Angus Taylor was the previous Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, and he is arguably one of the best educated people in our parliament, with degrees in Economics, and Law, and a Master of Philosophy (Economics) from Oxford. Each of these degrees is necessarily reliant on the use of facts, and figures, real evidence, and mature reasoning.
There is nothing as disappointing as the failure of clever people, because it signals one of two possible reasons for the failure: An inability to handle really difficult tasks because they are ‘clever’ in a bookish way, but when the going gets tough, they squib it, and come up short. The other reason is when they are captured by ideology, and/or ambition, and they tailor their contribution so that they fail in their allotted task. This is a form of intellectual self-sabotage, for personal gain.
Morrison’s cabinet was grossly under-resourced, staffed by drones valued for their loyalty to Morrison, rather than for their ability. However, individuals like Greg Hunt, and Angus Taylor stood out, at first glance, as genuinely talented, and yet they both failed in their allotted tasks. Sadly they also failed our climate, which later generations will not forgive.
Greg Hunt co-wrote a thesis at Yale titled “A Tax to Make the Polluter Pay“. It was apparently brilliant, and it made a very strong case for a ‘carbon tax’. I could not get past the first page, but it had a catchy message: “it (a carbon tax) better ensures that the polluter bears full responsibility for the cost of his or her conduct”. It seems that as soon as cabinet preferment beckoned, he threw his thesis out with the bathwater.
Similarly, Angus Taylor’s abject failure on reducing emissions came after a stellar education, “the best part of two decades in management consulting”, and yet on reaching parliament he devoted three years to undermining and (pardon the pun) gaslighting Australians on our progress to carbon neutrality.
He even stated, at a rally against wind power in 2013, “I am not a climate sceptic. For 25 years, I have been concerned about how rising carbon dioxide emissions might have an impact on our climate. It remains a concern of mine today. I do not have a vendetta against renewables.”
His failure is so mysterious. Ben Potter from the Financial Review once said his opposition to wind power dates from when a wind farm was built next door to his family’s property in Cooma.
I can understand that may have annoyed the family, but this is a past Minister of the Crown. It seems unlikely that such a trifle would trigger an enduring and illogical dislike for a proven form of power generation. Instead of continuing to nobble Australia’s response to climate heating, he might have been better off engaging with the realities of a changing climate.
The least he should have done was to step aside from his portfolio, and allow a competent person to step up and actually ‘do the job’. I know, we are talking about the former Coalition government, and there was a shortage of competent candidates to actually step up.
Which brings us to his next job. Once in Opposition, he served as the Treasury spokesman. Considering his demonstrated difficulties with numbers, one wonders how competent he could be in such a position. The botched stitch-up on Clover Moore sent a message that he struggles with the basics, and he looked to be a poor match for Jim Chalmers.
On the matter of trust, in March 2022 Roy Morgan published the results on polling undertaken that placed Angus Taylor as the 7th least trusted politician in Australia, placing behind Dominic Perrottet (6th), Craig Kelly (5th), Pauline Hanson (4th), Barnaby Joyce (3rd), Peter Dutton (2nd) and Scott Morrison (1st).
Those names bring back bad memories of how poorly the Opposition was served by many of its noisiest combatants. Thankfully Perrottet, Kelly and Dutton have ‘left the building’.
Angus Taylor has struggled with public perceptions that he has put his own, and his family’s, interests before the public interest. We all know that Morrison has damaged the Liberal brand, perhaps irrevocably. We know that Peter Dutton had a limited field from which to choose when allocating shadow portfolios.
That does not mean Angus Taylor was a hopeless choice, but it illustrates the lack of front bench talent, and the question to ask is, was Mr Taylor up to the task? Did he lack the ability to do his last job properly, or was he running dead, to sabotage the transition to renewables? That is the question we must ask ourselves.
Now that Peter Dutton has suffered his own humiliating defeat, and lost his own seat, and Sussan Ley has been discarded by an ungrateful party, one would have to question whether Angus Taylor really has either the ambition, or the smarts, to form a government at the next election.
He faces his own headwinds now. Jim Chalmers continues to shine as the treasurer, and Andrew Hastie appears to be waiting for his opportunity to pounce on the leader’s job, and fight the next election.
A further complication has been the breakup, then a short reconciliation, and another breakup, of the coalition. That was only a short split, but both leaders (Ley and Littleproud) have since been replaced.
Mr Taylor has moved his party further to the right, both parties have renounced net zero targets, and have moved to combat Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, which is enjoying its own moment in the sun.
Angus Taylor is not a good communicator, and his message on immigration has been a didaster. He has flipped positions several times, and came up with a nonsensical policy that would look at potential immigrants’ “values”.
This appears to potentially alienate Australia’s two largest immigrant blocs, the Indian and the Chinese, who make a valuable contribution to Australia, and is suitably tone-deaf to Australians’ wholesale acceptance of immigration as a driver of the economy. Both those groups are known for their emphasis on education, and are also widely acknowledged as being particularly entrepreneurial.
So Taylor is now in the unenviable position of taking his party into very unpopular policy areas, in a vain attempt to limit the appeal of Hanson’s Trumpist policies. By doing so he merely sounds the old racist dog whistle.
It is entirely probable that thinking Australians will turn against Mrs Hanson, because she is only popular amongst the grumpy and the resentful, who mostly live in the outer suburbs, and it is accepted wisdom that without the cities, the coalition is doomed to forever failure.
If a good government needs a good opposition to function well, then we are at a loss in Australia. The pendulum will swing back to Labor, not so much because Labor is even competent, but because the three opposition parties are incoherent, and led by donkeys. Anthony Albanese must wake up with a smile every morning.
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