AARON PATRICK: New Liberals leader Sussan Ley built a political career, slowly, by learning to listen

When she was environment minister in the last Liberal government, Sussan Ley took an adviser and drove along gravel roads in northern Tasmania to see Bob Brown, a founder of the Australian Greens, in the Tarkine, one the world’s largest temperate rainforests.

Over three hours, as they ate lunch at a lodge and walked under a canopy so thick the sun could barely break through, the ex-senator tried to convince Ms Ley to veto an expansion by a zinc, copper, lead and gold mine operating in the area since 1936.

She was unpersuaded by the environmental warrior, and approved the construction of a tailings dam under strict conditions. Even though Mr Brown challenged the project in court, a fight which continues, he did not forget the respect he was shown that day — a respect he did not feel he received from her successor, Labor’s Tanya Plibersek.

“We had differing opinions,” Mr Brown said on Tuesday, about half an hour after Ms Ley was elected the Liberal Party’s first female leader. “I appreciated her affability and ability to listen and communicate in an honest and direct manner. I wish her well.”

Mr Brown’s experience is common to others who have dealt with Ms Ley, and helps explain why Liberal MPs entrusted her with the party’s recovery after one of the worst election results in its 80-year history: a life of unusual breadth and a respect for opponents’ opinions may help her win over Australians turned off by the party’s conservative male leaders.

Nigeria to Canberra

Ms Ley is an immigrant. She was born in Nigeria, where her father was a British intelligence officer, and sent to a boarding school in England. The family moved to Australia when she was 13, bought a hobby farm in Queensland and moved to Canberra, where she had her nose pierced and spiky purple hair. She got a commercial pilot’s licence, but could not secure airline work because she was a woman, she has said, and mustered farm animals.

She was elected to the NSW country seat of Farrer in 2001. Her rise was slow. It took 13 years to get her first ministry. In the five portfolios she held, a style emerged. She was a diligent minister who did not try to outshine colleagues. She was easy to deal with, and worked hard. In many ways, she was a stereotypical female politician in a party run by assertive men.

There was, though, the question of her ideological leanings. After she was elected, Ms Ley became one of the few Liberals prepared to publicly associate themselves with the Palestinian cause. In 2008 she was the only MP to raise Palestinian autonomy when the House of Representatives celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary.

For a British Tory, the position would have been unexceptional. In Australia, it placed her on the far left of the Liberal Party - further left than Labor MPs such as Bill Shorten, Joel Fitzgibbon and the late Kimberley Kitching.

Swapping sides

Ms Ley appears to have seen the benefits of ideological flexibility, or had a Road to Damascus conversion. After becoming deputy leader in 2022, she visited Israel with a Jewish Liberal MP, Julian Lesser, and returned on the other side. After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, she described Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s calls for restraint as “disgraceful”.

Following Tuesday’s vote, a Liberal MP dedicated to Israel’s cause, Andrew Wallace, assured journalists Ms Ley’s support for the Jewish state was not in doubt. The right-wing Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said it was “very comfortable” with her.

For the past three years, Ms Ley visited Liberal electorates. No doubt the relationships she built helped her win Tuesday’s election. It was not an overwhelming victory. Two fewer votes would have been a tie.

The close result could make her opponent, Angus Taylor, leader of the opposition to the leader of the opposition. The party’s right faction has been shaken by its loss of power, and does not welcome the coming left-wards shift, or what Ms Ley called on Tuesday a positioning in the “sensible centre”.

Mr Taylor may not choose to remain in parliament. He could expect a well-remunerated life on boards.

Ms Ley’s mother

No one doubts how hard the job will be for those Liberals who survived the election. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has never been more powerful. His party is united party with a deep talent pool. The economy is improving. A global trade war may be avoided.

Still, in her first press conference as leader, Ms Ley demonstrated she is not without public relations skills.

Just as Mr Albanese rarely misses an opportunity to pay homage to his late mother, who lived on a medical pension, Ms Ley revealed that her mother, Angela, is terminally ill. Visiting her on Mother’s Day in Albury, Ms Ley feared it would be their last time together. It was not, and Ms Ley said she would leave Canberra on Tuesday afternoon for her mother’s bedside.

The personal revelation drew many expressions of sympathy during the press conference.

While caring for her mother, Ms Ley will choose her frontbench. They will re-write the Coalition’s policies. Ms Ley promised she would not make any “captain’s calls”, an implicit repudiation of the last three leaders’ leadership styles. All were men of course.

“We’ll take the time to get it right,” she told reporters.

Which is how she likes to roll, as Bob Brown discovered in the Tarkine forest.