As the Liberal and National parties slide deeper into irrelevance, and further from power, leadership challenges continue to occupy the minds of members, rather than policy, or the needs of their constituents.
Emerging from a very shallow talent pool, Angus Taylor is apparently the front-runner to wrest the Liberal leadership back from Sussan Ley, if it comes to the crunch this week. Yes, he of the alarming smile and the self-congratulatory tweets. Western Australian backbencher and military man Andrew Hastie is beating a fighting retreat, for now.
Echoing the short-lived reign of Liz Truss in the UK, GetUp has a gripping YouTube livestream of a lettuce, to see if Ley can last longer. The plotting and number crunching of her internal enemies coincided with a Melbourne memorial for their late colleague Katie Allen, much as the Nationals’ dummy spit from the Coalition clashed with the National Day of Mourning for the victims of the terrorist attack in Bondi.
So who is this bloke Angus, and has he got what it takes to rescue the Liberals from the dustbin of history?
He’s got baggage
Rhodes Scholar Angus Taylor was born in Cooma, grew up on a sheep and cattle property, and has been involved in politics since the age of 26, initially as a staffer for Barry O’Farrell. He was elected to the safe seat of Hume in 2013, having made a series of large donations to the Liberal Party in 2012-13.
While once publicly claiming that ‘renewables have been in my blood since the day I was born’ (his grandfather was the chief engineer of the original Snowy Scheme), in practice he’s been a fierce opponent of wind energy, and a great supporter of gas.
As a member of the governments of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, Taylor’s name has been associated with a series of scandals. The three most notable involved water rights, illegal clearing and forged documents.
At the time when Barnaby Joyce was federal water minister, ‘Watergate’ saw Angus Taylor accused of using $80 million of taxpayers’ money (well above market valuation) to buy water licences from two properties owned by Eastern Australian Agriculture (EAA).
This was a company founded by Taylor, and based in the Cayman Islands, for tax purposes.
Investigators including the Australia Institute and independent Senator Rex Patrick were repeatedly stymied in their efforts to find out how much had been spent, and where the money had gone. Angus Taylor said he didn’t benefit from the transactions, having previously cut ties with EAA.
In 2019, a company part-owned by Taylor’s family was alleged to have poisoned 30 hectares of critically endangered grassland near Delegate. According to an investigation by Lisa Cox, then-Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg canvassed whether protections for the grassland could be watered down, and if the situation could be kept secret, following lobbying by Taylor.
Another low point came when Angus Taylor was accused of having forged a City of Sydney Council document which suggested that Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s department had spent almost $16 million on travel for the 2017-18 period (the actual figure was less than $6,000), in an effort to undercut her call to declare a climate emergency.
Taylor was alleged to have forwarded this forgery to the Daily Telegraph, who published it. The police investigation revealed that PM Scott Morrison spoke privately to his then-neighbour and NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller about the incident, for which Taylor was never suspended or punished, although Moore lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Press Council.
Well done Angus
With the Liberals bleeding support on the left to the teals, and on the right to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and an increasingly orange-tinged National Party, it’s hard to see how someone like Angus Taylor is going to excite anyone apart from Sky News presenters.
Is the thinking that a Liberal with rural origins and some Oxford polish can keep the Nats in line, à la Malcolm Fraser? Like big Mal, Taylor has a distant Jewish connection, which he’s been playing up recently, but he lacks Fraser’s gravitas, and doesn’t appear to stand for anything in particular.
There’s nothing fresh about a Liberal leader who plays fast and loose with the truth, or who has an irrational fear of renewable energy.
Despite the protection of a series of friends in high places, Taylor has been undistinguished in parliament or opposition, and failed to find the numbers to defeat Sussan Ley last time, following Peter Dutton’s catastrophic election loss last year.
If Angus Taylor is the answer, the Liberals might be asking the wrong question.
As for the Nationals, David Littleproud is expected to survive his own leadership challenge after a spill today, brought on by the Pauline-curious nonentity Colin Boyce.
Parliament returns to Canberra tomorrow. Perhaps there will be a federal Coalition again by the end of the week, but for how long? With our government not being held properly to account, the only winner from all this is Anthony Albanese.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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