Liberal leader Sussan Ley has warned the Liberal Party it needs to “respect modern Australia and reflect modern Australia” in her first press conference after securing the top job.

Australia's conservative Liberal Party elected Sussan Ley, a former outback pilot with three finance degrees, as its first woman leader on Tuesday, after an election loss partly due to comparisons with U.

The collapse of support for the Liberals is part and parcel of a far broader crisis of the two-party system on which the ruling class has relied since the end of World War II.