EDITORIAL: Taylor needs to win back mainstream Right
The key is recognising and understanding people are unhappy with the policies of the major parties, they want their views to be heard and their concerns to be addressed.
The bleeding of former Liberal voters to One Nation has now gone beyond the hypothetical.
It has happened.
The Farrer by-election on Saturday confirmed the political landscape has changed.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.One Nation’s victory in a seat held by the Liberal and National parties since its creation in 1949 was a smashing.
And it left the Liberals desperately seeking a way back to relevance.
And so a bold plan to automatically index income tax brackets to keep up with inflation will be unveiled in Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s formal Budget reply on Thursday night.
Ahead of his speech, Mr Taylor confirmed the Opposition would fight Labor’s planned changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, arguing the measures would hurt Australians trying to “get ahead”.
Mr Taylor said the Coalition would continue opposing the proposed tax changes through Parliament and would seek to repeal them if elected to government.
He had already released plans to meet the concerns of Australians he said were “fed up with politically correct preaching on immigration” and to focus on enforcing Australian values.
His Budget reply was set to further detail his call to restore “common sense” by cracking down on migration — and linking it to housing — and migrant welfare.
Mr Taylor says Australia should only bring in as many people as it can house and that net overseas migration will be capped each year at the number of new homes completed in Australia.
A migrant would have to become a citizen to access NDIS and other welfare payments.
Even before the speech was delivered, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson claimed her party’s popularity had “dragged the Coalition kicking and screaming to finally back the Australian people”.
Senator Hanson had long been derisively lumping the major parties together under the name “the uniparty”.
Mr Taylor has now embarked on a policy path that clearly sets the Liberals apart from Labor with a bid to address areas that are agitating a lot of voters.
The Greens immediately went on the attack, claiming Senator Hanson was “living rent-free” in Mr Taylor’s head.
In some senses the Greens and One Nation are mirror images of each other on opposite extremes of the political spectrum.
The extreme positions of the Greens are every bit as dangerous and divisive as they say are the extreme positions of One Nation.
And yet the Labor Party is quite happy to accept Greens preferences to win government.
The Coalition needs to work out a way to bring together in its camp what could loosely be called the mainstream Right.
It cannot continue to let votes bleed to One Nation.
So we have arrived at a significant moment.
The key is recognising and understanding people are unhappy with the policies of the major parties, they want their views to be heard and their concerns to be addressed.
The Liberals need to work out how they can deliver that.
