LATIKA M BOURKE: Angus Taylor finally draws battle lines as Coalition launches risky political reset

Angus Taylor’s first budget reply speech was a refreshing jolt to what has been a lacklustre start to his leadership of the beleaguered Liberal Party. At last, the Coalition appears ready for an economic fight.

Mr Taylor returned the Liberals to tax-cutting, linked migration to housing affordability and began associating Labor’s big government agenda with inflation and interest rate rises.

These are solid lines of attack that can form the foundations for the Liberals’ two-front fightback against a bolder Labor government and seemingly untouchable One Nation.

They are also a repudiation of the approach Peter Dutton took to opposition, by refraining from drawing up any policy and opposing small Labor tax cuts during an election campaign.

Mr Taylor drew lines in the sand on climate change, tax cuts and migration. But these contain risks too. The biggest was his unapologetic embrace of fossil fuels. Climate change is for the Coalition what illegal migrant boats were for the left.

It only ended one way for Labor, which belatedly recognised it could never govern for as long as it backed policies that resulted in a loss of control of the borders.

The Coalition’s long-running on-and-off-again relationship with climate change will meet the same electoral reality that borders held for the left.

Granted, the adaptation picture during the energy transition is more nuanced than the black-and-white pitch to ‘Stop the Boats.’

Public appetite to pay more for greening up has waned worldwide, as global shocks like the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and Iran have eaten into household budgets.

But smarter economies are still committed to electrifying, ideally using gas as a transition fuel and backing nuclear, a green fuel source that is extremely expensive and may never stack up economically for Australia, but remains banned due to Labor’s ideological hatred of civil nuclear energy, despite it being the same technology that will power the AUKUS submarines.

Here, Mr Taylor has landed on a far more politically defensible policy on nuclear by vowing to simply lift the moratorium, compared to the knots his predecessor, Peter Dutton tied himself in, by offering state subsidies and even locations for hypothetical nuclear plants.

But less wise was his declaration: “I’ll work with coal-fired power plant owners to keep them running as long and as hard as possible to get electricity prices down.”

He only needs to remember how well Scott Morrison’s stunt of carrying a lump of coal into Question Time went down with mainstream Australians, the type that now vote Labor and Teal.

These voters could be convinced of how much they need to pay to adapt and transition to the new economy, but the electoral maths means the Coalition must chart a path on energy security that does not leave them looking like the climate deniers many voters who have repeatedly rejected them, think that they are.

On migration, Mr Taylor’s announcement that benefits would be restricted to citizens only was an obvious appeal to Liberals attracted to One Nation. He is still reluctant to go head-to-head with Pauline Hanson, viewing Labor as the main game.

But he sought to frame the issue around housing affordability, pledging to cap numbers according to housing supply. This gives moderate Liberals a far more palatable line of attack than attempting to paint all migrants as extremists. But if Labor’s restrictions on negative gearing and capital gains tax do increase supply, he will find himself exposed on his pledge to repeal those two policies.

Most promising was his attack on big government, directly linking Treasurer Jim Chalmers high-spending ways to the cost of living.

“Anthony Albanese promised that you would be better off under big Labor government. But big government hasn’t led to better government – or Australians being better off,” Mr Taylor said.

This is the most potent attack the Coalition can wage, and one where One Nation carries less credibility also.

A relentless focus on the economy is perhaps the only way back for the Liberals trying to fight on the right and the left. Mr Taylor has long believed aspiration is Australia’s great unifier. He is right. But he must be ready for the enormous scare campaign that Labor will now run, claiming that he will close every Medicare service under the sun and on a good day is the devil reincarnated.

His policies, announced surprisingly early in the election cycle for Australian politics, have a big price tag, $22 billion for the promise to index all tax rates to inflation from 2031.

He will come under intense pressure to explain what goes to foot this bill. If it is welfare, the success, and possibly the Liberal party itself depends on whether or not he can turn the tables on Labor by the time of the next election.

But with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proving himself to be a bald-faced liar by reneging on his pre-election assurances not to touch negative gearing, Labor’s next election scare campaign, may have a little less punch than before.

All in all, it was a better than expected start from Mr Taylor who failed to animate Liberal voters in the Farrer byelection.

The only odd note was his promise to develop a national security strategy with a dedicated national security advisor to the prime minister.

This would have been better kept aside to launch as a standalone national security policy at a time when Labor’s underfunding of defence was back in the spotlight.