A week or so after the Coalition’s catastrophic 2025 election defeat, the surviving Liberals returned to Canberra to choose a replacement for vanquished leader Peter Dutton.
Sussan Ley had confirmed her candidacy. So too had Angus Taylor.
And for a few hours at least, a third contender was in the mix.
After claiming victory in a tight and bitter rematch with Zoe Daniel in the bayside Melbourne seat of Goldstein before it was officially declared, Tim Wilson teased at an unlikely tilt at the Liberal leadership.
Wilson eventually ruled himself out, declaring “it’s not my time” in a statement that very much implied he thought his time would eventually come.
To his supporters, Wilson is a doggedly determined political warrior, the clearest modern-day advocate of classical liberalism, and living proof the party can win back its prized urban heartlands from teal independents.
To his critics, he’s arrogant, abrasive and utterly shameless. Who else considers running for leader before the AEC declares their seat?
Less than a year after being resurrected from what he describes as “political death”, the 45-year-old is a step closer to the summit of the Liberal party.
Taylor, the new leader, appointed him shadow treasurer, giving him the chance to shape an economic agenda but also a platform to promote an alternative, optimistic vision for a party that has been almost wiped out in the capital cities.
It also sets up a clash of ideologies with the “Australia-first” Andrew Hastie, the man most colleagues believe he will compete with to eventually replace Taylor.
“The Liberal party we want is back, which is a party focused on how we’re going to build the future,” Wilson said in an interview with Guardian Australia.
“It’s clear to me that we lost our mojo, and I came back to help find that mojo again.”
‘Too much timidity’
Within 48 hours of his new appointment, Wilson accused the Reserve Bank of not focusing on inflation, labelled the top income tax bracket “punitive” and declared an end to the John Howard-era mindset that has captured the party.
The immediate and predictable rush of ideas signalled a departure in policy ambition and presentation from the conservatism of his predecessors, including Taylor and Ted O’Brien.
With Taylor as shadow treasurer, the Dutton-led opposition took a hollow set of economic policies to the 2025 election that comprised of reversing tax cuts, cheaper petrol, sacking public servants, building nuclear power stations and offering tax-deductible business lunches.
Taylor has since admitted it was a mistake to oppose Labor’s income tax cuts but also claimed Dutton and his office blocked his alternative plan for tax relief.
Tim Wilson: ‘You need a bold and confident vision.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
“I believe there has been too much timidity on my side,” Wilson said. “You need a bold and confident vision about where you’re going. I’ve had conservations [with Taylor] about how we are going to enliven the debate.
“No one has ever given me a role in politics thinking that I’m going to be quiet or not fight for a better future.”
Wilson declared “hope is on the way” in his first press conference as shadow treasurer, projecting a sense of optimism that jarred with the negativity of the Dutton era.
The former Liberal MP Jason Falinski said his close friend and former colleague was striking the right tone.
“For too long we’ve been reactive and not proactive. Our party and our movement prospers the most when it is selling hope,” he said.
Out of the valley
Wilson was not one of Taylor’s supporters and some senior Liberals warned the new leader about giving a potential future rival such a prominent portfolio.
But Guardian Australia understands other unlikely allies within the Liberal party, including Tony Abbott and his former chief of staff Peta Credlin, advocated for Wilson as a proven “fighter” who could challenge Labor and treasurer Jim Chalmers.
First elected in 2016 after working at the rightwing Institute of Public Affairs thinktank and the Human Rights Commission, Wilson won plaudits inside the party – and sparked outrage outside it – after weaponising a taxpayer-funded parliamentary inquiry to campaign against Bill Shorten’s franking credits policy ahead of the 2019 election.
Six years on, he was a vocal and effective opponent of the Albanese government’s $3m superannuation tax plan, which it ultimately watered down by dumping a proposal to tax unrealised capital gains.
Wilson said the optimism and self-confidence that defines his approach to politics can be traced to his teenage years, when after six years of inner torture he found the courage to come out as gay.
“I was taken to the brink of doubting the legitimacy of my place in the world and the darkness that comes with that,” he said.
“And then I found my way through that darkness, and realised I had already conquered my worst bully in life.”
Self-confidence and optimism: Tim Wilson in the House of Representatives. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
He said the second life-shaping event was his “catastrophic” defeat to Daniel in 2022.
“In my life I have twice walked through the valley of death and come out the other side,” he said.
The former Liberal attorney general, George Brandis, said Wilson has a rare mix of qualities that are shared with the likes of Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Gough Whitlam, John Howard and Robert Menzies.
“At a time where the Liberal party is endlessly being asked ‘what do you stand for?’, it is very important to have a person who knows perfectly clear what he stands for and what the Liberal party stands for,” Brandis said of Wilson, who he appointed as human rights commissioner in 2013.
“Secondly, as was seen during the 2019 election, he is a very effective political practitioner in the arena. All senior politicians need to be that but it is rare to find one person who is both a deep thinker, who is philosophically sophisticated but is also a vigorous political practitioner.”
Wilson’s next obvious target would be spearheading the campaign to kill-off potential changes to the capital gains tax discount, which Labor is mulling ahead of the May budget.
But there is a potential complication.
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In a 2020 book, Wilson wrote there was no “intergenerational justice” in the “preferential arrangements” for property investors. In a speech to parliament in 2018, the then backbencher raged against a tax system that was “screwing over young people”.
“In short: if you work hard to get ahead, you get hit hard; if you live off assets, you don’t,” he said.
Since his appointment as shadow treasurer, Wilson has sought to cast changes to the 50% capital gains discount as a disincentive to building new homes.
“My focus on tax is how we incentivise the right behaviour and incentivise Australians to work, to take risks, to set up small businesses or become self-employed,” he said.
Labor has tried to quickly discredit Wilson by resurfacing old comments about a user-pays healthcare model, dismantling the superannuation system and supporting net zero emissions by 2050.
“Tim Wilson strikes me as another typical Liberal. He’s long on ego, arrogance and entitlement and short on empathy or understanding,” Chalmers said.
Zoe Daniel in the Melbourne suburb of Hampton during 2025 election campaign. Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAP
Wilson has long been a figure of ridicule on social media, mocked relentlessly over a steady stream of bizarre controversies including fleeing Melbourne during Covid-19 lockdowns, laying a wreath set aside for Daniel at an Anzac service and appearing alongside a “fake tradie” during the last campaign.
After losing to Daniel in 2022, Wilson’s bid to reclaim Goldstein deteriorated into one of the ugliest and most divisive of the 2025 election.
In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the 2025 election, a team of Daniel’s volunteers described the campaign against the teal MP as “hostile and threatening”.
“They spread hate, fear and division – the sad fact is that it worked,” a source who witnessed the Goldstein campaign said.
“His [Wilson’s] superpower is his shamelessness.”
‘The loudest peacock’
Early on the morning of this month’s Liberal leadership spill, Wilson confirmed on social media that he had “no interest” in running for the deputy’s role.
The post, which include a picture of a smiling Wilson walking around Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin, amused colleagues familiar with his vaulting ambition.
Of course he has no interest in being a deputy, they privately joked.
Sussan Ley arrives for the leadership spill alongside Tim Wilson and other supporters. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
A few hours later, Wilson walked into the party room with Ley and her other close supporters in a visual sign that he was with the party’s first female leader until the end.
Wilson didn’t nominate for the leadership but colleagues are in no doubt he will in the future.
“I know people will speculate. I’m ambitious for the country and what it can do. I think now is the time for fresh thinking and I’m going to bring that to this role and we’ll see how that goes and where that goes from there,” Wilson said.
One Liberal MP – who would support Wilson as a leader for the “modern age” – said Wilson and Hastie were about to enter a contest of “who is the loudest peacock”.
“It is two precocious children dancing for the attention of the broader family,” the MP said.
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