ICAC hearings and Angus Taylor’s crisis of faith, factions and funding claims rock Liberal leadership
Apart from providing Labor with even more ammo against the Opposition leader, this week’s evidence again exposes the deep factional animosity in the Liberal Party’s largest NSW branch.
Angus Taylor has not yet reached six months as Liberal leader and is now facing uncomfortable questions about links to a right-wing Christian group under investigation by the corruption watchdog in New South Wales.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption has this week begun public hearings into alleged Liberal party branch stacking and donation breaches, by examining the workings of a shadowy conservative faction known as the “NSW Reformers”.
During sensational evidence on Tuesday, Mr Taylor’s name emerged in text messages sent between Reformers members in 2021 which detailed his apparent agreement to hand over large donations.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“No payment was made,” the Opposition Leader insisted during a visit to Queensland on Wednesday when he was repeatedly questioned about the claims made in the ICAC hearing.
On five occasions the federal member for the New South Wales seat of Hume denied making donations to the group led by his close associate and Catholic Schools boss Dallas McInerney.
“I’ll let the commission do its job,” Mr Taylor told reporters, again insisting he was “not a party to proceedings” and would not be giving a “running commentary”.
However, this week’s evidence has again exposed the deep factional animosity alive inside the Liberal Party’s largest branch of New South Wales, where all but two of its federal leaders have come from since the 1990s.
At the time of the explosive text exchanges, Mr Taylor was a minister in the Morrison government, and his National Right conservative faction was engaged in a turf war with members of the rival centre-right faction in New South Wales.
Leading into the 2022 election National Right figures were busily trying to undermine centre-right faction MPs led by NSW powerbroker Alex Hawke, including its female members Melissa McIntosh and Hollie Hughes.
When Sussan Ley, a moderate MP with links to the centre-right faction replaced Peter Dutton after the 2025 election to become the party’s first female leader, she defeated conservative candidate Angus Taylor for the job.
Eventually Ms Ley was defeated by her fellow NSW MP in a leadership challenge launched by Mr Taylor in February, after another conservative Liberal MP, Andrew Hastie, withdrew from the contest.
Those who backed Ms Ley believe that if the damaging evidence that has emerged in ICAC this week was publicly known earlier this year, many Liberal MPs in the party’s centre would not have shifted their support to Mr Taylor.
Details of Mr Taylor’s links to the NSW Reformers and their clandestine activities targeting moderate members of the party will also cause further strain inside his Liberal frontbench team ahead of Parliament’s resumption next month.
“It’s going to be awkward leading a frontbench team that includes centre-right members when it’s just been revealed how you were engaged with a group that was working hard to stack branches against them,” one Liberal figure remarks.
For Labor, reeling from CFMEU corruption scandals in Victoria and the ACT that have claimed senior figures, the revelations from NSW this week are a gift for the Prime Minister and his frontbench team.
When Parliament returns next month, the Albanese government will relish every opportunity in Question Time to highlight the ICAC evidence to taunt Mr Taylor and the senior colleagues seated behind him.
Little has been heard from Sussan Ley since she was deposed as leader earlier this year, paving the way for a by-election in her previously safe New South Wales seat that was convincingly won by One Nation.
But it’s not hard to imagine the former member for Farrer has also been tuning in occasionally to the ICAC proceedings this week to watch the mentions of her successor.
Angus Taylor still has several months to serve in the top job before he can eclipse Alexander Downer’s disastrously record short stint of 252 days as Liberal leader.
If for some reason his Liberal colleagues decided before then that a new leader is needed, they would likely turn to former soldier Andrew Hastie, a Western Australian MP whose electorate is as far away from New South Wales as possible.
