition’s primary vote crumple to 32 per cent, it was a tight run race for the leadership, with Ms Ley and her deputy Ted O’Brien narrowly edging out Angus Taylor and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on the conservative ticket 29 votes to 25.

Hardly a landslide.

That makes Ms Ley’s position and authority as leader tenuous. Only a small handful need to be convinced to change sides in the event of a later spill.

But treading softly to avoid putting noses out of joint would be a mistake.

Ms Ley needs to listen to what the electorate has been screaming at the Liberals: that they have become a party which does not reflect modern Australia.

She will need the strength to guide the Liberals through what will be an at-times painful period of transformation.

That will take a root and branch review — followed by an overhaul — of its policy formulation and recruitment processes.

But her key challenge will be knitting the deeply fractured Liberal Party back together into something that again resembles John Howard’s broad church.

Having been first elected to her seat of Farrer, centring on the regional cities of Albury and Griffith, back in 2001, Ms Ley is likely a familiar face to many Australians, mostly seen nodding in the background of the press conferences of the men who preceded her as Liberal leader.

Fewer would know her varied career prior to entering politics.

Born in Nigeria and having spent some of her childhood in the Middle East, she has been a stock mustering pilot, an air traffic controller, a shearer’s cook and a public servant with the Australian Taxation Office.

In contrast to her breadth of real world experience, her political career prior to her elevation as leader has been lacklustre. She held a variety of cabinet positions in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments without distinction.

The question now is if she can leave that behind her and haul the Liberal Party back onto an electorally competitive footing.

If they ever want to govern again, the Liberals and Nationals need to command a primary vote in the 40s. With the Coalition facing a likely six years at a minimum in opposition, it seems improbable that Ms Ley will ever be prime minister.

But her moment is now, and the party’s future success depends on her getting it right.