Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie yesterday confirmed he would not be a candidate in the Liberal Party's leadership ballot, leaving the contest up to Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor, Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley and Shadow Immigration Minister Dan Tehan.
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00:00With the pulling out of Andrew Hastie from this contest, there remains three people probably
00:09most likely to contest the Liberal leadership.
00:13They are the Deputy Leader, Susan Lee, the Shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor, and the Shadow
00:17Immigration Minister, Dan Tehan.
00:19Now, Angus Taylor is probably one of the more high profile people.
00:24Of course, the Shadow Treasurer took a major role in the campaign, but there has been criticism
00:28both privately and publicly about the Coalition's economic policy, and there are people like
00:34Liberal Senator Holly Hughes, who we heard from yesterday, saying that she doesn't believe
00:38that Angus Taylor is up to leading the party.
00:41There are other concerns that the party is leaning too far to the right, that some of
00:46those comments in the campaign that were likened to Donald Trump-style politics are not where
00:52it should be going.
00:53It should be coming back to the centre.
00:55And therefore, Angus Taylor, who is a right part of the party and is being supported by
01:02the Conservative wing, potentially not the person that many of those backbenchers will
01:06feel is the best person to lead.
01:08So it will be interesting to see where that goes.
01:10We heard from the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, as well this morning, as she was asked what
01:15she thought happened to the Liberal Party on Saturday night.
01:18I think if you look at the metropolitan electorates around the country, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly,
01:28Australians who live in cities and suburbs looked at the Liberal Party and said, you don't represent
01:33my aspirations.
01:34You don't reflect the things I'm worried about.
01:37You don't reflect where I want to go.
01:43That is the clear message from the election.
01:45Isabel, there's been a lot of concern from female members of the Liberal Party in the
01:49last 24 hours.
01:50What are they saying?
01:51Look, this conversation about women in the Liberal Party came up at the last election.
01:57It is coming up again.
01:59There are several female members of the party who may lose their seats, some of those seats
02:05too close to call.
02:07And there are concerns from both people in the party, people outside the party or adjacent
02:12to it who think that the party needs to have the conversation about gender quotas.
02:17Again, it's come up before and the party's rejected it.
02:20But for example, we've heard this morning from Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic, she's a senator
02:25in New South Wales.
02:27She says it is something that the party needs to have another think about.
02:31We've heard as well from Charlotte Mortlock, who runs the Hilmers Network, and that's a
02:35group that tries to get women into the Liberal Party.
02:38She says that the average Liberal Party member is a male in his 70s.
02:43The average Australian is a 37-year-old female voter.
02:46And she says if the party can't speak to some of those average Australians, she says in her
02:51words, we deserve to keep losing.
02:53And it's not just women.
02:54We've heard also late yesterday from former Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham.
02:59He also said that the party does need to reconsider this issue of quotas.
03:04He says it's an illiberal concept.
03:06But he says that he struggles to think of any alternatives to help the party attract more
03:13women.