Sussan Ley’s troubled tenure as the leader of the federal Liberal party has come to an end, with her loss to Angus Taylor.
All in all, Ley clocked up just 276 days in the job. But how does she rank against other Liberal party leaders? We crunched the numbers from the parliamentary handbook to compare her with the rest:
The all-time longest serving leader was Robert Menzies, who was leader of the Liberal party for 7,638 days – not surprising as he was also one of the party’s founders. Menzies served 27 times longer than Ley.
The only leader to have had a shorter tenure than Ley was Alexander Downer, leader of the Liberal party from 23 May 1994 to 30 January 1995. Downer was replaced by John Howard in his second, and longest, stint as leader.
Note: we have used dates listed in the parliamentary handbook to calculate tenures, and these can differ from dates listed elsewhere.
