Sussan Ley champions Liberal history of backing migrants, in challenge to conservatives

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Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has stared down conservative agitators within the Coalition, championing the Liberal Party’s history of supporting migrants and a broad-church approach to different strands of conservatism, as she urged her MPs to represent all “modern Australians”.

In a statement celebrating the 81st anniversary of the party on Thursday, Ley blamed losses at the last two elections on a departure from traditional Liberal values, saying the party must hold to its core beliefs as her internal rivals stake out an alternative nationalist vision.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley with her colleagues this week in Melbourne, where she discussed law and order.

“Five months ago, our party suffered its worst defeat in our 81-year history,” Ley said. “We didn’t lose because of our values. We lost because we failed to heed them. The values of the Liberal Party are not for changing. We must re-adopt them. Now is a time to reconnect with the Australians with whom we have lost touch, and to develop new policy solutions to the challenges of our time.

“The Liberal Party has always succeeded in shaping a better Australia when it has respected, reflected and represented modern Australians, and when it has backed the aspiration of all Australians. We need a new Liberal agenda, based on our enduring values, that meets this moment.”

The Coalition lost 32 seats over the last two elections, with the Liberal Party bleeding votes to inner-city “teal” independents and suburban seats to Labor. It now holds just 43 seats in the 150-seat lower house, having been largely expelled from Australia’s capital cities.

With a significantly hollowed-out moderate base, Ley has been wracked by consistent agitation from right-wing figures within the party, who have freelanced on policies such as immigration, energy and climate, as her personal popularity dropped by 14 percentage points in recent polling. Party insiders do not expect an imminent challenge to Ley’s leadership despite the turmoil, but her backers are prepared for one within the next 12 months.

Former home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie moved to the backbench last month after staking out a nationalist position on everything from the Australian flag to immigration and car manufacturing. Hastie’s departure came just weeks after Ley sacked Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for failing to back her leadership following remarks Price made about Indian immigration.

Ley’s statement lauded former Liberal prime ministers from Robert Menzies to Scott Morrison.

“From the Fraser government to the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, Liberals have always acted with compassion to those seeking sanctuary from regimes to build a better life here in Australia. We are the party that built modern Australia, and we must be a party for modern Australia,” Ley said.

“Liberals built the foundations of modern Australia when our party stood against racism, supporting migrants and multiculturalism from the start. Robert Menzies was one of the first to call for the abandonment of Australia’s racially discriminatory migration system in 1943.”

Hastie said last month that too much migration was leading Australians to start “to feel like strangers in our own home”.

Ley urged her party to focus on a “forgotten generation” of young people she said were being left behind by Labor’s “failure to responsibly manage the budget and pay down the national debt”.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton made a similar pitch early in his tenure as party leader in 2022, saying the Liberals needed to embrace “forgotten Australians” as he outlined an ultimately unsuccessful strategy to target suburban voters.

Appearing on ABC News on Thursday morning, Ley said work within the party to develop a new set of policies was ongoing, but would not flag a timeline for the release of key platforms including the party’s position on net zero by 2050.

“I’m very proud to lead the party that I do that backs aspirational Australians, people who get up early, who go to work, who take risks, who want to get ahead and build a future for their families,” she said.

Speaking on Nine’s Today on Thursday morning after reports some Liberal MPs had, in preliminary terms, canvassed the prospect of switching to the Nationals, Senator Bridget McKenzie said: “Our country is best served by a strong Coalition government, and the Liberal Party. We want them to be successful. So let’s hope they get this nailed down and get on with holding this terrible government to account as soon as possible.”

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