New Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor is poised to bring back exiled conservative figures Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to frontline politics as he attempts to salvage the Coalition’s record-low standing in opinion polls.
Taylor is expected to announce his new frontbench in the coming days as he attempts to move on from weeks of bitter infighting and debate that led to Friday’s toppling of Sussan Ley after just 276 days in the job. The Coalition trails Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in several major polls after recording its lowest-ever primary vote at last year’s federal election.
Victorian MP Tim Wilson is widely expected among his Liberal colleagues to be appointed shadow treasurer to take on an economic fight with the Albanese government. Hastie, who resigned from Ley’s frontbench in October over immigration policy, was being touted by colleagues as a candidate for the industry portfolio.
The biggest casualty is predicted to be NSW MP and factional figure Alex Hawke, a Ley loyalist, who will probably lose both his shadow cabinet position and his role as leader of opposition business in the House of Representatives.
In his first full day in the job on Saturday, Taylor visited the home of a young couple in regional NSW to frame his economic narrative.
“Owning a home has always been an essential part of the Australian ideal, of the Australian journey, of what young Australians do as they start a family,” he told reporters in Goulburn. “But it is getting too hard, young Australians are giving up hope.”
Flanked by his deputy, Jane Hume, Taylor vowed to fight a possible wind-back of the capital gains tax discount, which is reportedly under consideration by the government.
Asked if such a change would actually ease home prices and aid first home buyers, Taylor said a less generous discount would weigh on housing supply.
“And we need more homes, not less, if we’re going to have more affordability.”
Taylor dined with Nationals leader David Littleproud in his hometown of Goulburn on Friday evening, where the pair discussed a potential way to fast-track the junior Coalition party’s readmission to the ministry. All nine Nationals members of the Coalition shadow ministry are serving a six-week ban after the parties split over a falling out on hate crimes legislation.
A Nationals source told this masthead, on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely, that it was up to Taylor to decide whether the March 1 return of the suspended Nationals imposed by Ley would remain.
Sources close to Taylor said he had made no promises to colleagues to gain enough numbers to win Friday’s party-room ballot, 34 votes to 17, which freed him to pick the best available frontbench team.
Price, a Northern Territory senator who crossed from the Nationals to the Liberals after the last election, was dumped from Ley’s shadow ministry for her failure to endorse her leadership as well as her refusal to apologise over her remarks about Indian immigrants. Popular among the party’s membership, she is also one of several conservative faction figures eyeing a return.
Liberal MPs believe several Ley backers could struggle to retain their places in the shadow cabinet, including Queensland-based legal affairs spokesman Andrew Wallace, shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien, health and aged care spokeswoman Anne Ruston and education spokesman Julian Leeser.
Taylor has nominated immigration as another key battleground and will release the Coalition’s policy in coming weeks. The plan, which was developed under Ley’s leadership but not released, would drive more temporary visa holders out of the country under a sweeping new immigration policy, in a bid to boost departure rates from Australia and rebalance net migration.
“What we need right now is everyone pulling together to work hard for hard-working Australians who are struggling,” Taylor said. “And I’m going to be putting a great team on the field.”
Senator James Paterson, a key Taylor ally, is likely to remain as finance spokesman, with Hume not keen to return to the portfolio she held last term when her promise to cut working from home for public servants backfired.
Hume told reporters on Saturday that the pair had not yet discussed what frontline responsibilities she would hold.
“Whatever position I take will be one that allows me to best represent our party’s values and our party’s priorities,” she said.
Speaking at a Country Labor conference in Orange on Saturday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sank the boot into his new opposite number.
“It is extraordinary that they have had eight months of plotting in order to deliver the two people to the leadership positions who more than anyone else on their entire show were responsible for alienating the Liberals from the Australian voters,” Albanese said.
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