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Sussan Ley has left open the possibility the Coalition could abandon net zero emissions targets, but insists she is not interested in restarting Australia’s bitter climate wars.
In her first press conference since being elected opposition leader earlier on Tuesday, Ley said all the Coalition’s policies were up for review after this month’s devastating election loss, including plans by the former leader Peter Dutton for the introduction of nuclear energy.
After defeating the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, in a close party room ballot, Ley said she would avoid “captain’s calls” as leader, but stood by her predecessor’s views on “uniting” behind the Australian flag, and on Indigenous welcome to country ceremonies.
“No policies have been adopted or walked away from at this time,” Ley told an afternoon press conference.
“There won’t be a climate war. There will be sound and sensible consultation and I undertake 100% to do that.”
One of the chief architects of the nuclear policy, the former shadow energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, was elected as Ley’s deputy leader.
He promised to take a “practical” and “pragmatic” approach.
Ley, the MP for the New South Wales seat of Farrer and a former minister in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, signalled she would maintain some of Dutton’s political and policy positions.
“We should unite under the one Australian flag. That is my firm view … with respect to welcome to country: if it’s simple, if it’s meaningful, if it matters, if it resonates, then it’s in the right place,” she said.
“If it’s done in a way that is ticking a box on a Teams meeting, then I don’t think it is relevant.”
Ley, a former member of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine and advocate for a two-state solution, said her views had “changed” since the 7 October attacks against Israel.
“The hideous events of October the seventh in Gaza have changed my thinking on the entire subject. Having said that, I remain a steadfast friend of the Palestinian people,” she said.
Soon after, she launched an attack on Labor over its approach to Jewish Australians, saying unprompted that the Albanese government was the “biggest threat to social cohesion”.
“Everything that happens overseas, and I have reflected on that, has domestic implications,” she said.
“We have a foreign minister, Penny Wong, who has let down Australia in the UN, and we have a prime minister who is intent, it seems, on letting down Jewish Australians on the streets of our cities.”
Now the most senior woman in the party’s 80-year history, Ley was elected 29 votes to 25 over the former shadow treasurer. One of the longest-serving female MPs in Canberra, the 63-year-old is the first regionally based opposition leader since Alexander Downer in the 1990s.
Ley said the Coalition needed to meet voters “where they’re at” and promised to reflect on the recent electoral drubbing with humility.
She would not be drawn on the position that Taylor, or his running mate in the leadership election, Nationals defector Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, would have in the refreshed party lineup.
Ley promised MPs would be considered on merit, regardless of whether they supported her or Taylor in the ballot.
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She also promised more on economic reform, but did not say what the party would do.
“I believe it is core business of the Liberal party to be working on economic tax policy and we do need a new economic narrative going forward,” she said.
Ley said she wanted to see more women in the party, but would not throw her support behind stronger targets or quotas. She previously supported targets of 40% to boost female representation.
“We need more women in our party organisation and more women in our party room. Had we done better at the last election we would have outstanding women in the party room,” she said.
Born in Kano, Nigeria, Ley is a former wool and beef farmer and tax office executive. Her father was a British intelligence officer who brought his family to Australia in the 1970s.
A trained pilot, Ley joined the Liberal party in 1994 and has held the industry and small business portfolios since 2022.
She is a mother of three and grandmother of six, and has previously revealed she enjoyed a “brief punk rock period” in the 1980s and added an extra S to her first name in her 20s, guided by numerology.
Ley said Taylor would have made a “fine leader” for the Liberal party.
Taylor congratulated her in a statement on Tuesday, and said a woman leading the party for the first time was a “milestone”.
“We must do better and we must unify … I will contribute the best way I can to help get us back in the fight,” he said.
Nampijinpa Price said in a statement she was disappointed by the vote but respected the outcome, and pledged to help rebuild the Liberal party.
“If the Coalition is to offer hope and a way forward for our nation, unity must prevail more within us now more than ever,” she said.
