The Sloane effect: Why we can’t stop watching the Liberals

The Liberals are the political version of the car crash you cannot take your eyes off. It is this perverse fascination with a party imploding before our eyes that explains the lopsided focus on the Liberals. In the past week, the intrigue has been even more acute, with party leaders achieving what most in opposition cannot. Undivided attention.

Federal Liberal leader Sussan Ley is facing the ultimate political train wreck, leading a party that is tearing itself apart. As hard as it is to watch, she is slowly losing her grip on the job and the worse it gets, the more we stayed tuned.

In Victoria, Jess Wilson has just risen to the top of her state party, which has been the laughing stock of the Liberals for years. Unlike Ley, however, Wilson has a shot at turning her party’s fortunes around. That makes for more comfortable viewing.

And now in NSW there is Kellie Sloane, who was waiting in the wings as her colleagues clumsily deposed her predecessor, Mark Speakman. The new Liberal leader will have to perform miracles to hang on to 10 marginal seats, let alone beat a first-term government. But for now, her appeal is she is not Speakman.

Three women leading Liberals. None is a premier or prime minister, but all are commanding as much or more attention as the premiers and the prime minister who are their direct rivals.

An example of Sloane’s early pulling power was on display in two clashing media events on her second day on the job. On Tuesday, Premier Chris Minns and his Health Minister Ryan Park were at an inner-city GP practice for an announcement on ADHD. At the same time, Sloane was doing a street walk in Eastwood, in the ultra-marginal Liberal seat of Ryde.

On a typical day, the press gallery would prioritise the premier. Not on Tuesday. Reporters and cameras turned up to Minns, but just as many were at the newly minted Liberal leader’s meet-and-greet. You would have thought she was on the hustings.

And that is how Sloane described her day. “It felt like an election campaign today,” she told reporters. “For me, the election campaign has well and truly started. I’ve hit the ground running.”

Sloane, a former journalist with two decades of media experience under her belt, had already done the rounds of commercial TV and radio, as well as the ABC and news mastheads.

Labor operatives, who did little to hide their annoyance that Sloane was in such demand, snidely suggested she was pulling in favours from old media mates. Her Liberal colleagues, meanwhile, were convinced the interest was because Sloane represented the renewal the NSW parliamentary party needed.

One of Speakman’s biggest hurdles was that he was invisible to voters. He did the obligatory press conferences, attended events and networked but, as is the curse of most state opposition leaders, he was unknown to voters. Sloane is determined to change that.

She is off to a good start. But a heightened profile will only carry her so far and, when the early interest wanes, the Vaucluse MP will have a tough task ahead of her. She will need to be decisive and have a laser-sharp approach to policy.

Her first test will be appointing a new shadow cabinet. Sloane gushed in her first press conference as leader that she was spoilt for choice. In reality, she will have to make brave calls.

Does she bring in her young colleagues, the under-40s who would truly represent renewal in the party? To do so would likely come at the cost of older, experienced hands, such as shadow attorney-general Alister Henskens, who desperately wanted the leadership. There are others, too, including upper house MP Aileen MacDonald and Hawkesbury MP Robyn Preston.

Sloane also has the shadow of net zero hanging over her. She has tried to brush away the issue by suggesting those very words, net zero, are creating more trouble than they are worth. This will not fly in the Sydney seats that overlap those engulfed by a teal wave at two federal elections. She will also need to take a coherent energy policy to the March 2027 election, a difficult ask when the Liberals and Nationals, in NSW as well as federally now, do not agree on emissions targets.

The Liberal heavyweights who backed Sloane for the top job have made the calculation that tough policy decisions can wait. Sloane can begin to define her leadership and stamp her authority on the party over the summer break.

But the real work will coincide with the return to schools and offices, when voters are back, paying serious attention. Then, there will be little more than a year to convince them she is leading something that resembles an alternative government. If not, will voters even keep watching for the looming car crash?

Alexandra Smith is state political editor.

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