Sussan Ley elected first female Liberal party leader, narrowly defeating Angus Taylor in ballot

Sussan Ley has go Australia’s archetypal pistillate absorption leader, beating Angus Taylor successful the contention for the Liberal leadership.

Smashed successful the 3 May national election, Liberal MPs met to elite a caller enactment squad astatine Parliament House connected Tuesday morning, without Peter Dutton, the erstwhile person who mislaid his spot successful the historical drubbing.

Ley, a erstwhile situation and wellness minister, was the Liberal party’s lawman person nether Dutton and has been a subordinate of parliament since 2001.

Now the astir elder pistillate successful the party’s 80-year history, Ley was elected 29 votes to 25 votes implicit the erstwhile shadiness treasurer. She is the archetypal regionally based absorption person since the 1990s.

The 63-year-old is 1 of the longest-serving pistillate MPs successful Canberra.

Chief absorption whip Melissa Price announced the effect conscionable aft 10:15am.

Her lawman volition beryllium Ted O’Brien, the erstwhile vigor spokesman. Queensland MP Phil Thompson besides contested the ballot for deputy. O’Brien won 38 votes to 16.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who had announced she would basal arsenic Taylor’s deputy, did not tally for the presumption erstwhile Taylor had mislaid the enactment ballot.

Born successful Kano, Nigeria, Ley represents the determination New South Wales spot of Farrer and is simply a erstwhile wool and beef husbandman and taxation bureau executive.

A trained pilot, she joined the Liberal enactment successful 1994 and has held the manufacture and tiny concern portfolios since 2022.

A parent of 3 and grandma of six, Ley’s begetter was a British quality serviceman who brought his household to Australia successful the 1970s. She has antecedently revealed she enjoyed a “brief punk stone period” successful the 1980s and added an other “s” to her archetypal sanction successful her 20s, guided by numerology.

Ley studied astatine assemblage arsenic a parent and a mature aged student, completing a bachelor of economics astatine La Trobe University, and masters qualifications successful taxation and accounting.

Serving arsenic a curate nether Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, Ley resigned from furniture successful 2017 implicit an expenses ungraded involving authoritative question and the acquisition of an concern spot connected the Gold Coast.

Ley is owed to talk to the media astatine Parliament House aboriginal today.