By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s conservative Liberal Party elected Sussan Ley, a former outback pilot with three finance degrees, as its first woman leader on Tuesday, after an election loss partly due to comparisons with U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was sworn in for a second term on Tuesday after his Labor Party rode a voter backlash against global instability caused by Trump’s policies to a come-from-behind victory in the May 3 national election.
The opposition conservative Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, who had been labelled “DOGEy Dutton” by Labor after echoing Trump policies to cut thousands of public service jobs including diversity and inclusion roles, lost his seat.
Ley said her appointment as the first female leader of the Liberal Party “sent a signal” to Australian women, although her agenda would be “much more than that”, flagging the need for new policies on economic and tax reform.
“We did let women down, there is no doubt about that, and it is true that the number of women supporting us is declining and I want to rule a line under that,” she told a press conference in Canberra, reflecting on the conservative party’s loss.
The Liberal Party has lost city seats in Sydney and Melbourne to women who ran as independent candidates with policies supporting climate change and gender equality in the last two elections.
Ley said the Liberal Party needs to “meet modern Australia where they are”.
“Government is always formed in the sensible centre,” she added.
A former pilot who mustered livestock in Australia’s vast outback and raised three children on a farm before graduating from university, Ley entered parliament in 2001.
She acknowledged her mother, who she said was in end of life care, as instilling in her the value of resilience.
She also paid tribute to the “wisdom of shearers” she had listened to as a cook in the hut at the end of a hard day’s work in the hot sun.
She had become a strong person as a farmer’s wife raising a family through years of drought, she said, and later gaining three finance degrees at university.
The caravan Ley had lived in as a shearers’ cook was later painted to become her Liberal Party campaign vehicle, she recalled.
The Australian Electoral Commission is yet to finalise vote counting in several seats, although Labor said it is ahead in at least 94 seats out of the 150-seat House of Representatives.
It was the largest Labor caucus since Australia was formed by the federation of six former British colonies in 1901, Albanese said.
Albanese and his ministers were sworn in at a ceremony at Government House in Canberra, conducted by Governor-General Sam Mostyn.
The key roles of treasurer, foreign affairs, defence and trade are unchanged. In new roles, Michelle Rowland was sworn in as attorney-general, Murray Watt as environment minister, and Tanya Plibersek as social services minister.
Albanese will travel to Indonesia on Wednesday, and will attend the inauguration mass of Pope Leo XIV on Sunday in Rome, where he said he would also hold meetings with other leaders including European Union president Ursula von der Leyen to discuss trade.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
