Peter Dutton has confirmed he’ll put his hand up to be the next leader of the Liberal party following Scott Morrison’s resignation.
The Prime Minister conceded defeat on Saturday night as it became clear the Coalition would had not won enough seats to form either a majority or minority government, Scott Morrison also announced he’s stay on in parliament, but would relinquish his leadership role.
Dutton was re-elected to his Queensland seat of Dickson, and is the front-runner to take over the Liberal party leadership.
Current deputy leader Josh Frydenberg has yet to concede defeat in his Melbourne seat of Kooyong but has admitted the numbers are not looking positive for him. The Treasurer said he’ll wait until postal votes are counted before conceding the seat to independent Dr Monique Ryan.
Karen Andrews told the media earlier today it was too soon to start talking about who would be the next leader, but did not rule herself out from running for the position. Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor have also been mentioned as potential candidates.
Discussion about why the party lost government has already begun with MP’s publicly voicing their thoughts about where the party needed to head in the future.
Senator Simon Birmingham told the ABC that the party needed to embrace a more ambitious climate target, and select more women to be candidates in the future.
“We acknowledge the need for Australia to play a leading role in action around the world and that we get our language as well as our policies right in that space.”
He said given that Australia was well placed to exceed the Coalition government’s 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 emission cut target “of course we should commit to being able to go further.” Senator Birmingham said.
In stark contrast Senator Alex Antic told Sky News that the Liberal party needed to embrace centre-right values.
“We are not the party of capitulation to net zero, we should not be the party of vaccine mandates although I accept they weren’t a Commonwealth issue but across the country Liberal state governments like mine here effectively endorsed those, we are the party of individual choice, freedom of speech and so forth,” Senator Antic told Sky News.
“The time is now to understand that, the Liberal Party’s experiment with the poison of leftism and progressivism must be over.” he said, arguing that the Liberal members who had lost their seats were the ones who had tried to “appease the climate crowd.”
Senator Antic said the comments made by Senator Birmingham on election night where he critisised the selection of Katherine Deves as a candidate were “nonsense”.
“That is completely and utterly wrong.” he said.
OIP Staff
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