Sussan Ley leaves Angus Taylor his first hurdle, and it’s a high one

After she was trounced in Friday’s Liberal ballot, Sussan Ley addressed the media with a speech that was gracious in defeat, but came with an announcement new Liberal leader Angus Taylor would not have wanted.

Ley’s decision to quit parliament means a byelection in her New South Wales regional seat of Farrer, set to see a contest between Liberals, Nationals, One Nation and at least one high profile community independent.

The result is unpredictable. Last election, independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe, who received some backing from Climate 200, polled strongly. Ley beat her on a two-candidate vote of 56-44%.

Independent for Farrer Michelle Milthorpe. Michelle Milthorpe Independent Website

Milthorpe, a teacher, told The Conversation on Friday she will definitely stand in the byelection. “The electorate is looking for a voice outside the major parties that can speak to the real issues happening to us,” she said.

Pauline Hanson, with her party enjoying surging numbers in the opinion polls, was quick on Friday to announce One Nation would contest Farrer.

This is the former seat of one-time deputy prime minister, the late Tim Fischer. It includes the major centre of Albury and stretches to the South Australian border. Ley won it in 2001 from the Nationals, when Fischer retired. Nationals Leader David Littleproud will want to show his mettle to his party by fighting hard to get it back. That opens an interesting Liberal-Nationals dynamic.

Whichever partner holds it, the seat is conservative heartland. Certainly in present circumstances, the Coalition can’t afford to lose it.

While the numbers in the Ley-Taylor contest last May were close (29-25), on Friday some of Ley’s earlier supporters obviously deserted her, when she lost 17-34. This was no time for loyalty at all costs. The Liberals are in such a deep funk they have seized the opportunity to give the new leader the big margin he needed.

Taylor might have preferred to wait longer to challenge Ley, but in the event the timing, given the party’s mood, has probably suited him. Whether he can turn opportunity into results is quite another question. But at least he starts with no ambiguity in the result.

The vote has worked out well for Taylor in other ways. Victorian Senator Jane Hume’s election as deputy means there is both gender and factional balance in the new team.

The first is important after the pulling down of the party’s first female leader, as well as for the obvious reason of pitching to women voters. Without making inroads on the female vote, the Liberal Party can make little electoral progress. (The departure of Ley, incidentally, will leave the Liberals with only five women in the House of Representatives.)

The factional balance – Hume is a moderate, Taylor a conservative – helps calm internal party tensions and, electorally, gives some breadth to the leadership’s new public face.

Taylor and Hume had a good personal relationship last term when he was shadow treasurer and she held the shadow finance job – though both were sub-optimal in their performances.

Hume made it clear when canvassing her colleagues for support for the deputy job that she would not seek to be shadow treasurer which, in practical terms, would be near impossible from the Senate. Who gets that position will be a very important choice for Taylor when he puts together his shadow ministry. Tim Wilson, who won back the Victorian teal seat of Goldstein, is an aggressive performer with endless energy, and should be a strong contender.

The Liberals are banking on Taylor being able to give them a so-called “reset”. But what he can do to make the Coalition’s pitch more appealing is far from clear, given the multiple constituencies it has to claw back.

Taylor arrives in the leadership with strong economic credentials and when the government is facing tough economic issues. Inflation, now 3.8%, is set to stay high. Interest rates have just gone up and are likely to do so again. This economic backdrop should play to Taylor’s advantages. But he will have to greatly sharpen his presentation to cut through to voters.

He is at home with a conventional dry economic line, for instance telling parliament this week: “We need less government, less spending, less taxes, less regulation and less regulators”.

But that sort of generalisation is too simplistic, too crude to be saleable to today’s voters.

At his news conference on Friday, Taylor gave an apology for a key mistake by the Liberals at the last election. “I’m particularly conscious that we got some big calls wrong - especially on personal income tax. And it won’t happen again,” he said, saying the Liberals would always be the party of lower taxes.

Taylor declared, “If an election was held today, our party may not exist by the end of it. We’re in this position because we didn’t stay true to our core values - because we stopped listening to Australians, because we were attracted to the politics of convenience rather than focusing on the politics of conviction.”

Taylor can be expected to soon release an immigration policy, an issue that plays to the opposition’s conservative base, and its present deep fears about One Nation.

“In this country, our borders have been open to people who hate our way of life, people who don’t want to embrace Australia, and who want Australia to change for them,” Taylor told his news conference.

Malcolm Turnbull is a constant critic of the Liberals but he had a point when he said on Friday, “If you think you are going to win back people who have gone to Hanson by showing yourself to be even more tough, more anti-immigration than her, that’s a game you can’t win.”

To make substantial electoral progress, of course, the Liberals must make enormous strides in urban areas, where they are dealing with both Labor and the teals. Taylor needs a strategy for these areas. Hume might be helpful here, but it won’t be easy. At his news conference Taylor had no road map.

The leadership switch is an admission of how bad things have become for the Liberals. But it does not, in itself, provide them with obvious answers to their deep malaise and multiple problems.