Angus Taylor has been elected the Liberal party’s new leader, ousting Sussan Ley in a partyroom ballot, 34 votes to 17.
Taylor won a strong victory after the spill motion to change the leader passed 33 votes to 17, with one informal vote.
The Liberal partyroom met on Friday morning for the hotly contested ballot, the culmination of a months-long campaign from conservative forces inside the Liberal party to undermine Ley, who had been supported by the moderate faction to lead the party after Peter Dutton’s crushing election defeat in May 2025.
Ley’s leadership has been undermined by right faction opponents since she took the top job nine months ago, and her position has been questioned by critics seeking a stronger conservative stance from the opposition.
Despite overseeing a partyroom process to dump the Liberals’ commitment to net zero by 2050 – a position agreed in 2021 when Taylor was energy minister, under prime minister Scott Morrison – and taking a position of full-throated support for Israel, Ley’s critics were unhappy she hadn’t been more forceful on migration and cultural issues, or moved more quickly to release policies on cost-of-living.
Ley’s leadership was also damaged by two separate splits from the National party, fuelled by bitter disagreements with the minor party’s leader, David Littleproud. After the second split in January, following Nationals breaking from shadow cabinet solidarity over the Coalition’s response to the Labor government’s legislative response to the Bondi massacre, Ley’s challengers again started circling.
After jockeying by conservatives Andrew Hastie and Taylor to eventually challenge Ley, the Hume MP emerged as the right faction’s preferred candidate.
Over recent days, Taylor resigned from his position as shadow defence minister, followed by numerous high-profile resignations including shadow ministers James Paterson, Jonno Duniam, Dan Tehan, and key Ley supporter James McGrath.