Angus Taylor does not think the Liberal party has a woman problem.

Q: I was really struck by something you said near the start of your speech. You came back to it at the end. You said, “Our team reflects the people they seek to represent.” Less than a third of your candidates are women. It’s a quarter in WA. What does that say to the women voters in Australia?

Taylor:

That’s not right. If you look across both houses of Parliament, I think the right number is 47%.

…I can’t speak to every state but I’d say across Australia, and, you know, they are an amazing group of candidates. The most amazing group of candidates I have seen in my time in politics.

I thought the 2013 crop was pretty good. I was lucky enough to be one of them. But I tell you the people we have out fighting across this country for better government, for making sure that we don’t have another three years of Labor, making sure that we do have a vision for beating inflation, for boosting growth, for backing business, for making sure we fix our housing supply, our energy supply in this country, they are the most incredible group of people and the truth is, unlike our opponents, most of them are coming from outside of politics.

But I think we need that. We need a balance and I’m a great believer that we should have that balance and I think we’ve got an amazing balance on so many different dimensions.

On the public service cuts, Angus Taylor says:

On the 41,000, that’s the growth in the public service under Labor. That’s the growth in the public service under Labor. I want to see a strong and effective public service in this country. I’ve lived around Canberra for much of my life and I think it’s incredibly important that we have a very strong and effective Canberra-based public service, but I’ve also learned through the course of my career a business career, so I’m, you know, compared to most who we’re up against on the Labor side, I’m a relative newcomer to politics, but I learned in that career that you don’t need to have a bigger team to have a better team. I want to empower the very best public servants in this country to be their absolute best.

Take away some of the bureaucracy – and I’m talk about this today – and help them to be part of the mission to make this country a better country. And I think that’s what every public servant wants to do. But right now, I don’t think that’s how the public service is working in many cases. And so we do think – we’ve got to get it back to the size it was before Labor took government and we’ve said we’ll do that in a way which does not threaten front-line services. It won’t be from front-line services and the focus will be on the Canberra-based jobs of course. I also think that some movement in and out of the private sector with the public service is what we want to see more of too.

One of the best people I’ve worked with in my career, a public servant, Rod Sims, came over from the public sector, went into the private sector, went back to the ACCC. We need more of this. We shouldn’t be frightened of having a public service that moves in and out of the public and private sectors and that mobility, I think, will make us a stronger country and it’s far more likely to achieve the kind of results that I have talked about in this speech today in terms of getting investment moving, because that is the absolute key. If we can get investment moving. We get productivity, higher real wages, we get a growing economy. We can pay for the things we want and need and we can have a strong and effective public service.

Angus Taylor, the shadow treasurer, is literally pushing for more public servants to head into the private sector – he is literally promoting the revolving door between the public and private sectors which ultimately cost more money and lead to institutional knowledge walking out the door with it – which is why so many of those people usually end up contracted back.

Over the last few months, senior Coalition shadow ministers have expressed their admiration for Elon Musk, which, I probably don’t need to tell you, is just a tad, shall we say PROBLEMATIC as he continues his coup of the United States.

Among those is Angus Taylor, who said that Musk was “doing good work” on a recent podcast.

So what did Elon-lite mean by that?

I use Starlink. I live about an hour from here and I have to tell you it has changed the way the internet works for me, my family, and people around me. It is unbelievable.

I love innovation that works, that changes the world, from the private sector, from entrepreneurs and from enterprise.

And anyone… There’s lots of farmers and others in my electorate who use that amazing technology and that’s… I think, the best work the very best work that we’ve seen from Elon Musk and I think many Australians in regional Australia will absolutely back me up on that.

This on its own is incredible, because you know who was part of a government that rolled out the NBN – which was meant to connect the regions to super fast internet – but changed that roll out for cost savings? ANGUS TAYLOR.

But we should absolutely let far right billionaires with facist and authoritarian leanings control our internet. Absolutely. WHAT COULD GO WRONG.

Angus Taylor:

“And meal deductions will give 98% of Australian businesses a tax cut when they invest in productive assets”

Angus is trying to suggest that taking your mates out for a round of golf and framing it as a business meeting is “investing in productive assets”!

In his Budget Reply Speech Peter Dutton gave this actual example – “It will allow the local real estate agency or a builder to take staff to a local cafe to celebrate a big sales event or simply to say thank you to their hardworking employees.”

I mean, wonderful, but why on earth should taxpayers be paying for a real estate agency to go out to lunch? And how on earth can they say this will improve productivity. All it will mean is workers probably have to spend more time with their bosses so they can justify claiming their dinner as a business expense.

This next bit from Angus Taylor is straight out of the Institute for Public Affairs, which is one of the Liberal party’s most favouritist think tanks ever – the IPA to Liberal party pipeline works better than most digestive tracts.

Taylor:

“Australian small businesses have been crowded out by a ballooning public service and a rising cost of Labor’s red and green tape. “

I’ll let Grog’s take this one:

Actually, one of the big booms of “small business” has been in the health and care sector – primarily associated with the NDIS. This is because care and services that used to be done by the public sector are now funded by the NDIS but done by “private sector businesses” – often care and service workers who are either sole traders or working in small businesses. Far from “crowding out” public spending on NDIS is “crowding in” small business.

Back to Angus Taylor and he is promising that a Coalition government, would, *gasp* SLASH RED AND GREEN TAPE.

All those pesky environmental regulations that barely regulate the environment are just holding up fossil fuel projects too much Taylor says.

He wants a new body in Treasury called ‘Investment Australia’ and “it’s legislated powers will include calling powers to hold agencies to account for bureaucratic delays on significant projects for our nation, implementing pathways for escalation to cabinet.”

Greg Jeicho:

Hard not to see this as a way to gut even more any environmental regulations, because the key “projects for our nation” are invariably mining ones – and certainly those are the ones Dutton and Taylor most care about.

Am guessing protecting the Murujuga rock art will just be one aspect that is framed as “bureaucratic delay”

There is one area where the Coalition is making more sense when it comes to policy and that is mental health services, particularly for youth mental health.

The Coalition have pledged $400m for youth mental health and today, expanded on that announcement by breaking down how some of the money would be spent:

An elected Dutton Coalition Government will invest $6.2 million to upgrade headspace Melton and ensure young Australians living in Melbourne’s western suburbs have affordable and accessible mental health services.  

Mental health and suicide prevention remains one of the Coalition’s highest priorities. This announcement forms part of the Coalition’s commitment to invest an additional $400 million to deliver a world-leading focus on youth mental health.  

Today’s announcement will boost capacity at headspace Melton, including through additional support workers and youth mentors, to ensure more young people can access free support and bring down wait times. This funding will support an additional 12,000 occasions of service per year at headspace Melton, allowing up to 2,500 more young people in the local community to access the support they need. 

The funding will also support headspace Melton to proactively perform community outreach activities, which will greatly benefit families living in the Western suburbs of Melbourne.  

It will provide certainty to parents that the mental health support their children need will always be delivered by a Dutton Coalition Government.  

Angus Taylor:

“We’ll bring forward more gas through our national gas plan, for example, through unlocking the north-west shelf, to decarbonise our grid and support manufacturing and data jobs into the 2030s”

Not one drop of the gas from the North West Shelf will go to Australians. ALL OF IT will be exported.

And on top of that, Woodside wants the use of domestic gas FOR its expansion plans. So not only will all the gas be exported, it will also TAKE gas from the WA domestic market.

Angus Taylor just said:

“A collapse in home ownership has profound inflations not just for — implications not just for our aspirational character, but the cost of our retirement system. The challenge requires every lever to be pulled with a focus on three in particular, security, serviceability and supply.”

But not it seems the levers that give investors massive tax breaks that give around $7.5bn a year to the richest 10%

Angus Taylor is speaking about the loosening of financial regulations (which the Coalition confused between Peter Dutton, Michael Sukkar and Andrew Bragg when they announced it yesterday.

A reminder – that it will only increase house prices because it will mean more people get loans, or get bigger loans – which will just send housing prices up.

As Matt Grudnoff said yesterday:

The Coalition is promising to reduce the safeguards that the financial regulator requires for people to get a mortgage. This will allow people to borrow larger amounts and, they reason, more of them will be able to buy a home.

But if everyone can borrow more then everyone shows up to the auction able to bid up the price. All that happens is house prices rise even faster.

Those that thought they might finally be able to buy a home realise they’re still locked out as prices race away from them. Those trying to save up watch as house price rises mean the deposit they need grows at a faster rate than they can put money away.

Just like the idea to let people access their super to buy a home, these kinds of ideas only help people who already own houses. They don’t help people trying to buy their first home.

Rather than pumping up demand for houses the Coalition should instead announce reforms to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount which would reduce investor demand for housing. This will make housing more affordable and lift home ownership rates.