Taylor says Coalition ‘breached trust’ during Covid pandemic and must rebuild it
Josh Butler
Angus Taylor claims Coalition governments, including one in which he was a senior minister, “lost trust” with the electorate through the Covid pandemic, saying they “allowed big government to become accepted”.
The opposition leader also says he’d never “attack” One Nation voters, claiming his focus is on fighting Labor.
Taylor was on 2GB this morning, saying the voting public was “angry” about politics and the economy, including standards of living and taxes. He admitted the Liberal Party had to rebuild trust among voters, but that while the Coalition’s vote was previously “in free fall”, Taylor claimed now “the Coalition is solid as a rock” – despite its primary vote falling to just 17% in one poll published today.
“It’s going to take time because people need to rebuild trust in their Coalition, in a Liberal party, in a National party that has breached trust,” Taylor claimed.
In an interview with The Australian over the weekend, Taylor claimed the pandemic was one of the times the Coalition and Australian governments breached trust with voters.
He reiterated the message on 2GB this morning:
We allowed big government to become accepted, and we don’t believe in big government. Australians felt that government got too big, too heavy, too close to their daily lives.
We needed to come out of Covid with a strong plan to pare back on both spending and the role of government in people’s lives.
I think that is, widely accepted on our side of politics now. But that did breach trust and we’ve got to rebuild that trust and rebuilding trust takes time.
Key events
Students facing a ‘double squeeze’ as cost of living sky rockets
With independent MP, Monique Ryan, introducing her bill to move the indexation date on university Hecs debts, Universities Australia has released new analysis showing just how far students have gone backwards over the last five years.
They’ve tied the analysis to the year the controversial job ready graduates scheme was introduced by the Morrison government – 2021.
The analysis shows in that time, student rents have increased 40%, groceries are up 27% and fuel is up 43%. And students are now spending just over 50% of their weekly expenditure on housing.
The body’s chief executive, Luke Sheehy, said it shows students are being hit on all sides – from the rising cost of living, and increasing student debt. Universities Australia has long called for job ready graduates to be abolished.
He said:
Students are paying more for rent, more for groceries, more for electricity and more for fuel. At the same time, the government continues to punish students with some of the highest university fees in Australia’s history.
That’s the double squeeze students are facing. They are paying more to live and more to study, yet they’re still unable to keep pace with the rising cost of living.
‘They’re going after our kids’ Greens slam fossil fuel industry marketing to children
The Greens have also joined the call for a Senate inquiry into the fossil fuel industry marketing to children.
Greens senator, Steph Hodgins-May has accused the industry of copying the big tobacco strategy.
She says the problem is “likely far greater than this report reveals”.
‘Get them young’ was Big Tobacco’s strategy, and it appears the fossil fuel industry has copied the playbook from cradle to career. They’re going after our kids.
Labor approves new coal and gas projects with one hand, takes millions in fossil fuel donations with the other, and stands by while these corporations gain access to Australian classrooms.
This is about social licence. These companies know their business model faces growing public scrutiny, so they’re investing in the next generation’s perceptions.
Achol Arok
Maroubra beach in Sydney’s east reopens after shark sighting
A beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has reopened within an hour of being closed following another shark sighting.
Maroubra beach was shut on Monday morning after Surf Life Saving NSW drones spotted a shark at 8.40am.
The beach was closed for less than an hour before being declared safe again.
Surrounding beaches in the Randwick council area, including Clovelly and Coogee, remain open.
The NSW government on the weekend announced additional dawn-to-dusk drone patrols as part of a $34m anti-shark program:
‘Let kids be kids’: climate group slams fossil fuel marketing targeting children
The Australian Conservation Foundation has called for a Senate inquiry following a report into the fossil fuel industry’s marketing towards young children.
A report by Comms Declare found coal, oil and gas companies are reaching kids through schools, museums, sporting clubs, early learning programs and scholarships.
The ACF’s climate and energy program manager, Gavan McFadzean, called gas giant Woodside’s sponsorship of the Nippers “particularly revolting”.
How can a corporation whose key product directly causes ocean warming be allowed to sponsor a children’s lifesaving program?
Let kids be kids. Australian children should be able to learn, play and grow without companies Glencore, Woodside and Santos misusing educational spaces to build trust and social licence.
Monique Ryan calls Labor’s gambling reforms ‘milksop’, saying she ‘won’t support a half measure’
The independent MP Monique Ryan is heavily critical of the government’s gambling reforms – which will be introduced to parliament this week.
For a recap of what the changes are – read here.
Ryan says evidence shows a partial ban won’t work and accuses the government of folding on the reforms.
A 2019 report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), on the impact of government restrictions on gambling advertising during live sport established in 2017, found a partial ban can lead to more advertising.
Ryan says she won’t be supporting the bill (although she sits in the House, where the government has a majority).
The legislation that the government will be proposing will be inadequate. It will not protect young Australians from gambling harm. Saying that we’ll only have three ads an hour instead of five or six or seven, there’s no evidence that that will significantly decrease the harm to young people from gambling advertising
I can’t support something that won’t work, and I won’t support a half-measure which looks like a wave in the right direction but won’t achieve the desired result. And so I won’t support the legislation in its current form. I couldn’t do that.
Monique Ryan pushes to move Hecs indexation date: ‘You wouldn’t accept that on your mortgage’
The independent MP Monique Ryan will introduce a bill today to move the Hecs indexation date.
Why? Because at the moment, if you have a Hecs debt, you’ll be making payments out of your paycheque over the course of the year, but none of that is actually applied to the balance until after your tax return is submitted, which is in July.
But indexation – which increases the debt in line with either inflation or the wage price index – is added before your payments are applied. Which means you’re being indexed on debt that you’ve already paid off.
If that date was changed, it would save university graduates $3.2bn over ten years, according to costings by the Parliamentary budget office, commissioned by Ryan.
She told RN Breakfast this morning:
You end up paying indexation, which is effectively interest, on debt that you’ve already repaid. You wouldn’t accept that on your credit card, you wouldn’t accept on your mortgage, but we’re expecting graduates to basically end up paying back more than they should on their HECS debts.
I asked [education minister] Jason Clare about this in the House a couple of weeks ago and he can’t give us a time frame. He acknowledges the unfairness of the indexation. He’s done that before. He’s also acknowledged the unfairness of the Job Ready Graduate Scheme, which doubled the cost of arts, law, finance, and economics degrees under Scott Morrison, but which has now been in place longer under Anthony Albanese.
Taylor says Coalition ‘breached trust’ during Covid pandemic and must rebuild it
Josh Butler
Angus Taylor claims Coalition governments, including one in which he was a senior minister, “lost trust” with the electorate through the Covid pandemic, saying they “allowed big government to become accepted”.
The opposition leader also says he’d never “attack” One Nation voters, claiming his focus is on fighting Labor.
Taylor was on 2GB this morning, saying the voting public was “angry” about politics and the economy, including standards of living and taxes. He admitted the Liberal Party had to rebuild trust among voters, but that while the Coalition’s vote was previously “in free fall”, Taylor claimed now “the Coalition is solid as a rock” – despite its primary vote falling to just 17% in one poll published today.
“It’s going to take time because people need to rebuild trust in their Coalition, in a Liberal party, in a National party that has breached trust,” Taylor claimed.
In an interview with The Australian over the weekend, Taylor claimed the pandemic was one of the times the Coalition and Australian governments breached trust with voters.
He reiterated the message on 2GB this morning:
We allowed big government to become accepted, and we don’t believe in big government. Australians felt that government got too big, too heavy, too close to their daily lives.
We needed to come out of Covid with a strong plan to pare back on both spending and the role of government in people’s lives.
I think that is, widely accepted on our side of politics now. But that did breach trust and we’ve got to rebuild that trust and rebuilding trust takes time.
Coalition’s poor polling is a ‘complete distraction’, Tim Wilson says
The shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, has also weighed in to the Coalition’s poor polling today.
Newspoll recorded Labor’s primary vote rising from 30% to 33% as One Nation went down from 31% to 29%, while the Coalition faces a historic low of 17%.
Wilson, speaking to journalists this morning in parliament, called the polling a “complete distraction”.
I think that’s a complete distraction. We need to make sure that we’re ending the corruption, we’re stopping inflation, we’re cutting taxes, and we’re backing small business …
I think the focus of the Australian people is their anger with their government, and as a consequence, they’re looking around and trying to make sure that there’s an alternative. There’s more work to be done and no one’s trying to pretend otherwise.
As the Nationals leader Matt Canavan said this morning, “the herd is moving … it’s just not going through the right gate for us at the moment”.
Angus Taylor should ‘absolutely’ remain Liberal leader at the next election, Jane Hume says
Despite the Coalition still going backwards in the polls (today hitting a rock-bottom 17% primary) Hume tries to remain jovial, and backs in her leader, Angus Taylor.
She says Taylor’s only been in the role for around 17 weeks now, and has come up with some credible policies, they just need to be sold to the public.
She adds that Taylor has prosecuted the government’s budget “exceptionally well” – despite Labor experiencing a slight uptick in today’s polls.
In that period of time, we’ve been pretty upfront that we’ve got a long road to go. We know it’s been, we know it’s going to be tough. We breached trust with Australians …
Our job is to make sure now that people can see that Angus Taylor is leading not just a credible team but has a credible plan to put Australia back in the right direction
Host, Mel Clarke asks whether Taylor should remain leader all the way until the next election, Hume says, “yes, absolutely”.
‘Halt it and deal with it’: Jane Hume calls for pause on Victoria’s Big Build sites
The deputy Liberal leader, Jane Hume, says Victoria’s Big Build projects should stop to weed out all corruption.
The Nine newspapers have reported an attempted clean up of Victoria’s Big Build has failed to stop large sums of money flowing from state and federally funded projects to the underworld.
Hume, sitting in the hot seat on RN Breakfast after Anika Wells, says there should be a Victorian royal commission into the issue.
I do believe that you need to remove the corrupt elements before you can continue to give taxpayer money to these projects.
Asked whether its feasible to leave strategic infrastructure projects with no timeline, Hume says:
I personally think halting it and dealing with it is the only way to do it. And the best way to deal with that would be through a royal commission in Victoria. But at a federal level, we’ve given the Albanese government an option to have an inquiry about corruption in the construction industry and they have voted against it over and over again.
