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Australia’s main opposition party has ousted its leader Sussan Ley after only nine months and replaced her with a former McKinsey partner.
Angus Taylor pledged to return the Liberal Party to a conservative social and economic agenda to try to step up opposition to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who won a second term in a landslide last year.
Taylor said this week his party was in “the worst position it has been” since it was formed in 1944. He was elected by 34 votes to 17 in a vote among MPs, known as a “spill motion”, held in Canberra on Friday.
The son of a sheep farmer, Taylor has been seen as a potential Liberal leader since he was elected to parliament in 2013. The 59-year-old was a minister under Scott Morrison, the last Liberal prime minister, and later shadow treasurer while in opposition to Albanese’s Labor government.
Taylor’s coup represents a shift back to the right for the Liberal Party after Ley, a moderate, won the leadership contest in the wake of Peter Dutton’s disastrous election campaign last year.
Ley’s tenure has been tumultuous. The Liberals twice split from its long-standing coalition agreement with the rural National Party during her leadership due to disagreements over policies.
The Liberals have ceded voter support to One Nation, a right-wing party that opposes immigration and multiculturalism, while losing a number of seats in its traditional wealthy urban heartland to candidates who have split with the party over gender and climate policies.
Zareh Ghazarian, a senior politics lecturer at Monash University, said the party faced an “existential question” of whether to remain a pragmatic, flexible centre-right party or adopt a more ideological stance on social and economic policies.
Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister from the party’s moderate wing, told the ABC broadcaster on Friday that Taylor was “absolutely not” the right leader for the party if he pushed the party further to the right. He said the party needed “positive detailed plans” on tax reform, housing and economic growth. “They can’t just get away with soundbites,” he said.
Ley said she would resign from parliament, precipitating a by-election in her New South Wales seat that will present Taylor with an immediate test.
Jane Hume, a senator for Victoria, was elected as Liberal deputy leader after defeating the incumbent Ted O’Brien.
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