Angus Taylor and the Liberal Party need to go big or go home.
Just over two months since prising the Liberal leadership from Sussan Ley, it remains unclear whether Taylor is capable of delivering on his promise to turn the Opposition’s fortunes around.
He has inherited a party that’s not merely unpopular, it’s being squeezed from both sides, uncertain of what it stands for, and still struggling to look like a serious alternative government.
That’s not simply a consequence of Ley’s woes before Taylor took over. The Liberals now face a deeper and more structural problem than any change of leader alone can fix.
They are ideologically confused and losing relevance in different parts of the electorate for different reasons. Also being squeezed out by One Nation on the right at the same time.
They need a meaningful alternative manifesto for government to be taken seriously.
A few years ago, I thought Labor might end up with a version of this problem on its left flank.
The rise of the Greens looked as though it could place Labor under sustained pressure, pulling it away from the centre or costing it support on the left if it resisted. Instead, it’s the Liberals that now find themselves fighting on two fronts.
The Liberals are ideologically confused and losing relevance in different parts of the electorate for different reasons. Above, Angus Taylor with former prime minister John Howard
They have the Teals eating into support in affluent metropolitan seats and One Nation taking votes from the right, not only in the regions but increasingly in outer suburban Australia too.
That is before even considering the internal Coalition dynamic, where the Nationals increasingly carry themselves as though they are no longer the junior partner.
This is what makes Taylor’s recovery task so difficult. He’s not taking over a temporarily unpopular opposition awaiting an inevitable correction.
He has inherited a party in genuine strategic trouble. One Nation’s rise has not been a media confection.
ABC analysis in February described it as the fastest polling rise in modern Australian politics, with the party polling above 20 per cent nationally and ahead of the combined Liberal and National votes.
Since then, the South Australian election has turned that polling into reality, with One Nation winning four lower-house seats and the Liberals reduced to five.
This is why the lazy assumption that the Coalition will simply snap back no longer looks adequate.
The Liberals are being squeezed from two directions at once. The Teals remain a problem in affluent metropolitan seats. But the more immediate danger is on the right, where One Nation is feeding off disillusionment with both major parties.
One Nation is feeding off the disillusionment with the major parties
Taylor’s own camp framed the leadership moment as change or die, and that was not simple melodrama. It was an admission of just how serious the rot had become for one of Australia’s major political party.
The Coalition now looks less like a single alternative government than a collection of competing impulses. Taylor has tried to cast himself as a smaller-government, economically serious Liberal focused on living standards, home ownership and business confidence.
But Nationals leader Matt Canavan has been pitching something far more protectionist and populist, complete with tariffs, state activism and an economic revolution built around national self-reliance.
The contrast is not a minor one. Taylor is trying to rebuild the Liberal brand as economically coherent while his Coalition partner is flirting with ideas that cut directly against that tradition. In fact, they sit more comfortably alongside some of the musings Liberal leadership rival Andrew Hastie likes to post on social media.
The economic divisions internally matter because Taylor’s whole path back to power, and the pitch he’s already relying on, depends on economics. He cannot outbid One Nation on anger. He cannot win back Teal seats by sounding like a culture warrior.
And he cannot make the Liberals credible again if the Nationals are publicly auditioning a protectionist agenda while he is trying to restore the party’s economic core.
The point isn’t that voters are poring over shadow cabinet minutiae. The point is that oppositions reveal their character early, and right now the Coalition reeks of confusion.
Once it looked like Labor were under threat from the left… But it is the Liberals being consumed by the right
Taylor has, to his credit, shown more political discipline than some expected so far. His national address on the fuel crisis earlier this month was an effort to look like a leader responding to events rather than merely a partisan critic reacting to them.
He accused the government of moving too slowly and used the moment to argue for faster oil and gas approvals and a broader case for self-reliance. Whether anyone agrees with the substance or not, it was at least an attempt to occupy national ground and project seriousness.
But that only underlines the standard he now has to meet. Taylor doesn’t need a few decent set pieces. He needs a coherent opposition project.
Under ordinary circumstances, oppositions can get away with making elections mostly about the government.
These are not ordinary circumstances. The Liberals are too weak, too fragmented and too uncertain of their own identity for that. They need a serious economic agenda, not because that guarantees victory, but because without one they will lose all respectability.
This is where Taylor’s own record still hangs over him. He and Jane Hume have both now acknowledged major mistakes from the last election campaign, including opposing Labor’s income tax cuts and, in Hume’s case, the work from home fight.
Those failures point to the larger truth: the Coalition stopped sounding like a natural party of lower taxes and limited government, and instead sounded tactical, muddled and occasionally punitive.
Taylor’s first challenge is to restore ideological coherence before he can restore electoral competitiveness. I’ve seen limited evidence of that so far. Where is the early economic policy work, or even the promise of big things to come?
The good news for Taylor is that he’s still being underestimated, says Peter van Onselen. Of course that’s in part because he’s been rather underwhelming
The temptation will be to chase One Nation too obviously. Taylor has already flagged tougher rhetoric on immigration, saying numbers have been too high and standards too low while insisting the Liberals are not One Nation lite.
That may make tactical sense in the short term, especially if the immediate goal is to stop conservative voters drifting further away. But it also carries risk. A Liberal Party that merely echoes protest politics will not recover its authority. It will simply look like a weaker imitation of the real thing.
Which is why Taylor’s job, at least for now, is not really to aim to win. It’s to make the Liberal Party look serious again. About economic management, about the size and cost of government, and about tax reform.
Serious about what it actually believes in. The party doesn’t need glib lines or the usual opposition bag of tricks. It needs something more substantial than that because it’s starting from such a poor position.
The good news for Taylor is that he’s still being underestimated. Of course that’s in part because he’s been rather underwhelming.
There is a good reason political observers have underestimated Taylor up to this point. However, most voters do not yet have a fixed view of him. The undecided answers in polls about his performance underline this point. Inside politics, Taylor comes with baggage, but outside of it he is still relatively undefined and unknown.
That gives him some room to move. The bad news is that such room doesn’t last forever. Oppositions do not get much time before they are judged either credible or irrelevant. Just ask Ley.
If Taylor can use the coming months to restore some clarity and seriousness to the Liberal brand, then even a defeat at the next election might lay the groundwork for something more competitive after that.
Because don’t forget that current polling suggests the Coalition will lose votes and seats compared to the 2025 election result, despite it having been the worst result in the Coalition’s long history.
If Taylor can’t find his footing soon, then the fresh start he promised will be remembered as little more than another leadership change inside a party still struggling to understand why voters stopped taking it seriously in the first place.
And that’s when Hastie will start agitating for generational change.
