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- Follow our live coverage of the Liberal Party leadership spill here.
Liberal Party MPs are gambling that Angus Taylor and Jane Hume will form a political dream team, but it’s still possible the opposition could drop further in the polls.
Taylor acknowledged as much in a mostly well-handled first media conference as leader, declaring the Liberals faced a “change or die” moment, “and I choose change”.
In Taylor and Hume, the opposition has chosen two Liberals from central casting, and the pair did not disappoint on their debut.
Having replaced Sussan Ley and Ted O’Brien, the pair put a strong emphasis on the need for better economic management, restoring living standards and the dream of home ownership for all Australians, and vowed to shut the door to immigrants who “hate our way of life”, as Taylor put it.
But electing Taylor and Hume as leader and deputy, with comfortable victory margins for both of them, does not mean that these appointments are not without risk.
Taylor had an undistinguished stint as shadow treasurer that included allowing the Liberals to be the party of higher taxes, while former shadow finance minister Hume’s policy on winding back working from home and her gaffe about Chinese spies last election were both own goals.
Taken together, the Liberals’ economic team in the last term delivered arguably the worst set of economic policies from the Coalition in decades, and they surrendered the Liberals’ traditional mantle of better economic managers.
And now Taylor and Hume are in charge.
The pair rightly acknowledged their parts in the mistakes made in the last term of opposition, and they wanted to draw a line under it. It’s unlikely Labor will let them forget.
The bigger question, and one that will not be resolved immediately, is whether the prescriptions they are offering are the right ones to win back voters disillusioned about inflation, electricity prices, immigration and more and who are being tempted by the simplistic solutions offered by One Nation.
The pair offer orthodox prescriptions to revive the Liberal Party that come straight from the playbooks of John Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton.
And that’s the problem: we are not living in orthodox political times and offering more of the same will not necessarily revive the Liberals’ fortunes.
Facing One Nation on the right and Labor and teal independents to its left, the Liberal Party faces competing and contradictory demands: to move back to the political centre to win back metropolitan seats and simultaneously, to move to the right to stare down One Nation, which is eating into Liberal and Nationals support in the regions.
Taylor and Hume were asked about how they would balance these competing demands and what specifically they would do to move the party to the left or right. They didn’t answer in any detail, though Hume’s promise that they would take the party forward – rather than to the left or right – cut through.
It was good enough, just, on their first day. But the pair will need more detailed answers in the weeks to come because promising more of the same after the results of the 2022 and 2025 elections is a recipe for disaster.
Taylor will have some advantages that Ley did not have. His margin of victory was comprehensive, which should give him the clout to enforce party discipline and get the troops to fall into line.
Nationals leader David Littleproud should be a little more amenable to Taylor than Ley. A refreshed frontbench offers a chance to promote younger talent, something that should be an absolute priority.
For all the exaltation of Taylor as the best policy brain in the Liberal Party, in government and in opposition he cannot point to any great policy achievements. That will have to change quickly.
Ley, for her part, departed earlier in the day with class and grace that hinted at the person Australians never quite got to know. She declared no hard feelings towards Taylor and then dropped a bombshell by saying she will leave parliament after 25 years.
Though she departed without rancour, the byelection in the seat of Farrer caused by Ley’s resignation will be a stern test for Taylor, with the Nationals, One Nation and at least two independent candidates all likely to run hard.
Taylor will not want his first contribution as leader to be the loss of another woman and another seat from the lower house.
In one sense, the arc of Ley’s leadership was much like that of Malcolm Turnbull: a moderate leader who promised to bring the party back to the political centre but was dragged right on a series of issues to satisfy conservative MPs. But no matter how much each former leader conceded, it was never enough for the conservatives, as they were not part of the tribe.
Taylor is the third Liberal leader in nine months. Supporters of Andrew Hastie say he will be a loyal servant to a fellow conservative, but there are some in the party room who – if the party’s polling doesn’t significantly improve – could be tempted to take another look at Hastie’s leadership credentials in 12 months’ time.
Read more on the Liberal Party leadership spill
James Massola is chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent. He has won Quill and Kennedy awards and been a Walkley finalist. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.From our partners
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