The most important thing that Angus Taylor has done since he became the Liberal leader is to admit to past mistakes. None of us are perfect and given the state of the Australian economy, we must admit that past decisions by both Labor and the Liberal National Coalition have not been great.
Predictably, the Labor party went straight to the attack ads with the unoriginal and lazy tagline of “Just Another Liberal”. Good political advertising has an element of truth and this fell flat because it was not true.
Angus has not spent his life in the Liberal party. His father ran for the Country party. He comes from a farming family. Angus spent most of his career as a business person often helping farmers get a better deal. He helped put together the deal that combined farmers into the powerful selling entity, Fonterra, in New Zealand.
I first worked with Angus after his election, to ensure that we got proper regulation of our bulk wheat ports so that our grain growers (including here in Central Queensland) were not screwed. Typically, Liberal and Nationals politicians would be on the opposite sides of this debate – the Liberals being more likely to oppose regulation.
But Angus’s farming background means he understands that a blind obsession with “free markets” so often just means exploitation of the small by the big.
After recognising past errors, Angus also laid out the beginning of a plan to take Australia back to better days.
Angus zeroed in on Labor’s bad carbon taxes on cars, on manufacturing and on food. Labor’s net zero obsession now means that they are considering adding another tax on imports because we must push the price of everything to protect the businesses crippled by Labor’s carbon taxes.
We must end Labor’s “net zero obsession” on energy. Ahead of the 2019 election, I worked hard with Angus to expose the costs of Labor’s proposed carbon taxes. We won that election, surprising most of the pundits.
Angus was right to focus on migration too. He was right to say that our “immigration rates have been too high, and our standards too low.” We need to re-establish the principle that we decide who comes tothis country and the terms on which they come.
Labor has been at pains to say they run a non-discriminatory migration policy. But as they have been taking in 200,000 people a year more than normal, it is time we do discriminate based on who has theright character to add value to our nation.
While Angus admits that things need to change, Labor keeps gaslighting us all saying that things are going well.
Labor’s reckless spending has increased inflation and interest rates to the highest in the developed world.
Labor’s obsession with renewables has led to massive electricity price rises and some of the highest power prices in the world even though we have some of the greatest energy resources in the world.
Labor’s open border policies have pushed up rents, denied Australians a home and tanked real wages back to 2011 levels.
Even after all of this, the Labor Government stubbornly refuses to change.
Australian living standards have never fallen so quickly. I am sure that the Australian people are desperate for a change. What is clear is that under Angus Taylor, the Liberal and National Coalition will break from the mistakes of the past, so that we can give the Australian people a break in the future.
