After nine months in the political wilderness, Jane Hume has made a triumphant return to the Liberal party’s senior leadership team.

The Victorian senator was installed as deputy leader on Friday after Sussan Ley was ousted by Angus Taylor just 276 days into the job.

The party’s choice to elect Hume as deputy leader will probably soften the blow of dumping their first female leader after only nine months. Taylor’s primary priority is to stop the haemorrhaging of votes, and to win back those – women in metropolitan and regional seats, for example – who were once dependable supporters.

Speaking at Parliament House after Friday’s ballot, Hume said she knew people had lost faith in the party that opinion polls suggest would be decimated even further if an election were held today.

“The Liberal party is a party of hope and it is a party of aspiration, but most importantly is a party for all Australians, together, with Angus as our leader,” she said.

While Hume sided with Taylor in the leadership spill, it’s important to note she did not run on a joint ticket with him.

Hume’s return to the shadow ministry also means the moderate wing still holds influence federally – the role is second-in-charge to Taylor, a leading economic and social conservative within the Liberals.

Hume’s elevation could also impact who ends up as the opposition’s Senate leader. The role is held by Michaelia Cash but is decided by the party’s upper house members. A deputy leader, however, doesn’t automatically need to run for Senate leadership.

A decade in the making

Hume’s rise to the (almost) top hasn’t been without its share of bumps along the way.

In the Morrison government, Hume served as minister for women’s economic security, superannuation, financial services and the digital economy.

Following the Liberals’ heavy loss in 2022, the 54-year-old took up the finance and public service portfolios and became the shadow special minister of state during Peter Dutton’s time as opposition leader.

But the relatively unblemished run came to a halt during the 2025 election campaign when Hume was credited with drafting the disastrously unpopular policy to end working from home entitlements for public servants.

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The policy was dumped a month later but comparisons between the Trump administration’s department of government efficiency (Doge) in the US and Dutton’s public service policies continued to haunt the Liberals.

In the final week of the campaign, Hume claimed on Channel Seven’s Sunrise that some Chinese Australians handing out how-to-vote cards for Labor may have been “Chinese spies”. The comments drew sharp criticism and experts suggested it could have contributed to swings against the Liberals in seats with significant Chinese Australian populations.

After Ley took the reins following Dutton’s loss in the 2025 election, Hume was dropped from the frontbench. Many saw this as a clear demotion owing to her campaign performance.

Despite being a senior moderate, Hume didn’t shy away from the occasional veiled swipe at Ley.

When Ley called for the Australian ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, to be sacked from the role after a curt encounter with US president Donald Trump, Hume described the opposition leader’s demands as a “little bit churlish”.

In the following week, Hume said she didn’t like to “tell people what it is that they should and shouldn’t wear” when Ley was on a warpath about Anthony Albanese’s Joy Division T-shirt.

A ‘talented’ operator with quick wit

Hume has been lauded by her colleagues, publicly and privately, as a great public performer with cut-through. Even Ley described her as “enormously talented, fantastic” as she demoted her from the frontbench.

In Senate estimates this week, Hume pointed out condoms were for sale in the women’s bathrooms at the Parliament House gym but not the men’s. Public officials quipped it was “absolutely wonderful that women are taking care of their sexual health”.

“I just wonder why men aren’t taking responsibility as well,” Hume said in response.

But even the most experienced operators have their moments.

Hume’s quick wit and penchant for a joke has landed her in uncomfortable situations, such as when she apologised to the Asic chair, Joseph Longo, in June 2024 for wearing Lycra in the gym they both frequent.

“Less worthy men have seen me in far less,” Hume said before revealing a shocked expression. “Sorry, forgot myself for a moment.”

The Victorian senator also didn’t shy from making a jab at the Coalition’s junior partner in October last year when she said she was “too fond of good coffee and free markets” to join the Nationals.

“Well, look, I do look very fetching in an Akubra … I’ll tell you that much. And I’d have to speak a lot slower and talk about the regions more often down in cocky’s corner,” Hume told Channel Seven’s Sunrise.

Outside political life, Hume has three children with her former husband. All are in their late teens or early 20s.

Hume has a long-term partner but told the Australian Financial Review in 2022 she prefers to keep any details about the relationship private.

“I think I got the last mid-50s, Oxford-educated, heterosexual lawyer – never married, no kids – in Australia,” she said.

Hume joined the Liberal party in the early 2000s, becoming the secretary and then president of the party’s affluent Armadale branch in Melbourne’s inner-east.

She served in a number of administrative roles across the party before entering the Senate in 2016. While she lost to then-28-year-old James Paterson for the top spot on the Senate ticket, she became the Coalition’s fifth senator in Victoria due to a double dissolution.

Hume was re-elected to the Senate in 2025 for another six-year term so bar any unexpected scandals or life events, we can expect the new deputy leader to be around for some time.