Liberal MPs will convene in Canberra on Tuesday morning to begin the process of rebuilding – and healing – after their thumping federal election defeat.
The first task is electing a new leader to replace Peter Dutton, who lost his seat in the 3 May wipeout, as well as a fresh deputy to serve under them.
The ballot, to be held at 10am, is being cast not just as a contest between individuals, but a struggle that will reset the direction of a party in crisis.
Here are the contenders for the two positions.
The leadership contenders
Sussan Ley
The deputy leader during Dutton’s reign, Ley is bidding to become the first female leader of the federal Liberal party in its 80-year history.
Ley has publicly and privately pitched herself as the best candidate to appeal to sections of the electorate that have deserted the Liberals at the past two elections, particularly women.
“We need to listen and we need to change. The Liberal party must respect modern Australia, reflect modern Australia and represent modern Australia,” she said.
Ley – who represents the seat of Farrer in regional NSW – has the backing of Liberal moderates and figures within the centre-right faction, including Alex Hawke, a former numbers man for Scott Morrison.
The 63-year-old was a cabinet minister under Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, where she held portfolios including health, sport and environment.
She resigned from Turnbull’s frontbench in 2017 after it was revealed she had used taxpayer funds to travel to New Year’s Eve events hosted by a Queensland businesswoman and party donor.
She rejoined the ministry in 2018, rising to the position of deputy leader after the Coalition’s 2022 election defeat.
Angus Taylor
Long touted as a future leader, Taylor is adamant he is the right man to lead the Liberals back from the brink.
The shadow treasurer under Dutton, the 58-year-old has copped blame inside and outside the party for the opposition’s threadbare economic agenda. Taylor and his allies have privately blamed Dutton in the aftermath of the defeat for blocking his push for bolder policies.
In his official pitch for the leadership, Taylor said the party needed “real ideas that match the scale of the challenges we face”, an injection of talent in its ranks – in particular, more women – and better campaign and organisational infrastructure.
“None of this will be easy. Reform never is. But the road to government begins with doing the hard things now, not later,” he said.
Dutton’s defeat means Taylor is now the most senior member of the Liberals’ right faction.
The Oxford-educated Rhodes scholar worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Co, and at Port Jackson Partners. He was the energy minister under Morrison and minister for law enforcement and cybersecurity under Turnbull, and has held the cities and industry portfolios.
The deputies
Ted O’Brien
The Mandarin-speaking MP from the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax had little public profile until his appointment as Dutton’s climate change and energy spokesperson in 2022.
O’Brien was the chief architect (and defender) of the Coalition’s controversial nuclear policy, which proposed replacing retired coal-fired power stations with nuclear reactors.
The one-time trainee baker had a long and diverse private sector career prior to politics, which included a stint in Beijing with global consulting firm Accenture.
The 51-year-old is not aligned to a faction.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
The firebrand Country Liberal senator from the Northern Territory caused an stir among colleagues old and new after defecting from the Nationals to the Liberals to run as Taylor’s deputy.
Price – a Warlpiri-Celtic woman – is adored in hard-right circles after spearheading the successful no campaign in the voice to parliament referendum.
During that campaign, she argued there was no ongoing negative impacts of British colonisation on Indigenous Australians, in comments the then minister, Linda Burney, described as a “betrayal”.
In a statement announcing her candidacy for the deputy leadership, the 44-year-old said the Liberal party must return to its “roots”.
“We must once more remember and fight for the forgotten people, those on whose shoulders Australian society has been built and still depends.”
The shadow minister for Indigenous Australians was in January appointed to a new government efficiency portfolio, a role with echoes of Elon Musk’s public service razor-gang in the US.
Price’s declaration that she wanted to “make Australia great again” and the resurfacing of an image of the senator wearing a hat bearing the US president’s signature slogan fuelled further comparisons between her and Trump-style politics.
She served as deputy mayor of Alice Springs council and worked at the conservative Centre for Independent Studies thinktank before being elected to the Senate in 2022.
Ruled out
Tim Wilson
Wilson flirted with the idea of a leadership tilt after reclaiming the bayside Melbourne seat of Goldstein – a feat that made him the first Liberal to win back a traditional heartland seat from a teal MP.
The 45-year-old publicly ruled himself out late on Monday, writing on social media that “it’s not my time”.
The shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, and the shadow defence minister, Andrew Hastie, had already pulled out of the leadership race.
