14 February 2026
Originally published in The Australian
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Angus Taylor’s accession to the leadership of the Liberal Party and alternative prime minister of Australia is good news for everyone who thinks our country is drifting backwards and needs change. His declaration that he will restore Australians’ standard of living and preserve our way of life is exactly what’s needed right now.
Under the Albanese government, GDP per person has declined sharply and Australia has endured the biggest drop in real living standards of any developed country. Government policy has made a bad situation much worse. Labor’s emissions obsession has caused sky-rocketing energy prices and is closing down all our heavy industry. Labor’s green fixation has made it almost impossible for new resource projects and is inevitably ending the coal and gas exports on which our prosperity absolutely depends. Labor’s union attachments are crushing productivity and making businesses much harder to manage.
As well, out-of-control mass migration has put downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs, big extra burdens on social and physical infrastructure and is undermining social cohesion. Australia is the world’s greatest migrant success story but that doesn’t mean taking anyone from anywhere all the time. Migrants have to be committed to Australia and take their citizenship oath seriously. The Bondi massacre shows that it’s way past time to discriminate on the basis of values and insist that every Australian has a responsibility to respect the rights and liberties that keep Australia Australian.
There is no hope of better government from a Labor Party that’s owned and operated by the union movement, contaminated by the politics of climate and identity, tends to see every issue through a quasi-Marxist lens of oppressor and oppressed, and is addicted to spending and regulating. Under Labor, spending has increased by some 3 per cent of GDP – on everything except the armed forces – and the public sector payroll in Canberra has grown by some 50,000 in just four years but does anyone think the quality of government has improved?
The fact that the Prime Minister’s first term priority was the divisive race-based Voice that crashed to defeat and his ongoing moral confusion about the Jew hatred that’s disfigured our streets for the past two years says everything about the lamentable state of our public life.
Still, a Labor Party that’s hopeless at government is clever and cunning at low politics and a tsunami of abuse will now be directed at Taylor and the Liberals. It started in the parliament last week with almost every minister competing to mock the Liberal Party, and play the politics of envy against Taylor for being a successful businessman, multi-generational farmer, Rhodes Scholar, and – supposedly – a throwback to a gentrified Australia that’s passed. Labor and the unions have a small army of keyboard warriors on social media trying to persuade voters and stampede commentators that Taylor is out-of-touch and unelectable.
He’s being blamed for all the mistakes of the Morrison government and the Dutton opposition even though, as a loyal colleague, he simply did his best to support the team while being a voice of reason to leaders who wouldn’t often listen. Parliamentary question time is certain to degenerate even further into a mindless slug-fest. In the end, the public are repelled by ministers better at abusing the opposition than governing the country but it will be important for Taylor’s colleagues to have their armour on.
I’m confident that the Taylor opposition will quickly pursue a new policy direction that’s a clear contrast to a failing and flailing government. No more coal-fired power stations will close, new gas fields will open at express speed, subsidies for renewable energy will end, the nuclear ban will go, and immigration numbers will come back to the average of the Howard years by stopping language schools and unis selling work and residency in the guise of education, and stopping businesses substituting cheap foreign workers for paying and training locals.
There will be no ambivalence about Australia Day or Anzac Day, there will be only one national flag not three, and acknowledgements of country will be confined to the indigenous occasions where it’s only courteous to do so. Australia’s Anglo-Celtic core culture will be respected and our fundamental Judaeo-Christian ethos will be honoured and preserved, because – after all – that’s what made us attractive to migrants in the first place and we do no one any favours to dilute it in a bid to make Australia more like the places migrants left.
Every Coalition MP and all the Coalition’s erstwhile supporters in the community now need to get behind the leader and the Liberal-National parties that are by far the best hope of better government in this country. It’s time to put aside personal ambition and to be ambitious for the party and the country. It’s time to stop seeking perfection and be content with substantial improvement.
Taylor knows that this is his one-and-only moment to take our party and our country in a better direction and that he must rise to this mighty challenge and opportunity. Knowing him well, I’m sure he has the character, conviction, courage and relentless energy to reverse the decline and keep our country the very best on earth.
