Angus Taylor will announce new Coalition policies on migration and cost-of-living within months, declaring he wants to stop “bad immigration” and shut out those seeking to “import the hatred and violence of another place to Australia”, but has declined to say how the Liberals would make that assessment.
The new Liberal leader, and his deputy, Jane Hume, have also candidly admitted they personally made big mistakes during the last election, including unpopular decisions such as opposing Labor’s income tax cuts and seeking to restrict work-from-home arrangements for public servants, which were seen as key reasons for the Coalition’s crushing defeat.
After defeating Sussan Ley in a partyroom spill on Friday, Taylor takes charge of a diminished parliamentary party at a record low public popularity, an uneasy Coalition alliance, and existential electoral threats from a resurgent One Nation and community independents. The Member for Hume declared his party had to “change or die, and I choose change”, but did not immediately outline a vastly different agenda to that advanced by Ley.
Taylor’s first policy comments in his maiden press conference as leader focused on immigration, which he claimed was adding pressure to infrastructure and housing supply. The Liberal leader said his priority would be to “restore our standard of living and protect our way of life”, making reference to smaller government, defending “Australian values” and “love for our country” alongside an emphasis on home ownership for young people.
“If an election was held today, our party may not exist, by the evidence. We’re in this position because we didn’t stay true to our core values, because we stopped listening to Australians, because we were attracted to the politics of convenience, rather than focusing on the politics of conviction. This ends today,” Taylor said.
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“We’ll stand for an immigration policy that puts the interests of Australians first and puts Australian values at the centre of that policy. If someone doesn’t subscribe to our core beliefs, the door must be shut. If someone wants to import the hatred and violence of another place to Australia, the door must be shut.”
Taylor did not give any hints about the makeup of his shadow ministry, but Hume will have her choice of portfolios.
On immigration, Taylor declared “numbers have been too high and standards have been too low”. However, he did not say where or how the Coalition would propose to cut numbers, and declined to say if that would include particular restrictions on certain countries or types of migrants, or new citizenship tests.
Under Ley, the Coalition had planned to release its migration policy in December but held off because of the Bondi terror attack. Taylor told journalists he would have more to say on that in coming weeks.
“I’ve seen what good immigration can do, but we don’t want bad immigration,” Taylor said, without defining those two terms.
One Nation is focussing on immigration as a core policy area, as it continues to attract right-leaning voters from the Coalition. It recorded a 27% primary vote compared with the Coalition’s 18% in the most recent Newspoll. After Taylor’s press conference, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson called on the Liberal Party to restrict immigration from what she called “fundamentalist Islamic countries”.
One Nation will contest a byelection in Farrer caused by Ley’s resignation, which will be an early test of Taylor’s leadership. Taylor said his party would not be “One Nation lite”, but said he would work to win back Liberal voters who have shifted to the right-wing party.
Taylor was shadow treasurer during the last federal election, while Hume was shadow finance minister. With Ley announcing her retirement, Taylor and Hume are the two most senior survivors of the election, which saw then-opposition leader Peter Dutton lose his seat and the Coalition reduced to just 42 seats in parliament.
Both admitted to significant blunders in the campaign, with Taylor saying opposing Labor’s tax cuts was a mistake, and Hume saying the same of her damaging policy that sought to pare back working from home for public servants and comments about “Chinese spies” shortly before election day.
The work-from-home policy was dumped mid-campaign, but unfavourable comparisons between the US Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and Hume’s other plans to slash the public service haunted the Liberals until polling day.
Hume reiterated it was “pretty clear” the policy was a mistake and it would not be brought to a future election.
Asked how he and Hume could claim to be the people to bring the Liberals out of their current predicament, Taylor argued: “I think there were very good things in the last election policy, even if there were mistakes”, including policies to “free up businesses” from regulation.
At the last federal election, the Liberals proposed a series of tweaks, such as making the instant asset write-off permanent, raising the deduction limit from $20,000 to $30,000 and offering small businesses a $2,000 tax deduction upgrade technology.
“We need businesses with confidence to invest and [have] that focus on getting rid of the red tape, of the regulation,” Taylor said.
