{"id":288533,"date":"2026-02-13T01:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/288533\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T01:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:51:12","slug":"angus-taylor-becomes-opposition-leader-after-defeating-sussan-ley-in-liberal-party-leadership-ballot-angus-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/288533\/","title":{"rendered":"Angus Taylor becomes opposition leader after defeating Sussan Ley in Liberal party leadership ballot | Angus Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angus Taylor has been elected the Liberal party\u2019s new leader, ousting Sussan Ley in a partyroom ballot, 34 votes to 17.<\/p>\n

The stronger than expected victory sees the conservative and former shadow defence minister become the party\u2019s 17th leader, ending Ley\u2019s nine-month tenure as Australia\u2019s first female opposition leader.<\/p>\n

Ley said she would quit parliament within weeks, in a bid to provide clear air for Taylor\u2019s leadership, noting it was \u201csomething that\u2019s not always afforded to leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

A byelection in Ley\u2019s seat of Farrer, in regional New South Wales, sets up an immediate challenge for Taylor, with the risk of a tough fight with One Nation and even the Nationals. Pauline Hanson\u2019s party is strongly outperforming the Coalition in recent polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not sure what comes next for me,\u201d Ley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look forward to stepping away completely and comprehensively from public life, to spend time with family, to reconnect with my enduring passion, aviation, which taught me, if I had an ego, I\u2019d be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victorian senator and Taylor backer Jane Hume is the party\u2019s new deputy leader, with Ley\u2019s number two, Ted O\u2019Brien, pushing to take a frontbench role after losing the ballot.<\/p>\n

Hume won 30 votes to O\u2019Brien\u2019s 20. Frontbenchers Dan Tehan and Melissa Price were both eliminated in the early stages of the ballot for deputy.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s hotly contested ballot<\/a> was the culmination of a months-long campaign from conservative forces inside the Liberal party to undermine Ley, who had been supported by the moderate faction to lead the party after Peter Dutton\u2019s crushing election defeat in May 2025.<\/p>\n

Ley\u2019s leadership has been undermined by right faction opponents since she took the top job in May last year, and her position has been questioned by critics seeking a stronger conservative stance from the opposition.<\/p>\n

Despite overseeing a partyroom process to dump the Liberals\u2019 commitment to net zero by 2050 \u2013 a position agreed in 2021 when Taylor was energy minister, under prime minister Scott Morrison \u2013 and taking a position of full-throated support for Israel, Ley\u2019s critics were unhappy she hadn\u2019t been more forceful on migration and cultural issues, or moved more quickly to release policies on cost-of-living.<\/p>\n

Ley\u2019s leadership was also damaged by two separate splits from the National party, fuelled by bitter disagreements with the minor party\u2019s leader, David Littleproud. After the second split in January, following Nationals breaking from shadow cabinet solidarity over the Coalition\u2019s response to the Labor government\u2019s legislative response to the Bondi terror attacks, Ley\u2019s challengers again started circling.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Andrew Hastie had considered running against Ley, but opted not to contest the race over a lack of support. Taylor eventually challenged Ley<\/a> on Thursday, with the Hume MP emerged as the right faction\u2019s preferred candidate.<\/p>\n

Minutes after the result was announced, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s office released new online attack ads, dubbing Taylor \u201cjust another Liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tehan praised Ley\u2019s dignified response to the loss on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, ultimately, in the end, [she] faced huge, huge challenges, because where we are on the right of politics, we\u2019ve got to unify, and we\u2019ve got to present a cohesive alternative to the government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need a serious political manifesto which is true to our values, which clearly articulates where we want to take the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott told ABC TV the party should immediately unite under Taylor\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the best person for the job,\u201d Abbott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone should get behind him because we need to win and be a strong opposition. The Liberal party remains the best hope of better government in this country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next election is winnable. It is winnable. Never forget that oppositions, in a sense, don\u2019t win. Governments lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angus Taylor has been elected the Liberal party\u2019s new leader, ousting Sussan Ley in a partyroom ballot, 34…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-288533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}