The boys are back in charge. Sussan Ley was handed a poisoned chalice after the worst election defeat ever, and given the impossible task of rebuilding the Liberal party.
She was never destined to be prime minister.
She didn’t stand a chance. Nine months into the job the hatchet men pushed her off the glass cliff.
In their desperation to grab back the leadership, panicked by haemorrhaging of votes to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, they appeared completely oblivious to the appalling optics.
Didn’t they pause for a second to consider why so many moderate teal women MPs are now holding what were recently safe Liberal metropolitan seats?
If Liberals had a ‘woman problem’ before the coup, they have now confirmed they deserve it.
Awarding Senator Jane Hume the consolation prize of deputy will do nothing to dispel the view that women are second-class citizens in the Liberal Party.
She has her own problems, with the Chinese-Australian community whom she absurdly accused of supplying ‘spies’ to help Labor at last year’s election. The Chinese are renowned for having long memories.
New leader Angus Taylor is already talking darkly about the ‘right kind of immigrants’.
Former PM Tony Abbott, who lost his ‘safe’ seat to a teal, is coaching Angus Taylor and asserting we are a Judaeo-Christian nation. He conveniently ignores 65,000 plus years of First Nations spirituality and implies people of other faiths, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or those of no faith (nearly 40 per cent of the population) don’t really belong in Australia.
It’s hinting at a de facto return to the White Australia policy which didn’t end legally until 1973 when Gough Whitlam was prime minister.
If Angus Taylor goes helter-skelter trying to win back One Nation supporters who form a distinct group of disgruntled, mostly rural and regional people, feeling disadvantaged and blaming immigrants for their woes, he is likely to come a cropper.
He will further alienate metropolitan voters and cement those teals in their seats, plus risk losing the handful of seats still held.
His task may be more difficult than Sussan Ley’s, as his coup and subsequent comments will have alienated even more women and non-Anglo communities.
Nearly a third of Australians were born overseas and many are children of migrants. They are not natural Liberal voters.
Their votes need to be earned.
Talking tough on immigration will not win them over.
The by-election in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer in southwest New South Wales will be an interesting litmus test.
It was a National Party seat until Ley won it in 2001 and has been in Coalition hands since its creation in 1949.
There will be at least four candidates (probably all women) – Nationals, Liberal, One Nation, and teal candidate Michelle Milthorpe, who ran second to Ley at the 2025 election. Michelle is already campaigning, and if she wins there will be only four Liberal women MPs left in the lower house.
While Liberals have their crisis, the Albanese government has also stumbled. According to a poll, two thirds of Australians were opposed to inviting Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia.
It was inevitable that it would not go smoothly and sure enough there was shocking footage of peaceful protesters being violently bashed by police, reminiscent of ICE violence in America. Filmmaker James Ricketson was injured and released without charge when bodycam footage showed he was guilty of nothing.
I have heard people say they won’t vote for the Albanese or Minns governments again.
Psephologist Anthony Green has declared the two-party system is broken.
Political parties do come and go. They are not immortal.
I joined the Australia Party to contest the 1972 federal election in the seat of Mackellar against Bill Wentworth, then Liberal minister for social services. I sent the seat to preferences for the first time but never had a hope of winning.
The Australia Party then merged with the New Liberal Movement to become the Australian Democrats in 1977. I was a Democrat member of the NSW Legislative Council until 1996 and then independent until 2003. The Australian Democrats disappeared in 2008 when their last senators’ terms ended.
The Liberal party, founded by Sir Robert Menzies in 1944, is now at is lowest ebb ever. Maybe it too has reached its use-by date?
Voters are in a quandary. The old major parties do not truly represent the average Australian and One Nation is too far to the Trumpian right.
Inequality is at an all-time high as are rents and house prices, but neither the Albanese government nor the opposition rabble are showing any real signs of rectifying this, nor dealing with the worsening climate crisis. Many are also appalled we are still locked into the ruinous AUKUS deal.
In theory Greens and independents should fill the yawning gap on the progressive side of politics. If not, will yet another party emerge?
Richard Jones is a former NSW MLC, and is now a ceramist.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
