Liberals desperately seeking a circuit breaker as factional warfare, dysfunction seal Sussan Ley’s fate

Following their worst election defeat on record, the Liberals are now almost certain to remove the party’s first female leader, after just nine inglorious months.

The brutal reality of stubbornly bad polling for the opposition has sealed Sussan Ley’s fate, with spooked MPs desperately looking for a circuit breaker to improve their electoral fortunes.

Throughout Thursday momentum for a change of leader and direction inside the Liberal Party gathered pace, as even some of Ms Ley’s former backers accept her time is now up.

Shortly after 9 o’clock on the morning of Friday the thirteenth, Angus Taylor is poised to become the sixth leader of the party in eleven years, but he’ll need more than good luck as he faces a daunting task to revive their standing.

Senator James Paterson, one of Mr Taylor’s key supporters, conceded in a press conference after resigning as Shadow Finance Minister that a change of leader might not immediately improve the Liberal party’s support.

“I think there is a risk that, given what has happened over the last few weeks, that there will be continued harsh judgement from the Australian people, and we will have to work very hard to earn back their trust and support.”

During Thursday’s Question Time, likely to have been Sussan Ley’s last as leader, the Labor party focused almost all its attention on her ambitious rival who she narrowly defeated for the job in May last year.

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King accused the Opposition of a gendered attack on their leader, telling Parliament that Ms Ley had endured “persistent undermining” from day one.

Grim faced Liberal MPs who had otherwise remained mostly silent or distracted by their phones erupted at the comments, yelling at Labor that they too had knifed their first female leader Julia Gillard.

Some Liberal Party insiders acknowledge that gender has played a role in Ms Ley’s demise, but insist other factors have been far more influential, including the fraught management of the dysfunctional Coalition.

Ms Ley’s ascension to the leadership of the Liberal Party after the 2025 election was in large part because as a more moderate woman, she represented a more distinct alternative than rival Angus Taylor, to replace the deeply unpopular Peter Dutton.

Even some of Ms Ley’s harshest critics inside the Opposition concede the long serving parliamentarian has exceeded the relatively low expectations placed on her when she took over the toughest job in politics.

There have been moments, particularly following the Bondi terrorist attack, that Ms Ley has managed to put the Prime Minister under genuine political pressure — but the missteps have been more frequent and damaging.

Demands to recall Parliament earlier this year to pass urgent laws in the wake of the massacre backfired badly on the Opposition leader after the Coalition split and Nationals crossed the floor on the legislation, accelerating her demise.

Right faction members had planned to give Ms Ley the chance to deliver a budget reply to see whether the Opposition’s standing could improve, but after Andrew Hastie bowed out of the leadership race, Mr Taylor has been under pressure to challenge quickly.

Speculation inside the opposition is now also turning to Ms Ley’s future and whether she will quit Parliament if she’s deposed, causing a potentially damaging by-election for the new Liberal leader.

Some of Angus Taylor’s supporters have privately tried to urge her to stand aside ahead of Friday’s leadership spill to allow a more orderly transition, but expectations that she will go quietly are low.

In what’s likely the final moments of her leadership, and possibly her political career, Ms Ley is digging in and trying to shore up her dwindling support, before she faces a fractious Liberal party room meeting.