In the hours after Angus Taylor delivered his budget reply on Thursday night, Labor figures shared a grainy photo of the opposition leader shaking hands with Pauline Hanson.
If Hanson’s shock of red hair looked out of place in the House of Representatives, the rest of the photo was just as confusing. Behind Taylor on the opposition frontbench are Barnaby Joyce, who quit the Coalition months ago, as well as Sussan Ley, Michael Sukkar and David Coleman – all Liberals no longer in parliament.
An AI fever dream, the image was created and shared on social media to reinforce the idea that Hanson is the real opposition leader in Australia today. The not subtle message was that Taylor’s proposals to cut migration, restrict welfare payments for permanent residents and wind back net zero policies are all about stopping the One Nation rot currently afflicting the Coalition.
Taylor might argue his new – and forcefully put – stances will be politically popular, but most are the lowest common denominator stuff of populist politics. Worse, they undercut his claim that a Coalition government would protect the Australian way of life or make the country fairer.
The Liberals say net overseas migration numbers should be linked directly to annual housing completions in Australia. A Taylor government would directly match the number of immigrants to the total number of new homes built.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailMigration experts say capping the number of people coming in and out of the country is impossible without limiting the movements of Australian citizens and changing longstanding arrangements for New Zealand citizens.
The blunt proposal is also silent on the average household size in Australia and the fact large cohorts of temporary residents, such as overseas students, live in specially built accommodation.
Business groups have obviously failed in their attempts to explain to the Coalition that overseas born tradies are badly needed to build new homes here, let alone do difficult and low paid work – such as in aged care and hospitality – that many Australians don’t want to do themselves.
Taylor’s proposal to cut 17 different types of welfare supports to permanent residents is reckless and mean. Under the Coalition, only Australian citizens would be eligible for jobseeker, the age pension, disability support, parenting payments and the NDIS.
Apart from the fact citizenship applications can’t start for at least four years, the wait time for new arrivals to access the age pension or disability support is already a decade of residency. Parenting payments and unemployment benefits require four years in the country.
Permanent residents make up 5% of age pension recipients, and 6% of jobseeker claimants. Taylor’s plan would lift the bar on any notion of a fair go for new arrivals, most of whom pay taxes and follow the law. Leaving vulnerable people to fend for themselves in tough economic times will do little to help social cohesion.
The message might be delivered with more polish than One Nation’s solutions, but Taylor’s plans are unbecoming for a party serious about governing a modern and open-minded country. They probably won’t win back voters moving over to Hanson anyway.
One aspect of Taylor’s speech stands out as something different, however.
He finally unveiled a plan, blocked by Peter Dutton before the last election, to index Australia’s tax brackets to inflation from 2028-29, as a way to stop bracket creep – the phenomenon which sees inflation cause workers’ average tax rates to rise.
Like Labor’s changes to negative gearing, the 50% capital gains tax discount and generous trust rules outlined in Tuesday’s budget, Taylor’s proposal would represent major tax reform long absent from the political debate.
As things stand today, governments simply make too much money from bracket creep to seriously tackle the problem.
Delivered in two stages, Taylor’s plan starts with indexation of the lowest two brackets. The top two brackets would be indexed from 2031-32. Taylor says it would deliver tax cuts worth about $1,000 to 85% of workers within four years.
But it will be expensive.
Taylor would not give a total cost but Liberals let it be known they expect indexation to cost the budget $22.5bn.
Labor disputed that figure on Friday, suggesting it would actually cost $35bn over four years, and much more over a decade. The government questioned if the Liberals would need to wind back the new “working Australians tax offset” announced by the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, on Tuesday night. Taylor and the shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, have said clearly the opposition will vote to support the offset.
Voters look set to have a serious choice on tax reform at the next election, with rival policies the two parties believe in and are prepared to fight for.
The Liberals and Nationals were not the only ones with Pauline Hanson on their minds this week. Even as the newly elected One Nation MP, David Farley, appeared with his new colleagues at Parliament House, Chalmers said the government had made key budget decisions conscious of shifting risks “from Farage to Farrer”.
Later Chalmers went a step further, invoking the threat of fringe players as justification for Labor breaking a clear promise not to change property investor tax settings ahead of the last election.
He told the National Press Club that there was a growing and accelerating sense in the community of people feeling disconnected and disregarded in the economy. “In my view, the prospect of more people losing hope or more people losing connection is a problem which transcends all of the others”, including the political considerations of broken election promises, Chalmers said.
Even if she wasn’t delivering the budget reply on Thursday night, Hanson is clearly the singular force in this present political moment.
Likely to grow her influence all the way to the next federal election, Angus Taylor should seek policy differentiation from Hanson with principle – like the indexation proposal – rather than the crass convenience of grievance politics.
The alternative is doing exactly what Labor claims: handing Hanson the power she doesn’t deserve.
Tom McIlroy is Guardian Australia’s political editor
