October 14, 2025 • 33 mins
Following their historic loss at the last federal election, it became apparent the Liberal party had a glaring issue... women.
So, now with a newly minted leader in Sussan Ley, just how do the opposition fix their women problem? And rebuild from a political washout?
And who is Sussan Ley, the history-making first female leader of the Liberals?
And in headlines today, Israel has delayed aid into the Gaza Strip due to Hamas' delay in returning bodies of hostages, while re-emergent Hamas fighters have publicly executed 7 men, darkening the outlook for US President Donald Trump's plan to end the war; Teenagers with Instagram will soon be restricted to viewing content in line with PG-13 movie ratings as Australia readies for a world-first social media ban; US far right commentator Candace Owens will find out today if her appeal in the high court to have her Australian visa ban overturned is successful; There’s another Aussie name on the Hollywood walk of fame with actress Naomi Watts receiving the accolade
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CREDITS
Hosts: Taylah Strano & Claire Murphy
Guest: Sussan Ley, Opposition Leader
Audio Producer: Lu Hill
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on It's Lee as in key.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. The Liberals have a woman problem,
at least that's the wash up following a historic loss
at this year's federal election. But how do they get
the show back on the road and women back on side.
Maybe their first ever female leader in Susan Lee, is
(00:46):
the key to leading the way.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We'll hear what she.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thinks in just a moment, but first, here's Claire Murphy
with the latest from the Quickie newsroom for Wednesday, October fifteen.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Thanks Taylor.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Israel has delayed aid into the Gaza Strip and kept
the borders shut, while Hamas fighters have re emerged in
tragic scenes, darkening the outlook for US President Donald Trump's
plan to end the war. Three Israeli officials said Israel
had decided to restrict aid into the enclave and delay
plans to open the border crossing to Egypt because Hamas
had been too slow to turn over bodies of dead hostages.
(01:19):
On Monday, the US President proclaimed the historic dawn of
a new Middle East to Israel's parliament, as Israel and
Hamas were exchanging the last twenty living Israeli hostages in
the Gaza Strip for nearly two thousand Palestinian detainees and prisoners,
but so far Hamas has handed over only four coffins
of dead hostages, leaving at least twenty three presumed dead
and one unaccounted for. The militant group has said locating
(01:42):
the bodies is difficult. Meanwhile, Hamas has swiftly reclaimed the
streets of the Gaza Strip's urban areas following the partial
withdrawal of Israeli troops last week. In a video circulating
late on Monday, HAMAS fighters dragged seven men with their
hands tied behind their backs into a Gaza city square,
forced them to their knees, and executed them as dozens
of onlookers watched from nearby shop fronts. Trump has given
(02:05):
his blessing for Hamas to reassert some control of the strip,
at least temporarily. Aid trunks have yet to be permitted
to enter the Gaza Strip at the full anticipated rate
of hundreds per day. And plans have yet to be
implemented to open the crossing to Egypt to let some
Gazans out, initially to relocate the wounded for medical treatment. Meanwhile,
Israeli drone fire killed five people as they went to
(02:26):
check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City,
and an airstrike killed one person and injured another near
khan unis Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire. The
Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed
truth lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to
turn back. Teenagers with Instagram will soon be restricted to
viewing content in line with PG thirteen movie ratings as
(02:49):
Australia readies for a world first social media ban. From
December ten, people across Australia under the age of sixteen
will no longer have access to social media accounts, increasing
the minimum age from thirteen. Ahead of the looming deadline,
Instagram has announced changes to its teen Accounts feature. Under
the changes, teenagers will no longer be able to follow
accounts a platform found regularly shares age inappropriate content, or
(03:12):
if their name or bio suggests the account is inappropriate
for teens. If teens already follow these accounts, they'll no
longer be able to see or interact with their content
or send direct messages. Instagram has also broaden the range
of mature search terms that are blog from teen accounts,
including alcohol and gore. Teens under eighteen will be automatically
placed into an updated thirteen plus setting, and they won't
(03:33):
be able to opt out without their parents' permission. Tara Hopkins,
a Global director of Public Policy at Instagram's parent company Meta,
denied the changes were a last ditch effort to skirt
Australia's under sixteen social media ban, saying it will be
a global rollout and that this wasn't built specifically for
Australia and what Australia's going through with the social media ban.
US Far right commentator Candice Owens will today find out
(03:55):
if her appeal in the High Court to have her
visa ban overturned is successful. Owens had to cancel her
plan speaking to Her of Australia in November last year
after her visa was rejected by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke,
who said her visit would incite discord and her views
downplaying the impact of the Holocaust and claiming Muslims started
slavery meant Australia's national interest is best served when Candice
(04:17):
Owens is somewhere else. Owens argued her visa rejection went
against implied freedom of political communication. Her lawyers are arguing
that the character test on which visa rejection decisions are
made are more likely to exclude non mainstream political views,
and that the inciting discord threshold was too broad and
meant visas could be withheld from people who will stimulate
debate the minister doesn't like. The Commonwealth contends Owens could
(04:40):
encourage extremist behavior, risk vilifying parts of the community, or
incite civil unrest if she were allowed into Australia, and
this constituted an unacceptable risk. The court documents point to
her being named in the manifesto of the man who
claimed responsibility for a massacre at two New Zealand mosques.
There's another Ossie name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
with actress Naomi Watts receiving the accolade. The star was
(05:02):
asked how her Australian upbringing impacted her career. What's saying
Ossies know how to work hard and keep their hearts
on their sleeves at the same time the unveiling of
the latest star on the Infamous Walks or A number
of other celebrities turn out in support, including Jack Black,
Sarah Paulsen, Nissi Nash Betts and Edward Norton. Watt's husband
Billy Crudup stood alongside her, as did her son Sasha,
(05:23):
who now towers over his mum. Her daughter wasn't there,
but posted a tribute to her mum star on social media.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Thanks Claire.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Next Opposition leader Susan Lee. Whether you lean left, right
or somewhere in between, it's no secret that Australian politics
has always been well a bit of a boys club.
Women left to talk amongst themselves may be afforded power
(05:51):
in drooms and drabs. So how does someone like Susan Lee,
the Liberal Party's first ever female leader, see the future
for women in politics and what's her vision for a
Liberal Party buying for the attention and votes of women
across Australia.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Let's ask her.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Two people call you ta.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, It's a hard time to be a tailor because
every time someone says Taylor in this office about Taylor Swift,
it's never about me, which is fine.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
I've learned to deal with it. But there's a lot
of Taylor chatter.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
No, it's not that I dislike I've just never really
kind of Yeah, I'm kind of more grunge, indie post punk.
I was a punk in my teens.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Okay, what's your top pick?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Look, well, you like we go back to the eighties punk,
but you know that would be a bit crazy. But like,
I love Australian post punk. So I'm listening to quite
a lot of Gang of Views at the moment, which
is yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Great, excellent, very very good.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, a little bit of Eddy Current Suppression ring stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Okay, we'll have to come back for a music chat.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
We'll have to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We'll come back for Desert Island discs.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Oh, that'd be great, we can swap.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yeah. But actually, you know, one of the first punk
bands in the world was The Saints, which came out
of Brisbane. Yes, which was before I mean, I was
like right on the I used to get the New
Musical Express mailed from England to read. Really yeah, one
hundred years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
So did you go to those early Saints show?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Now into early everything? Yeah, it was punk in Canberra. Great, yeah,
which was Camera was the epicenter of the punks. I
was going to say the many punks then yeah, it
was the epicent of the Australian punk scene in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I grew up in Western Australia, a very rich music history.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Does music there strangely?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Does? You probably don't think it's strange, but no.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
There's something about Camera and Perth are both like these
little microcosms that you're forced to make your own fun in. Okay, Susan,
let's start with something that's in the news today. Of course,
we've seen these data leaks that involve phone numbers of
yourself and.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
A couple of your political colleagues.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I want to know, is your phone blowing up right
now or have you had to switch it to silent mode.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I've got to be honest. I haven't had a single
call except from one of the media people who did
the data leak to alert me to it, who sent
me a voicemail message yesterday. Other than that, no one
has called. Maybe there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Maybe it was in fact the incorrect phone number.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Then I think it was the right phone number. Okay, yes, yeah,
I think there's two issues here. I think we have
to be careful about privacy and there's obviously a role
for government in making sure that we manage people's privacy,
and someone you don't want to access your information shouldn't
access your information. Having said that, I give my number
to a lot of people because I'm a member of Parliament.
I feel that as a representative. If I'm talking to
(08:32):
someone and I want them to be able to connect
with me at a time in the future, I give
them my number.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I imagine a lot of people want to speak to
you at all times of the day and night as well.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Though I'm totally relaxed about that. I think Australians are wonderful,
generous people who respect boundaries and privacy, and obviously there's
notable exceptions to that. But the country I'm migrated to
as a hopeful, optimistic teenager in the mid nineteen seventies
is the country I see around me today and it
just always fills me with inspiration, optimism and hope for
(09:04):
the future.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Well let's track back a little bit, because a lot
of Australians out there, and a lot of the womenless
might know the name Susan Lee. They know who you
are now, but there's a very interesting past and origin
story for you, including things like growing up across the
Middle East and the UK, being born in Nigeria, immigrating
to Australia as a teen. Tell us a little bit
about your backstory. How did all of those places come
(09:28):
into the story for you.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I was born in Africa, as you say, in Nigeria.
My father worked with British intelligence in the Emirates, and
I spent my early formative years in the UAE in
various different locations and absolutely came to love that part
of the world. Love the landscape, love the desert, love
the people. I would jump into the jeep with my
dad after school and you know, he would be yelling
(09:51):
in Arabic at all his contacts and shattering and we'd
have cups of Arabic coffee and sweets, which I wasn't
allowed at home, but I was where we went out,
and I just had this sense of a vibrant, incredible community,
and I think that's why I love the Australian out
so much. Went to boarding school though at ten, which
(10:13):
was a massive wrench for me and very hard to
be sent effectively to the other side of the world
with no contact, no phone, no anything. I just waited
for the letters to arrive. And you know when my
dad said, we're moving to Australia because it's the greatest
country on earth. He'd visited here in the nineteen fifties
(10:33):
as a crocodile shooter and he owned a pup in
sent Kilda. My mum had come here as a nurse
to Thursday al And separately, but they wanted to bring
their family for this next stage to Australia. And I
remember getting out of the plane in Brisbane. This is
brilliant blue sky from you know, the cold English boarding school.
And the pilot stepped out from the cockpit and said,
I was traveling on my own. Where are you going,
(10:54):
little girl? And I said, I've come to Australia to live.
And he said to me, you've come to the best
country on Earth.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's clear that your parents have instilled this sense of
adventure and independence and freedom in you. Because looking at
your resume of pasted him. Before politics enters the picture,
things like flying a plane come into that scenario.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Do you still fly?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I do. I have a small plane, Assessona one eighty two.
It spends more time in the hangar than it does outside,
and I passionately love everything to do with flying and
aviation from my mother would say, if it didn't have wings,
I'd throw it out of the cot. And I always
wanted to fly, and when I was young, I was told, well,
you can't fly, you're a girl, and you wear glasses,
(11:35):
and by the way, you're incredibly uncoordinated. All of those
things were are true. But then I sort of bumped
into some people who said, actually, you can get a
pilot's license, and my whole life changed. From that point
I would have been about eighteen. I just focused completely
on what does it take? And I work three jobs
(11:57):
because my parents said, look, if you want something badly enough,
you'll find a way to make it happen. And by
the way, it's not a very good idea. We want
you to go to university and get a proper job.
But I worked through jobs. I worked in an office,
I worked in a takeaway food caravan. I vacuumed the
department's store in Belconnon about two o'clock in the morning.
But I felt so excited to have this goal of
(12:18):
learning to fly. I lived in a bed, sat under
the bridge in Queenbean, which in those days wasn't the
most salubrious address. And yeah, I just lived for my flying.
And you know, there was some I call them private
school boys whose parents bankrolled their lessons, but I paid
for every single minute I spent in the air, and
there were a lot of minutes, because I wasn't actually
(12:40):
that good when I started. In fact, I was so
bad that the instructor said to me, after I don't know,
fifteen hours, why are you doing this. Part of the
reason was I was quite air sick, but I just persisted,
dug in and yeah, everyone who's flown and remembers their
first solo and they walked ten feet above the ground
for the rest of the day. And then my whole
life was captured by aviation. By flying. Was an air
(13:01):
traffic controller. I went and flew aerial stock mustering planes
in western Queensland in very much a male dominated world.
I would have loved to fly the big jets. You know,
there was a view that women didn't really sit in
the front left hand seat of vetty aircraft. So that's
actually how I ended up aerial mustering. And that was
amazing because I flew very small planes, very close to
(13:24):
the ground in very remote locations, and then worked in
the sharing sheds of western Queensland, and the sharing sheds
are another male dominated industry.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, you've been in a lot of places that women
wouldn't usually be welcome.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I will always say that the wisdom and you know,
the instinctive I don't know. There's sort of australianists that
comes from the boys in the blue singlet sitting at
the huts at the end of a long day. And
I worked, by the way, when I went from flying
to the sheds, harder than I've physically worked. And I've
done some pretty pretty physical things in my life, including
(14:00):
the time I spent on the family farm with the
kids and milking cows and all of that. But to
see how people you know, do a hard day's work,
work in the hot sun gave me real respect for
manual work. And people might not be as articulate, or
as well read, or as inverted commas educated. You put
(14:21):
all that aside and you look at the true value
of a person, and you see it in a lot
of these individuals. And I have carried that lesson with
me in what I do today.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, well, you can't lead to people that you don't know,
so it's amazing to hear all the different places that
you've gone with work. We've seen in the news this
week in the Middle East, in Israel and in Palestine
as well. There's a ceasefire that seems to be holding
hostages and prisoners are being swapped, reunited with their loved
ones and their families. I want to know from your perspective,
(14:54):
what's next in all of this for Australia. You've vowed
to evoke Australia's recognition of Palestinian statehood, writing to the
US Republicans to flag the coalition's position. If not a
two state solution, if not Palestine in statehood, what is
it then that we move forward to make sure that
what we've seen the last two years in Gaza never
(15:17):
happens again.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I do want to see a two state solution. I
want to see that happen at the right time, which
is at the end of a priest process, not during
a process which wasn't about peace but was about terrorists
mass in charge in the Gaza Strip and all of
the evil that was wrought under them. I do want
to see a two state solution. I am a friend
of the Palestinians, I'm a friend of the Jewish people,
(15:41):
and I've looked with despair at the implications for our
Australian Jewish community following the events overseas. Now the Prime
Minister talked a big game about all of this, and
he wasn't involved in the peace summit for one of
a better word, that happened a few days ago. I'm
not saying that to make a hart asan political point.
(16:02):
It's a fact. I guess what I am saying is
that there was never going to be a peace and
it was broken by the US, and that was the
reason for me making the statements that I did on
behalf of the opposition at a time that I did
because we needed the US to broker this piece they have.
It is happening and everyone I know is desperately hoping
(16:23):
that it stays together. And with the involvement of so
many other countries, there's a real chance. And we're seeing
the hostages released, Sadly, some are no longer a life.
We're seeing humanitarian aid flow into Gaza. We're seeing the
war end. The next step is to build the enduring peace.
(16:44):
But here in Australia, I want to see that fraying
of social cohesion that we've all experienced over the last
two years. I want to see efforts to bring communities together,
to heal the divisions and to unite behind what will
always give us as people in Australia our greatest strength,
(17:06):
that we belong to this amazing country.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So do you feel then that Australia has more to
do on that global stage to help make sure that
that piece is broken and sustained.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Frankly, I don't think Australia does have a big role there.
I note as I said that we weren't at that
peace summit, and I think Australia has worked to do
at home. I think the Prime Minister needs to lead
work at home. I think the Prime Minister has unfinished business.
The country has experienced a praying of social cohesion. I'm
(17:35):
not going to overstate that because I see examples where
people come together all around me. But this is not
the Australia I came to, and it's not the bipartisan
approach that we've always had to policy about this issue
in the past. So I look forward to that and
I want to play my part as leader of the
Opposition well.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Let's bring it back home.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Then.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm glad you bring that up, because, of course this
year you have made history. Following the Liberals federal election loss,
You've been named as the first ever female leader of
the Liberal Party. An incredible, incredible achievement, But it also
seems like a contrasting moment, right because it's a huge
step for women in politics. It's a huge step for
women in Liberal Party history and politics, but also a
(18:16):
difficult one. How did you feel at that moment? Was
it empowering or there was a lot of criticism and
commentary at the time of this glass Cliff that Susan
Lee was headed for.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
What was your take? I felt, and still feel incredible
humility to have the role. It is not something you
should ever not be conscious of that you are leading
the Liberal Party and yes, I'm the first female and
it does send a signal. It's about much more than that.
It's about the work that we have to do. The
(18:46):
things that I said after becoming leader just as relevant
now we have to respect, reflect and represent modern Australia
and we have to communicate well with people in every
community across this country and we've started to do that.
I'm very, very proud of the team I lead that's
working hard doing exactly that. Look with respect to the
so called glass cliff, I've been you may gain underestimated
(19:11):
a lot of times in my life, and it doesn't
really worry me because I focus on what my mission is,
what I want to do, and it's not about personal ambition,
but it's about that ambition for the Australian people and
where we want to build a serious, credible, compelling agenda
to take forward to the next election.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
You've just got your feet under the desk as the
Opposition leader, but there's already been a lot of noise
about a potential leadership spill, and I am sorry we
have to take away from this conversation of two women
to talk about a.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Man, but we do need to do it for a moment.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Andrew Hasty's name keeps popping up after he quit the
shadow front bench. From where you're sitting, Is there a
leadership spill on the rise for your party?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Absolutely not. And sometimes I read the commentary and it
is commentary, and it's not from people who are in
the room who understand the cultures of the relationships between individuals,
or who have heard conversations. So there's a lot of
secondhand reporting and that's the job commentators and reporters, and
I understand that. So I want to make it clear
I value respect and get on well with all of
(20:17):
my colleagues in the Liberal Party party room, and the
building of those strong relationships is important. But I also
recognize that we will have differences of opinion on issues
of policy from time to time, and we do inside
our party room reflect a range of different policies.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So Andrew Hasty has echoed what you've just said there
that there's no leadership challenge on the horizon, but he
also recently emailed his constituents saying the time will come
when you will hear from me. That's a very foreboding
thing to say. Do you trust him? Do you really
think there will be no in the future Andrew Hasty?
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I guess what that says to me is when somebody
moves to the backbench and they're entitled to, they have
the freedom to speak up and talk about whatever they want.
And again that's something we really encourage in the Liberal Party.
So I've moved from the front to the back bench.
While I was on the back bench, I spoke about
a range of things and enjoyed if you like that freedom.
So the fact that Andrew's referring to that is not unusual.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
You mentioned there that you are still on really good
terms with every one of the members in the Liberal Party.
So how do these situations go down? Then when a
fellow minister resigns. You've had a couple of reshuffles already
this year. We've had Hastis departure just into NAMA, jimber
Price's departure as well to the backbench two in a month.
What's the political etiquette there? Do they send you a
(21:40):
nice email? Is it a face to face conversation? How
does it go down?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Look, it's a bit of everything. But underpinning both those
was the issue of cabinet solidarity. So because we're such
a party that freely expresses our views, unlike the Labor Party,
I'm not making a political point, I'm making a factual
point here. In the Labor Party, you don't have different views.
You can't cross the floor if you disagree with the
position of your party. If you cross the floor, and
(22:06):
what that means for your listeners is if you actually
vote with the other side when a vote hits the
floor of Parliament because you don't like what your own
side is saying. If you do that in the Labor Party,
you never come back to the team. You're finished.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
So if you called just enter price, she's going to
pick the phone up.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Absolutely fabulous. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
There was a lot of commentary that the Liberals lost
the election because the Liberals lost women. We've heard about this,
the Liberals have a women problem rhetoric, You've said the
party needs to reconnect with women. So there is an
acknowledgment of that there. What does that actually look like though,
in practical, real world terms for you?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I think we did lose women. I know that from
my own experience during a campaign when I stood on
boothe you know, with how to vote cards and had
conversations with women who did not intend to vote for us,
and in many cases we're not even considering what we presented,
so they didn't hear us at all, and that was
very sobering. But it was also very important that I
(22:58):
hear that, and we have over election after election we
have lost the vote of women. What that looks like
now is something that's really important to me because of
my life experience and how how I see the modern
women around me, and how I see child care and
looking after elderly parents and managing if you've got someone
in your family on the ndis, and how you make
(23:20):
it all fit together when you need to incomes to
pay the mortgage. I meanwhile, you're struggling with a commute
and you're just barely keeping your head above water with
everything that you have to do. Now, that's the life
of many modern women, and it's hard, and I know
it's hard. I've lived that life. And while the challenges
today might not be exactly the same, they sort of
(23:41):
have the same sense and feeling. So I do want
us as a party to come forward with I talked
before about a serious, compelling policy agenda that backs aspiration.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You were actually the Shadow Minister for Women from around
June twenty twenty two to May this year. During that time, then,
do you feel like there was maybe a need for
some stronger policies for women in the Liberal Party to
take to that last federal election. Was it a matter
of that they were being drowned out by others issues
or was it they weren't being supported fully maybe by
Peter Dutton at the time. Where do you think maybe
(24:15):
that could have been talked up more women's.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Policy is always economic policy. Now, while people didn't vote
for the economic policy that we put forward, our focus
as Liberals is always about strong economic management, lower taxes.
Every time we talk about economic management, it backs in
women who are struggling because they're finding the cost of
living crisis is overwhelming the household. Separately, in the last parliament,
(24:39):
I spent a lot of time talking about domestic violence,
and indeed there were days when I read out the
names of every woman who'd lost their life to intimate
partner violence, and I was horrified that as we prepared
one of our speeches to Parliament on a significant day,
we had to update it two or three times because
more women were taken. I'm the leader now, as I
(25:02):
sit at the table with my colleagues, I'm there at
every policy discussion where there's a big call to be made,
and I'll always see through the lens of women.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
What about that of young people, because it seems that
might also be a bit of a blind spot for
the Liberal Party. Roughly eighteen percent of the gen Z
vote at the last election. What do you think it
is that it's not cutting through with younger Australians.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
While every generation is different, every generation really does believe
in a home of their own. And I've said many
times to young people, we need to keep that faith
with you because if we can't demonstrate how there is
a pathway for you to have a home of your own,
then I agree you shouldn't vote for us on that basis.
By the way, shouldn' vote for the Albanezy government because
(25:46):
they definitely have failed completely. They said they'd build one
point two million homes over five years. We've revealed this
through what we call center estimates, which is putting the
departmental officials on the sticky paper and it's ten or
twelve or something. You can argue what the number is,
but it's very low. Indeed, So if we've got huge failures.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Housing, then what's your suggestion to help with getting those
young Ossies into their own home?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Or will have policies that are all about getting Aussies
into their homes and a lot of that is something
that state governments have to do. So the state governments
are responsible for the planning. Obviously that happens at local
council level. There's always issues around planning. If you're a
federal government. And you're assisting a state government to do
something that is a national priority like housing, and then
(26:30):
you give them I think two billion dollars was the
total bucket in this program, But then you don't actually
require them to report to you about what they've done,
whether it will actually deliver houses that wouldn't have happened anyway.
Then you're just giving the states free money and that's
not good enough. So we're doing a lot of work
around that to make sure we do have a good
housing policy for young Australians.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
We've mentioned a few of the niggling things here for
the Liberal Party. It is clear that there are problems
in your own backyard at the moment when you dig
deep at night, though, do you get really honest with yourself.
Do you lay there and go, okay, this is our
number one priority. It might be we need to get
more Australian women on side. And then do you sit
there and have that real on this moment with yourself
of how are we actually going to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm conscious that when you're the leader, you make the calls.
In many cases, you listen, you understand, you test, but
you make the big calls too. I'm up for that.
I've always said that I'm up for that. What flying
gave me was discipline. You know, flying is an absolute truth.
When you're flying, there's nothing else because the line that
(27:32):
you might cross is the line between being here and
not being here, and the focus and the discipline. And
everyone who flies will tell you this that what they
get out of it is is focus, discipline, responsibility, determination,
And that's allowed me to bring I think those qualities
to the leadership. And I've never actually wanted it to
(27:54):
be about me. I take great pride in seeing someone
else come up with a great idea and do well,
and I take particular pride when that someone is a
young woman. So in all the people I meet every day,
you know, if I come across someone and I just think, wow,
young woman. But I wondered too whether they felt like
I did, which was that I'm in a room full
of people who are smarter than me, who are men perhaps,
(28:18):
and maybe I won't say anything. I spend time to say,
make sure you say something. And if you have a
chance in any meeting, I say to young woman, say something.
As you get older, you want to see the next generation.
And I'm optimistic about the next generation of Liberal women.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It's really nice to hear you say that that you,
like a lot of women listening have at one point
or another, dealt with imposter syndrome. Of course, now though
the buck does stop with you, you are the leader
of the opposition the Liberal Party. Politics can be absolutely brutal,
especially for women, whether their early stage career or if
they've risen through the ranks like you have. Was there
(28:56):
a moment when you thought I am done with this,
I can't come in tomorrow, that's it, and how do
you push through it?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Look, I've had some tough times in my political life.
I think I'm helped by the fact that I've been
here for twenty five years and that is a long
time and it's taught me a great deal. So politics
is not something that you can learn from a book
or from a university degree. It's something that you learn
by ours in the saddle, so to speak, and that
(29:25):
conditions you to accepting what the realities are. And I
do accept that, but I also know that the moment
I start thinking, oh this is really hard for me,
forget it, because you know what, it's really hard for
a lot of Australians.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So then I have one more politics related question Pauline has,
Please explain Julia has the misogyny speech. What do you
want your moment to be? And if you don't have
an answer, I've come prepared with one.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Well, I think that's something you probably look back on
rather than look ahead at.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Okay, So do you want to create one right now?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I want you to create one, because clearly already have
ta Hey, good, I'm so glad you asked. Perhaps you
could tell the nation how to correctly answer yourself. It's
Lee as in key Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And now this may be the hardest question you have
to answer today.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
There are rumors, there's.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Speculation and stories and theories floating around about your first name,
Susan with a double S. How did the double s
come to be? Did you change it?
Speaker 4 (30:30):
And why?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
I talked before he came on air about my rebellious
punk phase, which was serious. Can I tell you in
my later teens?
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Yeah, there's photographic evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Well, possibly not, and that might be a good thing. Anyway,
During that phase where I certainly rebelled against my parents
and went to a school where you could wear whatever
you wanted, walk in bare feet, have purple hair, and
you know, spiky things in your face and ears, and
it was pure punk. I added the extra S and
it was simple as that, and it really annoyed my
(31:02):
mother and might have been something to do with why
I added the extra S. And then I was asked
about it years later, and I thought, well, that's a
silly question. I just gave a very flippid answer that
it was because of numerology. So it wasn't as exciting
as that. It was just that I thought, what the hell,
And once you've added it and put it on a
few things, it stayed. But then I found out once
(31:23):
I became leader that a lot of people quite like numerology,
and they wrote to me saying, you should think about
that extra S with Anyway, I don't need to go to.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Offend the numerology crowd, because once you're in with them,
you set my life.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Do you clearly?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Well, I mean you changed this before smartphones and autocorrect
was invented. Do you have to teach a phone that
it's double as Susan?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh? No, everyone every the phones all know it's doubless. Yeah. Yeah,
it's been there since I was pretty much seventeen.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Susan.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Next year will be your twenty fifth year in Australian
federal politics. Do they do something special for that? Do
you get like a certificate or morning tea?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I literally do not want anything special.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Okay, so you're not going to commemorate the occasion, and
how are you going to celebrate it? Because twenty five
years is an incredible achievement to stay in parliament for
that long.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Well, I'm just not one for celebrations, commemorations or marketing occasions.
I guess you kind of have that attitude from growing up.
And my mum and dad were very no nonsense people
and yeah, no fuss people, if I can put it
like that. However, I make a big fuss and I
absolutely love making a big fuss of my six grandchildren
(32:31):
and to them, I'm GLAMs and they need to keep
it that way. And so the.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Fus in a double less on the end, No good question.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Actually, so all the fuss in my world is about
them and obviously my three children. But yeah, any GLAMs
is listening will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
I need to know where GLAMs come. I've never heard
that one before.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, my daughter in law coined the term, and I
think it comes from glam Ma, but it got shortened
to GLAMs.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
That's very cute.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
I also want to know from you.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
We've talked a little bit and you've alluded to your
punk phase already.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
What's on your.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Spotify playlist at the moment. If you could give people
one recommendation, what is it?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
It's funny and I think everyone's like this, you go
through phases. There's a band called Wallace and Matilda that
put to music all of Banjo Patterson's songs, including the
Man from Stow of a Clancy of the Overflow and
the Man from iron Bach. And I just feel this
is a great insight into Australia.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Taylor Strano,
Lario Brophy and Clare Murphy, with audio production by Lou Hill.
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on It's Lee as in key.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily
news podcast, The Quickie. The Liberals have a woman problem,
at least that's the wash up following a historic loss
at this year's federal election. But how do they get
the show back on the road and women back on side.
Maybe their first ever female leader in Susan Lee, is
(00:46):
the key to leading the way.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
We'll hear what she.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thinks in just a moment, but first, here's Claire Murphy
with the latest from the Quickie newsroom for Wednesday, October fifteen.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Thanks Taylor.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Israel has delayed aid into the Gaza Strip and kept
the borders shut, while Hamas fighters have re emerged in
tragic scenes, darkening the outlook for US President Donald Trump's
plan to end the war. Three Israeli officials said Israel
had decided to restrict aid into the enclave and delay
plans to open the border crossing to Egypt because Hamas
had been too slow to turn over bodies of dead hostages.
(01:19):
On Monday, the US President proclaimed the historic dawn of
a new Middle East to Israel's parliament, as Israel and
Hamas were exchanging the last twenty living Israeli hostages in
the Gaza Strip for nearly two thousand Palestinian detainees and prisoners,
but so far Hamas has handed over only four coffins
of dead hostages, leaving at least twenty three presumed dead
and one unaccounted for. The militant group has said locating
(01:42):
the bodies is difficult. Meanwhile, Hamas has swiftly reclaimed the
streets of the Gaza Strip's urban areas following the partial
withdrawal of Israeli troops last week. In a video circulating
late on Monday, HAMAS fighters dragged seven men with their
hands tied behind their backs into a Gaza city square,
forced them to their knees, and executed them as dozens
of onlookers watched from nearby shop fronts. Trump has given
(02:05):
his blessing for Hamas to reassert some control of the strip,
at least temporarily. Aid trunks have yet to be permitted
to enter the Gaza Strip at the full anticipated rate
of hundreds per day. And plans have yet to be
implemented to open the crossing to Egypt to let some
Gazans out, initially to relocate the wounded for medical treatment. Meanwhile,
Israeli drone fire killed five people as they went to
(02:26):
check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City,
and an airstrike killed one person and injured another near
khan unis Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire. The
Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed
truth lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to
turn back. Teenagers with Instagram will soon be restricted to
viewing content in line with PG thirteen movie ratings as
(02:49):
Australia readies for a world first social media ban. From
December ten, people across Australia under the age of sixteen
will no longer have access to social media accounts, increasing
the minimum age from thirteen. Ahead of the looming deadline,
Instagram has announced changes to its teen Accounts feature. Under
the changes, teenagers will no longer be able to follow
accounts a platform found regularly shares age inappropriate content, or
(03:12):
if their name or bio suggests the account is inappropriate
for teens. If teens already follow these accounts, they'll no
longer be able to see or interact with their content
or send direct messages. Instagram has also broaden the range
of mature search terms that are blog from teen accounts,
including alcohol and gore. Teens under eighteen will be automatically
placed into an updated thirteen plus setting, and they won't
(03:33):
be able to opt out without their parents' permission. Tara Hopkins,
a Global director of Public Policy at Instagram's parent company Meta,
denied the changes were a last ditch effort to skirt
Australia's under sixteen social media ban, saying it will be
a global rollout and that this wasn't built specifically for
Australia and what Australia's going through with the social media ban.
US Far right commentator Candice Owens will today find out
(03:55):
if her appeal in the High Court to have her
visa ban overturned is successful. Owens had to cancel her
plan speaking to Her of Australia in November last year
after her visa was rejected by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke,
who said her visit would incite discord and her views
downplaying the impact of the Holocaust and claiming Muslims started
slavery meant Australia's national interest is best served when Candice
(04:17):
Owens is somewhere else. Owens argued her visa rejection went
against implied freedom of political communication. Her lawyers are arguing
that the character test on which visa rejection decisions are
made are more likely to exclude non mainstream political views,
and that the inciting discord threshold was too broad and
meant visas could be withheld from people who will stimulate
debate the minister doesn't like. The Commonwealth contends Owens could
(04:40):
encourage extremist behavior, risk vilifying parts of the community, or
incite civil unrest if she were allowed into Australia, and
this constituted an unacceptable risk. The court documents point to
her being named in the manifesto of the man who
claimed responsibility for a massacre at two New Zealand mosques.
There's another Ossie name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
with actress Naomi Watts receiving the accolade. The star was
(05:02):
asked how her Australian upbringing impacted her career. What's saying
Ossies know how to work hard and keep their hearts
on their sleeves at the same time the unveiling of
the latest star on the Infamous Walks or A number
of other celebrities turn out in support, including Jack Black,
Sarah Paulsen, Nissi Nash Betts and Edward Norton. Watt's husband
Billy Crudup stood alongside her, as did her son Sasha,
(05:23):
who now towers over his mum. Her daughter wasn't there,
but posted a tribute to her mum star on social media.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Thanks Claire.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Next Opposition leader Susan Lee. Whether you lean left, right
or somewhere in between, it's no secret that Australian politics
has always been well a bit of a boys club.
Women left to talk amongst themselves may be afforded power
(05:51):
in drooms and drabs. So how does someone like Susan Lee,
the Liberal Party's first ever female leader, see the future
for women in politics and what's her vision for a
Liberal Party buying for the attention and votes of women
across Australia.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Let's ask her.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Two people call you ta.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, It's a hard time to be a tailor because
every time someone says Taylor in this office about Taylor Swift,
it's never about me, which is fine.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
I've learned to deal with it. But there's a lot
of Taylor chatter.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
No, it's not that I dislike I've just never really
kind of Yeah, I'm kind of more grunge, indie post punk.
I was a punk in my teens.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Okay, what's your top pick?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Look, well, you like we go back to the eighties punk,
but you know that would be a bit crazy. But like,
I love Australian post punk. So I'm listening to quite
a lot of Gang of Views at the moment, which
is yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Great, excellent, very very good.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, a little bit of Eddy Current Suppression ring stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Very good.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Okay, we'll have to come back for a music chat.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
We'll have to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
We'll come back for Desert Island discs.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Oh, that'd be great, we can swap.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yeah. But actually, you know, one of the first punk
bands in the world was The Saints, which came out
of Brisbane. Yes, which was before I mean, I was
like right on the I used to get the New
Musical Express mailed from England to read. Really yeah, one
hundred years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
So did you go to those early Saints show?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Now into early everything? Yeah, it was punk in Canberra. Great, yeah,
which was Camera was the epicenter of the punks. I
was going to say the many punks then yeah, it
was the epicent of the Australian punk scene in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I grew up in Western Australia, a very rich music history.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Does music there strangely?
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Does? You probably don't think it's strange, but no.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
There's something about Camera and Perth are both like these
little microcosms that you're forced to make your own fun in. Okay, Susan,
let's start with something that's in the news today. Of course,
we've seen these data leaks that involve phone numbers of
yourself and.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
A couple of your political colleagues.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I want to know, is your phone blowing up right
now or have you had to switch it to silent mode.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I've got to be honest. I haven't had a single
call except from one of the media people who did
the data leak to alert me to it, who sent
me a voicemail message yesterday. Other than that, no one
has called. Maybe there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Maybe it was in fact the incorrect phone number.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Then I think it was the right phone number. Okay, yes, yeah,
I think there's two issues here. I think we have
to be careful about privacy and there's obviously a role
for government in making sure that we manage people's privacy,
and someone you don't want to access your information shouldn't
access your information. Having said that, I give my number
to a lot of people because I'm a member of Parliament.
I feel that as a representative. If I'm talking to
(08:32):
someone and I want them to be able to connect
with me at a time in the future, I give
them my number.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I imagine a lot of people want to speak to
you at all times of the day and night as well.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Though I'm totally relaxed about that. I think Australians are wonderful,
generous people who respect boundaries and privacy, and obviously there's
notable exceptions to that. But the country I'm migrated to
as a hopeful, optimistic teenager in the mid nineteen seventies
is the country I see around me today and it
just always fills me with inspiration, optimism and hope for
(09:04):
the future.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Well let's track back a little bit, because a lot
of Australians out there, and a lot of the womenless
might know the name Susan Lee. They know who you
are now, but there's a very interesting past and origin
story for you, including things like growing up across the
Middle East and the UK, being born in Nigeria, immigrating
to Australia as a teen. Tell us a little bit
about your backstory. How did all of those places come
(09:28):
into the story for you.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
I was born in Africa, as you say, in Nigeria.
My father worked with British intelligence in the Emirates, and
I spent my early formative years in the UAE in
various different locations and absolutely came to love that part
of the world. Love the landscape, love the desert, love
the people. I would jump into the jeep with my
dad after school and you know, he would be yelling
(09:51):
in Arabic at all his contacts and shattering and we'd
have cups of Arabic coffee and sweets, which I wasn't
allowed at home, but I was where we went out,
and I just had this sense of a vibrant, incredible community,
and I think that's why I love the Australian out
so much. Went to boarding school though at ten, which
(10:13):
was a massive wrench for me and very hard to
be sent effectively to the other side of the world
with no contact, no phone, no anything. I just waited
for the letters to arrive. And you know when my
dad said, we're moving to Australia because it's the greatest
country on earth. He'd visited here in the nineteen fifties
(10:33):
as a crocodile shooter and he owned a pup in
sent Kilda. My mum had come here as a nurse
to Thursday al And separately, but they wanted to bring
their family for this next stage to Australia. And I
remember getting out of the plane in Brisbane. This is
brilliant blue sky from you know, the cold English boarding school.
And the pilot stepped out from the cockpit and said,
I was traveling on my own. Where are you going,
(10:54):
little girl? And I said, I've come to Australia to live.
And he said to me, you've come to the best
country on Earth.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It's clear that your parents have instilled this sense of
adventure and independence and freedom in you. Because looking at
your resume of pasted him. Before politics enters the picture,
things like flying a plane come into that scenario.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Do you still fly?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I do. I have a small plane, Assessona one eighty two.
It spends more time in the hangar than it does outside,
and I passionately love everything to do with flying and
aviation from my mother would say, if it didn't have wings,
I'd throw it out of the cot. And I always
wanted to fly, and when I was young, I was told, well,
you can't fly, you're a girl, and you wear glasses,
(11:35):
and by the way, you're incredibly uncoordinated. All of those
things were are true. But then I sort of bumped
into some people who said, actually, you can get a
pilot's license, and my whole life changed. From that point
I would have been about eighteen. I just focused completely
on what does it take? And I work three jobs
(11:57):
because my parents said, look, if you want something badly enough,
you'll find a way to make it happen. And by
the way, it's not a very good idea. We want
you to go to university and get a proper job.
But I worked through jobs. I worked in an office,
I worked in a takeaway food caravan. I vacuumed the
department's store in Belconnon about two o'clock in the morning.
But I felt so excited to have this goal of
(12:18):
learning to fly. I lived in a bed, sat under
the bridge in Queenbean, which in those days wasn't the
most salubrious address. And yeah, I just lived for my flying.
And you know, there was some I call them private
school boys whose parents bankrolled their lessons, but I paid
for every single minute I spent in the air, and
there were a lot of minutes, because I wasn't actually
(12:40):
that good when I started. In fact, I was so
bad that the instructor said to me, after I don't know,
fifteen hours, why are you doing this. Part of the
reason was I was quite air sick, but I just persisted,
dug in and yeah, everyone who's flown and remembers their
first solo and they walked ten feet above the ground
for the rest of the day. And then my whole
life was captured by aviation. By flying. Was an air
(13:01):
traffic controller. I went and flew aerial stock mustering planes
in western Queensland in very much a male dominated world.
I would have loved to fly the big jets. You know,
there was a view that women didn't really sit in
the front left hand seat of vetty aircraft. So that's
actually how I ended up aerial mustering. And that was
amazing because I flew very small planes, very close to
(13:24):
the ground in very remote locations, and then worked in
the sharing sheds of western Queensland, and the sharing sheds
are another male dominated industry.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, you've been in a lot of places that women
wouldn't usually be welcome.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I will always say that the wisdom and you know,
the instinctive I don't know. There's sort of australianists that
comes from the boys in the blue singlet sitting at
the huts at the end of a long day. And
I worked, by the way, when I went from flying
to the sheds, harder than I've physically worked. And I've
done some pretty pretty physical things in my life, including
(14:00):
the time I spent on the family farm with the
kids and milking cows and all of that. But to
see how people you know, do a hard day's work,
work in the hot sun gave me real respect for
manual work. And people might not be as articulate, or
as well read, or as inverted commas educated. You put
(14:21):
all that aside and you look at the true value
of a person, and you see it in a lot
of these individuals. And I have carried that lesson with
me in what I do today.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, well, you can't lead to people that you don't know,
so it's amazing to hear all the different places that
you've gone with work. We've seen in the news this
week in the Middle East, in Israel and in Palestine
as well. There's a ceasefire that seems to be holding
hostages and prisoners are being swapped, reunited with their loved
ones and their families. I want to know from your perspective,
(14:54):
what's next in all of this for Australia. You've vowed
to evoke Australia's recognition of Palestinian statehood, writing to the
US Republicans to flag the coalition's position. If not a
two state solution, if not Palestine in statehood, what is
it then that we move forward to make sure that
what we've seen the last two years in Gaza never
(15:17):
happens again.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I do want to see a two state solution. I
want to see that happen at the right time, which
is at the end of a priest process, not during
a process which wasn't about peace but was about terrorists
mass in charge in the Gaza Strip and all of
the evil that was wrought under them. I do want
to see a two state solution. I am a friend
of the Palestinians, I'm a friend of the Jewish people,
(15:41):
and I've looked with despair at the implications for our
Australian Jewish community following the events overseas. Now the Prime
Minister talked a big game about all of this, and
he wasn't involved in the peace summit for one of
a better word, that happened a few days ago. I'm
not saying that to make a hart asan political point.
(16:02):
It's a fact. I guess what I am saying is
that there was never going to be a peace and
it was broken by the US, and that was the
reason for me making the statements that I did on
behalf of the opposition at a time that I did
because we needed the US to broker this piece they have.
It is happening and everyone I know is desperately hoping
(16:23):
that it stays together. And with the involvement of so
many other countries, there's a real chance. And we're seeing
the hostages released, Sadly, some are no longer a life.
We're seeing humanitarian aid flow into Gaza. We're seeing the
war end. The next step is to build the enduring peace.
(16:44):
But here in Australia, I want to see that fraying
of social cohesion that we've all experienced over the last
two years. I want to see efforts to bring communities together,
to heal the divisions and to unite behind what will
always give us as people in Australia our greatest strength,
(17:06):
that we belong to this amazing country.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So do you feel then that Australia has more to
do on that global stage to help make sure that
that piece is broken and sustained.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Frankly, I don't think Australia does have a big role there.
I note as I said that we weren't at that
peace summit, and I think Australia has worked to do
at home. I think the Prime Minister needs to lead
work at home. I think the Prime Minister has unfinished business.
The country has experienced a praying of social cohesion. I'm
(17:35):
not going to overstate that because I see examples where
people come together all around me. But this is not
the Australia I came to, and it's not the bipartisan
approach that we've always had to policy about this issue
in the past. So I look forward to that and
I want to play my part as leader of the
Opposition well.
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Let's bring it back home.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Then.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm glad you bring that up, because, of course this
year you have made history. Following the Liberals federal election loss,
You've been named as the first ever female leader of
the Liberal Party. An incredible, incredible achievement, But it also
seems like a contrasting moment, right because it's a huge
step for women in politics. It's a huge step for
women in Liberal Party history and politics, but also a
(18:16):
difficult one. How did you feel at that moment? Was
it empowering or there was a lot of criticism and
commentary at the time of this glass Cliff that Susan
Lee was headed for.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
What was your take? I felt, and still feel incredible
humility to have the role. It is not something you
should ever not be conscious of that you are leading
the Liberal Party and yes, I'm the first female and
it does send a signal. It's about much more than that.
It's about the work that we have to do. The
(18:46):
things that I said after becoming leader just as relevant
now we have to respect, reflect and represent modern Australia
and we have to communicate well with people in every
community across this country and we've started to do that.
I'm very, very proud of the team I lead that's
working hard doing exactly that. Look with respect to the
so called glass cliff, I've been you may gain underestimated
(19:11):
a lot of times in my life, and it doesn't
really worry me because I focus on what my mission is,
what I want to do, and it's not about personal ambition,
but it's about that ambition for the Australian people and
where we want to build a serious, credible, compelling agenda
to take forward to the next election.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
You've just got your feet under the desk as the
Opposition leader, but there's already been a lot of noise
about a potential leadership spill, and I am sorry we
have to take away from this conversation of two women
to talk about a.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Man, but we do need to do it for a moment.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Andrew Hasty's name keeps popping up after he quit the
shadow front bench. From where you're sitting, Is there a
leadership spill on the rise for your party?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Absolutely not. And sometimes I read the commentary and it
is commentary, and it's not from people who are in
the room who understand the cultures of the relationships between individuals,
or who have heard conversations. So there's a lot of
secondhand reporting and that's the job commentators and reporters, and
I understand that. So I want to make it clear
I value respect and get on well with all of
(20:17):
my colleagues in the Liberal Party party room, and the
building of those strong relationships is important. But I also
recognize that we will have differences of opinion on issues
of policy from time to time, and we do inside
our party room reflect a range of different policies.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So Andrew Hasty has echoed what you've just said there
that there's no leadership challenge on the horizon, but he
also recently emailed his constituents saying the time will come
when you will hear from me. That's a very foreboding
thing to say. Do you trust him? Do you really
think there will be no in the future Andrew Hasty?
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I guess what that says to me is when somebody
moves to the backbench and they're entitled to, they have
the freedom to speak up and talk about whatever they want.
And again that's something we really encourage in the Liberal Party.
So I've moved from the front to the back bench.
While I was on the back bench, I spoke about
a range of things and enjoyed if you like that freedom.
So the fact that Andrew's referring to that is not unusual.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
You mentioned there that you are still on really good
terms with every one of the members in the Liberal Party.
So how do these situations go down? Then when a
fellow minister resigns. You've had a couple of reshuffles already
this year. We've had Hastis departure just into NAMA, jimber
Price's departure as well to the backbench two in a month.
What's the political etiquette there? Do they send you a
(21:40):
nice email? Is it a face to face conversation? How
does it go down?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Look, it's a bit of everything. But underpinning both those
was the issue of cabinet solidarity. So because we're such
a party that freely expresses our views, unlike the Labor Party,
I'm not making a political point, I'm making a factual
point here. In the Labor Party, you don't have different views.
You can't cross the floor if you disagree with the
position of your party. If you cross the floor, and
(22:06):
what that means for your listeners is if you actually
vote with the other side when a vote hits the
floor of Parliament because you don't like what your own
side is saying. If you do that in the Labor Party,
you never come back to the team. You're finished.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
So if you called just enter price, she's going to
pick the phone up.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Absolutely fabulous. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
There was a lot of commentary that the Liberals lost
the election because the Liberals lost women. We've heard about this,
the Liberals have a women problem rhetoric, You've said the
party needs to reconnect with women. So there is an
acknowledgment of that there. What does that actually look like though,
in practical, real world terms for you?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I think we did lose women. I know that from
my own experience during a campaign when I stood on
boothe you know, with how to vote cards and had
conversations with women who did not intend to vote for us,
and in many cases we're not even considering what we presented,
so they didn't hear us at all, and that was
very sobering. But it was also very important that I
(22:58):
hear that, and we have over election after election we
have lost the vote of women. What that looks like
now is something that's really important to me because of
my life experience and how how I see the modern
women around me, and how I see child care and
looking after elderly parents and managing if you've got someone
in your family on the ndis, and how you make
(23:20):
it all fit together when you need to incomes to
pay the mortgage. I meanwhile, you're struggling with a commute
and you're just barely keeping your head above water with
everything that you have to do. Now, that's the life
of many modern women, and it's hard, and I know
it's hard. I've lived that life. And while the challenges
today might not be exactly the same, they sort of
(23:41):
have the same sense and feeling. So I do want
us as a party to come forward with I talked
before about a serious, compelling policy agenda that backs aspiration.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You were actually the Shadow Minister for Women from around
June twenty twenty two to May this year. During that time, then,
do you feel like there was maybe a need for
some stronger policies for women in the Liberal Party to
take to that last federal election. Was it a matter
of that they were being drowned out by others issues
or was it they weren't being supported fully maybe by
Peter Dutton at the time. Where do you think maybe
(24:15):
that could have been talked up more women's.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Policy is always economic policy. Now, while people didn't vote
for the economic policy that we put forward, our focus
as Liberals is always about strong economic management, lower taxes.
Every time we talk about economic management, it backs in
women who are struggling because they're finding the cost of
living crisis is overwhelming the household. Separately, in the last parliament,
(24:39):
I spent a lot of time talking about domestic violence,
and indeed there were days when I read out the
names of every woman who'd lost their life to intimate
partner violence, and I was horrified that as we prepared
one of our speeches to Parliament on a significant day,
we had to update it two or three times because
more women were taken. I'm the leader now, as I
(25:02):
sit at the table with my colleagues, I'm there at
every policy discussion where there's a big call to be made,
and I'll always see through the lens of women.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
What about that of young people, because it seems that
might also be a bit of a blind spot for
the Liberal Party. Roughly eighteen percent of the gen Z
vote at the last election. What do you think it
is that it's not cutting through with younger Australians.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
While every generation is different, every generation really does believe
in a home of their own. And I've said many
times to young people, we need to keep that faith
with you because if we can't demonstrate how there is
a pathway for you to have a home of your own,
then I agree you shouldn't vote for us on that basis.
By the way, shouldn' vote for the Albanezy government because
(25:46):
they definitely have failed completely. They said they'd build one
point two million homes over five years. We've revealed this
through what we call center estimates, which is putting the
departmental officials on the sticky paper and it's ten or
twelve or something. You can argue what the number is,
but it's very low. Indeed, So if we've got huge failures.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Housing, then what's your suggestion to help with getting those
young Ossies into their own home?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Or will have policies that are all about getting Aussies
into their homes and a lot of that is something
that state governments have to do. So the state governments
are responsible for the planning. Obviously that happens at local
council level. There's always issues around planning. If you're a
federal government. And you're assisting a state government to do
something that is a national priority like housing, and then
(26:30):
you give them I think two billion dollars was the
total bucket in this program, But then you don't actually
require them to report to you about what they've done,
whether it will actually deliver houses that wouldn't have happened anyway.
Then you're just giving the states free money and that's
not good enough. So we're doing a lot of work
around that to make sure we do have a good
housing policy for young Australians.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
We've mentioned a few of the niggling things here for
the Liberal Party. It is clear that there are problems
in your own backyard at the moment when you dig
deep at night, though, do you get really honest with yourself.
Do you lay there and go, okay, this is our
number one priority. It might be we need to get
more Australian women on side. And then do you sit
there and have that real on this moment with yourself
of how are we actually going to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm conscious that when you're the leader, you make the calls.
In many cases, you listen, you understand, you test, but
you make the big calls too. I'm up for that.
I've always said that I'm up for that. What flying
gave me was discipline. You know, flying is an absolute truth.
When you're flying, there's nothing else because the line that
(27:32):
you might cross is the line between being here and
not being here, and the focus and the discipline. And
everyone who flies will tell you this that what they
get out of it is is focus, discipline, responsibility, determination,
And that's allowed me to bring I think those qualities
to the leadership. And I've never actually wanted it to
(27:54):
be about me. I take great pride in seeing someone
else come up with a great idea and do well,
and I take particular pride when that someone is a
young woman. So in all the people I meet every day,
you know, if I come across someone and I just think, wow,
young woman. But I wondered too whether they felt like
I did, which was that I'm in a room full
of people who are smarter than me, who are men perhaps,
(28:18):
and maybe I won't say anything. I spend time to say,
make sure you say something. And if you have a
chance in any meeting, I say to young woman, say something.
As you get older, you want to see the next generation.
And I'm optimistic about the next generation of Liberal women.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
It's really nice to hear you say that that you,
like a lot of women listening have at one point
or another, dealt with imposter syndrome. Of course, now though
the buck does stop with you, you are the leader
of the opposition the Liberal Party. Politics can be absolutely brutal,
especially for women, whether their early stage career or if
they've risen through the ranks like you have. Was there
(28:56):
a moment when you thought I am done with this,
I can't come in tomorrow, that's it, and how do
you push through it?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Look, I've had some tough times in my political life.
I think I'm helped by the fact that I've been
here for twenty five years and that is a long
time and it's taught me a great deal. So politics
is not something that you can learn from a book
or from a university degree. It's something that you learn
by ours in the saddle, so to speak, and that
(29:25):
conditions you to accepting what the realities are. And I
do accept that, but I also know that the moment
I start thinking, oh this is really hard for me,
forget it, because you know what, it's really hard for
a lot of Australians.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So then I have one more politics related question Pauline has,
Please explain Julia has the misogyny speech. What do you
want your moment to be? And if you don't have
an answer, I've come prepared with one.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Well, I think that's something you probably look back on
rather than look ahead at.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Okay, So do you want to create one right now?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I want you to create one, because clearly already have
ta Hey, good, I'm so glad you asked. Perhaps you
could tell the nation how to correctly answer yourself. It's
Lee as in key Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And now this may be the hardest question you have
to answer today.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
There are rumors, there's.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Speculation and stories and theories floating around about your first name,
Susan with a double S. How did the double s
come to be? Did you change it?
Speaker 4 (30:30):
And why?
Speaker 1 (30:31):
I talked before he came on air about my rebellious
punk phase, which was serious. Can I tell you in
my later teens?
Speaker 4 (30:39):
Yeah, there's photographic evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Well, possibly not, and that might be a good thing. Anyway,
During that phase where I certainly rebelled against my parents
and went to a school where you could wear whatever
you wanted, walk in bare feet, have purple hair, and
you know, spiky things in your face and ears, and
it was pure punk. I added the extra S and
it was simple as that, and it really annoyed my
(31:02):
mother and might have been something to do with why
I added the extra S. And then I was asked
about it years later, and I thought, well, that's a
silly question. I just gave a very flippid answer that
it was because of numerology. So it wasn't as exciting
as that. It was just that I thought, what the hell,
And once you've added it and put it on a
few things, it stayed. But then I found out once
(31:23):
I became leader that a lot of people quite like numerology,
and they wrote to me saying, you should think about
that extra S with Anyway, I don't need to go to.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Offend the numerology crowd, because once you're in with them,
you set my life.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Do you clearly?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Well, I mean you changed this before smartphones and autocorrect
was invented. Do you have to teach a phone that
it's double as Susan?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh? No, everyone every the phones all know it's doubless. Yeah. Yeah,
it's been there since I was pretty much seventeen.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Susan.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Next year will be your twenty fifth year in Australian
federal politics. Do they do something special for that? Do
you get like a certificate or morning tea?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I literally do not want anything special.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Okay, so you're not going to commemorate the occasion, and
how are you going to celebrate it? Because twenty five
years is an incredible achievement to stay in parliament for
that long.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Well, I'm just not one for celebrations, commemorations or marketing occasions.
I guess you kind of have that attitude from growing up.
And my mum and dad were very no nonsense people
and yeah, no fuss people, if I can put it
like that. However, I make a big fuss and I
absolutely love making a big fuss of my six grandchildren
(32:31):
and to them, I'm GLAMs and they need to keep
it that way. And so the.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Fus in a double less on the end, No good question.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Actually, so all the fuss in my world is about
them and obviously my three children. But yeah, any GLAMs
is listening will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
I need to know where GLAMs come. I've never heard
that one before.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, my daughter in law coined the term, and I
think it comes from glam Ma, but it got shortened
to GLAMs.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
That's very cute.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
I also want to know from you.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
We've talked a little bit and you've alluded to your
punk phase already.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
What's on your.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Spotify playlist at the moment. If you could give people
one recommendation, what is it?
Speaker 1 (33:11):
It's funny and I think everyone's like this, you go
through phases. There's a band called Wallace and Matilda that
put to music all of Banjo Patterson's songs, including the
Man from Stow of a Clancy of the Overflow and
the Man from iron Bach. And I just feel this
is a great insight into Australia.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by me Taylor Strano,
Lario Brophy and Clare Murphy, with audio production by Lou Hill.
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