The Liberals have a new leader. But they’re still stuck with their old problems—and Angus Taylor isn’t going to dig them out of a deep hole.
Taylor beat Sussan Ley on 13 February with a party room vote of 34-17, just nine months after she became leader.
It’s a sign of a party in freefall. One opinion poll had the newly re-formed Coalition on just 18 per cent. The change of leadership reflects the panic among Liberal MPs.
Senator James Paterson summed it up the day before the spill, “At the last election, which was the Coalition’s most devastating defeat, almost 5 million Australians voted for us.
“Over the last nine months … 2.1 million of those people have since deserted the Coalition. That’s more … than 7000 votes a day. If it goes on, there’ll be nothing left of the Liberal Party.”
Core beliefs
Taylor immediately declared that he would be cracking down on migration, saying: “If someone doesn’t subscribe to our core beliefs, the door must be shut.”
After Bondi the reference to “beliefs” is an ear-shattering dog whistle, targeting Muslims. It’s also a transparent attempt to pull Liberal supporters back from the grasp of One Nation.
But Taylor faces the same problem as Ley. The party is caught in a tug-of-war between the Teals and One Nation.
The Teals have seized substantial ground on the Liberals’ left flank in the cities. The Liberals now hold only nine of 88 metropolitan seats.
To win back Teal voters would mean backing net zero, dumping plans for nuclear power and toning down the racist rhetoric around migration and Welcome to Country ceremonies.
But that would drive even more conservative Liberal voters into the arms of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, which opinion polls have riding as high as 27 per cent.
Former ABC election specialist Antony Green has drawn up a list of 25 seats that One Nation could win on its current polling. Nineteen are held by the Coalition—12 by the Nationals and seven by the Liberals.
Like the Nationals, who face a potential wipe-out, Taylor has made it clear that he sees One Nation as the greater enemy, hence the immediate attack on migrants.
It’s unlikely to work. In outer regional areas—where One Nation is strongest—65 per cent of people do not think that federal politicians understand and represent them.
Hanson can pose as an outsider who has stuck to her guns for 30 years. Meanwhile, Taylor, who boarded at The King’s School in Sydney, won a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford University before becoming a management consultant, is establishment through and through.
No impact
Even sections of the ruling class and the Liberals have little faith in Taylor, who was widely regarded as a dud shadow treasurer under Peter Dutton.
When he stood against Ley for the leadership in 2025, Liberal senator Hollie Hughes lashed Taylor, saying, “I have concerns about his capability … I don’t know what he’s been doing for three years.”
The Financial Review, the bosses’ paper, said this month in an editorial, “Nothing Taylor has done before gives us any hope he is the right man for the job.”
Financial Review columnist Jennifer Hewett was scathing about his ministerial track record, saying, “Taylor has shown little evidence in his parliamentary career that he has … personal political appeal.”
Taylor faces an immediate challenge with Ley resigning, creating a by-election in her regional NSW seat of Farrer. Independents, the Nationals and One Nation will be jostling to take her place.
And the Liberals are widely expected to cop a caning in the South Australian election next month.
Vicious laws
Meanwhile Labor is enjoying seeing its main rival tear itself apart. The rise of One Nation splits the conservative vote and makes another Labor landslide likely at the 2028 election.
The ALP created the circumstances for One Nation’s rise, with no real answers to a cost-of-living crisis that is hurting working class people hard.
Labor could scrap the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and boost health, childcare and education. Instead, its response has been to crack down on migration and to pass vicious deportation laws—legitimising Hanson’s agenda.
The danger is that Anthony Albanese will give One Nation an easy run to hurt the Coalition, giving the racists more space to spread their poison.
Socialists and activists can take pleasure in the Coalition’s pain. But we cannot afford complacency. We need to take the fight to Hanson’s racism and the Labor policies that have created the space for her to prosper.
By David Glanz
