After devastating election defeat: a woman leads the Conservatives for the first time
From Marc Kalpidis
Canberra (Australia) - For the first time in its 80-year history, the Conservatives in Australia have elected a woman as party leader.
The previous deputy leader Sussan Ley is to lead the Liberal Party out of the crisis following the resounding defeat in the general election earlier this month.
Ley resigned as Health Minister in 2017 after she handled the private purchase of an apartment during a taxpayer-funded trip to the Gold Coast, sparking a storm of outrage.
The 63-year-old was nevertheless considered the favorite of the moderate camp and succeeds the hapless opposition leader Peter Dutton (54).
He had been identified as the main culprit for the election debacle that helped the social democratic Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to a second term in office.
Conservatives lose half of their seats in parliament
The conservative alliance of liberals and nationalists, comparable to the CDU/CSU union in Germany, achieved a historically poor result in the election on 3 May and lost almost half of its seats in parliament.
Following the fiasco, the right-wing camp in the party insisted on a more radical course that was more closely aligned with the policies of US President Donald Trump (78).
According to pollsters, the majority of voters opted for Albanese's Labor Party because it distanced itself more strongly from Trump than the Liberals with Dutton.