It's time, Sussan Ley: What Gough Whitlam can teach her about saving a lost party
In 1967, Gough Whitlam was in a strikingly similar position to Sussan Ley today. The newly installed Labor leader was little known to the public. He bore no resemblance to his unpopular predecessor. His objective was to modernise a party that had lost touch with modern Australia.
illo from Joe Benke
Whitlam came to the leadership after Labor had suffered a devastating electoral rout in 1966 – a massive landslide to Harold Holt's coalition, in which the number of Labor MPs was reduced to half those of the government: almost exactly the same ratio as the opposition today.
When Sussan Ley gave her first big speech as opposition leader last Wednesday, Gough Whitlam was probably the furthest thing from her mind. Her speech was as un-Whitlamesque as it is possible to be: humble, self-critical, even apologetic. Frankly acknowledging that 'what we as the Liberal Party presented to the Australian people was comprehensively rejected', Ley went on to say: 'We respect the election outcome with humility. We accept it with contrition.'
I doubt we've ever heard such honest self-appraisal from an Australian political leader. Yet, to draw a line under the worst defeat in the Liberal Party's history, that was precisely what the occasion demanded, and Ley hit the mark.
It tells you just how far the party had drifted from the political mainstream that the very fact the speech took place at the National Press Club – second only to parliament as the customary venue for important political addresses – was itself a story. By returning to a rostrum boycotted by her predecessor, the new leader sent an unmistakable message: we're no longer in the echo chamber; the Liberal Party is back in the game.
Ley used the speech to sketch a path forward for internal reform and future policy development.
One of the most important issues she dealt with was the party's future approach to emissions reduction. She announced the establishment of a working group on 'energy and emissions reduction' policy. Led by Dan Tehan – one of the Coalition's most capable politicians, who was the only frontbencher to claim a ministerial scalp in the last parliament – it is tasked with developing policies that ensure a stable energy grid to provide affordable and reliable power, while reducing emissions 'so that we are playing our part in the global effort'.
Ley did not specifically mention the 2050 net zero emissions target, which has been Coalition policy since 2021, although her carefully chosen language suggested no appetite to abandon it.
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