Chosen on Tuesday as the first woman to lead the federal parliamentary Liberal Party, Sussan Ley is assured of a place in history as breaker of the party's "glass ceiling".

But politics has its own traditions, so another phrase may fit better: the "glass casing".

When her portrait is hung on the party room wall, framed in glass, it will stand out at the end of a long line of distinguished Liberal men, stretching from Menzies to Dutton.

Inside Sussan Ley's historic rise to Liberal Party leader
BY Tom Crowley

The significance was not lost on the Liberals who sat under the gaze of those portraits to elect Ley by a narrow margin to lead them out of the ashes of a catastrophic defeat.

"We shouldn't just paper over that," MP Melissa Price told the ABC. 

"It's exciting and exhilarating to think what we can achieve."

Colleagues may prefer the word "daunting". 

Reduced to just 28 seats in the lower house, almost none of them in cities, the party is bracing for a long road back.

It is why some see Ley's elevation as a "glass cliff", the choice of a woman to lead at a thankless time when few think she will survive long enough to win.

The new leader brushed off that phrase in her first appearance as leader, saying her leadership was about "much more" than gender but adding it would "send a signal to the women of Australia".

But even as she said she would "100 per cent" be in the role and in "a competitive position" in three years' time, she asked to be given "the time to get it right".

"You might hear me saying, 'Take the time to get it right' quite a lot this morning, because that's really important," she said.

It is not the first time Sussan Ley has followed Peter Dutton.

In her first cabinet role, she replaced him as health minister in the Abbott government. 

Then, as now, there was damage control to be done.

Dutton's effort to mandate a $7 payment for GP visits was one of the least popular elements of Mr Abbott's unpopular first budget, so much so that it was used against him to devastating effect a decade later in the 2025 election campaign.

Ley's three-year tenure was not so eventful but ended in controversy, demoted after she was sprung using a taxpayer-funded flight to buy a house on the Gold Coast, one of three she now owns.

After a brief tenure in the outer ministry, Ley returned as the environment minister in the Morrison government, a role she held until its defeat.

She then held the skills portfolio as deputy, and has also had responsibility for community services, agriculture, education, housing, justice, small business and regional development over a long and varied parliamentary career.

That career began in 2001, when she was elected to the enormous seat of Farrer in regional NSW, replacing former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader, Tim Fischer.

When she delivered her first speech, this time just a few minutes before Dutton, she spoke of an unusual and varied background.

Born in Nigeria and spending her early years in the Middle East, she arrived with her British parents as a migrant, settling in Canberra.

She trained as a pilot and worked as an air traffic controller and then an aerial stock musterer, before she came "down to earth" as a shearer's cook.

"I learned the value of a hard day's work in the hot sun," she said.

"I learnt the real value of, and the dignity of, manual labour. 

"And I always said there was no better wisdom than the wisdom of the shearers in their singlets sitting at the huts and the end of a hard, hard day."

At some time in this period, the punk rock enthusiast also changed her name, adding an "s" in what she told The Australian in 2015 was inspired by a "numerology" expert who told her she would have an "incredibly exciting, interesting life" with the change.

Her shift to politics and policy came via an economics degree at La Trobe University, which landed her a job at the Australian Taxation Office in Albury.

Living on a farm and working in a regional centre gave her an understanding of the economic challenges of an urbanising and modernising Australia, with many in the bush feeling left behind.

"Albury is strong and vibrant and needs to continue to grow, [but] too often we see regional centres acting like a sponge, soaking up services, shopping and industry from the towns around them", she told the parliament in her first speech, with big cities doing the same thing in turn to the regional centres.

"There is a growing communication gap between city and country. 

"It cuts both ways.

"We rural citizens need to show more of our city fellows what it is like out here … I want to promote rural and regional Australia as a place to live, work and raise a family, recognising its value to the identity and wellbeing of our nation."

The words echo into the present day, with Ley and her Liberals now facing difficulties with the communication gap in the other direction after the Dutton landslide.

Of the remaining 28 lower house Liberals, 16 represent regional or rural areas, as do the 15 lower house Nationals who round out the Coalition.

Moderates including Andrew Bragg and Dave Sharma, who are likely to have key roles in her shadow cabinet, and defeated urban MPs including Keith Wolahan, have urged a rethink of how the party connects with urban voters, especially women.

Ms Ley said on Tuesday she believed the gap was not so great as she had framed it 24 years earlier.

"I know that different electorates have different characteristics, but I do also know that the timeless values of the Liberal Party in terms of how we present our agenda can be equally adopted, accepted, and understood across those electorates," she said.

But as she acknowledged, the challenge of reconnecting with voters will be about policy as well as values.

There will be many challenges.

Although Ley and her deputy, fellow regional MP Ted O'Brien, were billed as the more moderate alternatives in a contest against conservatives Angus Taylor and Phil Thompson, O'Brien is the architect of the party's unpopular nuclear policy.

The future of that policy is unclear as the National Party and some Liberals suggest net zero should be looked at. 

On Tuesday, Ley said only that everything was on the table and no decision would be hers alone.

"I committed to my colleagues that there would be no captain's calls from anywhere by me," she said.

"I also committed … that we would work through every single policy issue and canvas the different views.

"We will listen and we will take the positions that we need to at the appropriate time".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-13/sussan-ley-elected-leader-liberal-party/105287414

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WISHING SUSSAN LEY THE BEST...