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Australia’s main opposition party has ousted its leader Sussan Ley after only nine months and replaced her with a former McKinsey partner.
Angus Taylor pledged to return the Liberal Party to a conservative social and economic agenda to step up opposition to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who won a second term in a landslide last year.
Taylor, who was elected by 34 votes to 17 in a “spill motion” of MPs in Canberra on Friday, said that the party was in “the worst position it has been” since it was formed in 1944.
He added that he recognised that part of the party’s base of support was “angry” that it had adopted “the politics of convenience” in recent years. “This ends today,” he said.
The son of a sheep farmer, Taylor has been seen as a potential Liberal leader since he was elected to parliament in 2013.
Taylor, 59, previously worked at McKinsey as a consultant. He was made partner five years after he joined due to his work in the New Zealand dairy industry, where he was credited with brokering the creation of the Fonterra dairy co-operative, which became the country’s largest company.
The MP for Hume, a seat located near Canberra, was a minister under the last Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison and later shadow Treasurer while in opposition to Albanese’s Labor government.
Taylor’s coup represents a shift back to the right for the Liberal Party after Ley, a moderate, won the leadership contest in the wake of Peter Dutton’s disastrous election campaign last year.
During her tenure, the Liberals twice split from their long-standing coalition partner the rural National Party due to disagreements over policies.
The Liberals have ceded voter support to One Nation, a rightwing party that opposes immigration and multiculturalism, and lost a number of seats in its traditional wealthy urban heartland to candidates who have split with the party over gender and climate policies.
Zareh Ghazarian, a senior politics lecturer at Monash University, said the party faced an “existential question” of whether to remain a pragmatic, flexible centre-right party or adopt a more ideological stance on social and economic policies.
Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister from the party’s moderate wing, told the ABC broadcaster on Friday that Taylor was “absolutely not” the right leader if he pushed the party further to the right. He said the party needed “positive detailed plans” on tax reform, housing and economic growth.
Taylor, in his first address, apologised for his previous opposition to tax cuts and highlighted housing affordability, defence spending and energy policy as being core to a Liberal recovery.
But he also said that his party would look to “shut the door” on immigrants who do not subscribe to what he called “Australian values”, even as he promised not to adopt an anti-immigration ideology.
“I’ve always believed that good immigration is good for the country,” he said.
Ley said she would resign from parliament following the “spill” vote, precipitating a by-election in her New South Wales seat. One Nation, and potentially the Nationals, are expected to contest the seat.
Jane Hume, a senator for Victoria, was elected as Liberal deputy leader, defeating the incumbent Ted O’Brien.
