00:00What we do know is that Angus Taylor, leadership aspirant, is still planning to resign from
00:09his front bench position. That is the first step required in then instigating a challenge
00:15against current leader Susan Lee. What we have sort of learned in the last 15 minutes
00:20or so is as a meeting held between Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Susan Lee has wrapped
00:27up. That's sort of one of the first things that Mr Taylor was essentially waiting for
00:32before he decided to make any move. I think what's really important to emphasise, as is
00:37always the case in these kind of uncertain times around a leadership spill and lots of
00:42speculation, is that Angus Taylor has been having a bit of a problem with leaks to the
00:47media. And one of his supporters told me that in the last day or so, the Liberal aspirant
00:54has really tried to stop flagging everything that he's doing. But as far as they're concerned,
01:00the plan remains that Angus Taylor is preparing to resign. There's some confusion around the
01:07timing in part because they don't necessarily want to rapidly have a meeting tonight, for
01:13example. So we are expecting, though, that Angus will resign and that along with him, there
01:20will probably be some other front bench resignations. Of course, anyone who no longer feels that
01:26they can support the leader, in this case, support Susan Lee, they are required to step
01:30down off the front bench.
01:31OK, so put this in the context of what has happened over the last several months with Susan
01:37Lee's leadership. But yeah, go back to when she became leader, how she's gone and what the
01:43issues with her leadership have been as identified by some in the party.
01:47Yeah, absolutely. Well, Susan beat Angus just nine months ago in a leadership ballot after
01:53the Liberal Party suffered another devastating election loss. She won that ballot 29 to 25
02:00votes, so fairly narrowly. And actually, since that vote has occurred, three of the people
02:05who backed Miss Lee have left the parliament. Two were senators whose terms came to an end.
02:11And one was it was Giselle Kaptarian, the candidate for Bradfield. She ultimately didn't actually
02:17win her seat and was a known backer of Susan. So really, the numbers as per that May ballot
02:23are only 26, 25, a very narrow margin for Susan Lee. So there has long been what many
02:29of her supporters say is a destabilisation campaign launched against her, where really
02:36from the get go, any misstep or perceived slowness in reacting to any issue was really seized
02:42upon by her critics. There were some of the smaller issues, like when she criticised the
02:47Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, for wearing a Joy Division band T-shirt, saying that it
02:52was anti-Semitic, that when she urged for things like parliament to be recalled early after the
02:59Bondi terror attack. And then ultimately, we saw this second splitting of the coalition.
03:04But broadly, of course, there's also been a story in the public polling that we've had over
03:09the last few months that has shown a huge surge in support for One Nation, essentially putting a
03:15lot of Liberals and Nationals, but particularly Liberals in certain areas, really concerned about
03:22what that means for their electoral fortunes and are concerned that Susan isn't leading the party in
03:28a way that is going to claw back votes. Of course, her supporters say she's barely been in the role.
03:33She hasn't even delivered a budget reply speech or anything yet. Their policy development is still in
03:38its very early stages. But you've essentially now got a situation where a lot of Liberals just
03:44really want this issue to come to a head again. There are plenty of supporters of Susan Lee who
03:49still think she has the numbers, that she will emerge from this victorious. But there are essentially
03:55agreement on one thing between the Lee and Angus camps, and that is that this is probably going to
04:01come down to about half a dozen MPs or senators who are either loosely or unaligned to a particular
04:07faction and could be the swing vote in what is likely to probably be another close ballot.
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