Long wait for Taylor's move ends with themes but little detail
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Reporter's view: Federal political reporter Finn McHugh writes: It takes less than a minute to walk from Angus Taylor’s office to the Liberal leader’s office, where Sussan Ley was ensconced on Wednesday evening.
But that walk took hours as the wait for his resignation, which had been floated from around 3:30pm AEDT, dragged beyond 7pm AEDT.
Reporters camped in the 50 metres which split the rivals were met with Liberals playing coy — and providing snacks — and Labor MPs revelling in the disunity.
Eventually, there was a suggestion that Ley — who had met Israeli President Isaac Herzog hours before — would simply leave for the day. Why wait if your challenger is unprepared to move?
When Taylor did emerge before a bank of cameras, taking a brief detour to Ley’s office to tender his resignation, he bemoaned diabolical polling but provided little detail.
He did not even explicitly declare he would challenge Ley — leaving that to implication — and laid out two vague priorities.
“We need to protect Australians’ way of life. We need to focus on restoring their standard of living,” he said.
Asked what specifically he would change, Taylor said: “Well, I think I've already outlined much of that”.
We’ll hear more on what that looks like in the coming, he eventually added.
This was not the assertive brashness of Malcolm Turnbull as he critiqued Tony Abbott’s leadership in 2014, with Turnbull immediately declaring "a little while ago I met with the prime minister and advised him that I would be challenging him".
Regardless, Taylor’s resignation is certain to trigger the Liberals’ first tilt at a sitting leader since Turnbull’s own ousting.
Angus Taylor resigns from frontbench, poised to challenge Sussan Ley for leadership
The news: Coalition defence spokesman Angus Taylor has quit the frontbench, and is expected to directly challenge Sussan Ley for the Liberal leadership later this week.
The context: Taylor announced his resignation on Wednesday evening and raised concerns about the direction of the Liberal party under Ley.
“I don’t believe Sussan Ley is in a position to be able to lead the party as it needs to be led,” Taylor told reporters on Wednesday.
Taylor had been expected to announce his decision immediately after question time, but Ley’s meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Parliament House delayed his move.
The defence spokesman informed Ley of his decision in her office at about 7pm, before releasing a statement shortly afterwards.
While he has been manoeuvring for weeks, his resignation allows him to openly canvass support from colleagues without fear of repercussions.
The Liberal partyroom met on Tuesday, but Taylor was unable to challenge due to Senate estimates, which prevented many Liberal senators from attending.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Senator Jane Hume, who Ley banished to the backbench after May’s election defeat, challenged her leader to provide a strategy for steering the party out of its crisis.
Ley’s nine-month tenure has been plagued by leadership rumours, with a series of diabolical polls deepening anxiety in the Liberal partyroom.
Conservative powerbrokers met in Melbourne to discuss a succession plan last month, with Andrew Hastie — another presumed leadership contender — publicly confirming he did not have the numbers to seize the leadership soon after.
The move paved the way for Taylor to make his move, and a continual polling slide and an ugly second split with the Nationals accelerated the process.
Taylor, the Coalition’s shadow treasurer under Peter Dutton, contested the post-election leadership ballot in May. Running with firebrand senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as his deputy, he narrowly lost to Ley.
Aware of the imminent challenge, Labor turns its guns on Taylor during Wednesday’s question time.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers took aim at Taylor’s record as shadow treasurer before the disastrous 2025 election result, accusing him of “failing upwards”.
“The worse he performs, the more entitled he feels to a promotion, no matter what happens,” he said.
“[Angus Taylor] was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
What they said: “The Liberal Party is at the worst position it has been since 1944, when the party was formed,” Taylor told reporters.
"That is a confronting reality and we cannot ignore it. We have failed to hold a bad Labor government to account," he said.
"We want to see a strong Liberal Party and we know that means we need strong leadership. We need clear direction, and we need to focus relentlessly on our values. And that that has been the focus of discussions I've been having in recent times with my colleagues."
The sources: Angus Taylor press conference, Capital Brief sources
