Opposition Leader Angus Taylor resisted demands to punish Moderates who backed Sussan Ley as he revealed a frontbench designed to revive the party’s economic credentials and promoted right-wingers including Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to counter One Nation.
Deputy leader Jane Hume steps into the productivity and industrial relations portfolio, while another Victorian Moderate, Tim Wilson, will become shadow treasurer, and is already rejecting proposals to wind back capital gains tax discounts on housing, an idea he’d previously explored in a book in 2020.
“Jim [Chalmers] is pushing for a new housing tax, I’m interested in how to lower income tax,” Wilson told this masthead.
Wilson, Hume and senator Claire Chandler, a younger MP who will take the finance portfolio, stood alongside Taylor at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday, signalling the new leader’s intent to restore the party’s fiscal reputation after months of infighting and paralysis.
“Today marks a fresh beginning, an opportunity to put the past behind us and to remember that our historic strength comes through unity,” Taylor said, as he scrapped the Nationals’ suspension from the frontbench that Ley had imposed.
As late as Monday, Taylor was facing what sources described as “massive” pressure to go further in punishing the Moderates.
Small-l liberal MPs largely did well out of Tuesday’s announcement.
Wilson, a potential leadership rival to Taylor, got the plum treasury portfolio.
Factional leader Anne Ruston kept her health portfolio as did education spokesman Julian Leeser even though Right faction backbenchers wanted them gone.
Andrew Bragg added the environment to his housing job and NSW senator and key Ley ally Maria Kovacic retained her women’s and multicultural affairs roles.
The only Moderate who was sent straight to the backbench was former immigration spokesman Paul Scarr. The remainder of those dumped – Alex Hawke, Scott Buchholz, Andrew Wallace, Melissa Price, and Jason Wood – were all unaligned MPs promoted by Ley last year after they backed her as leader.
Other Moderates Kerrynne Liddle and Angie Bell were demoted to the outer ministry, meaning the overall composition of the frontbench is more right-wing. Moving up were half a dozen Taylor backers including Hastie, Price, Chandler, Sarah Henderson (communications), Phil Thompson (defence industry) and Hume.
MPs who previously backed Ley and switched to Taylor, including McGrath, Sharma, Liddle and others, received no obvious reward.
“This was genuinely about getting the best team on the field. We are too far down in the dumps to do winner-takes-all,” one MP said of Taylor’s decision-making.
Deputy leader Ted O’Brien, who supported Ley and lost his position last week, was given the prestigious foreign affairs portfolio, while Right faction powerbroker James Paterson was shifted from finance to defence.
Labor has spent the past week sledging Taylor and Hume, putting a spotlight on the pair’s failed economic policies at the last election and Hume’s involvement in a furore over “Chinese spies” and an unpopular work-from-home policy.
Hume said on Tuesday: “They already have started going the man rather than the ball. That’s just fear, because you know that when Labor smear, you can smell their fear.”
Attempting to stem the loss of support to One Nation, Taylor brought Hastie (industry and sovereign capability) and Price (small business, skills and training) back into the shadow cabinet after they fell out with Ley last year in part over their contentious positions on migration and race.
Price’s misleading remarks last year about Indian migrants voting for Labor, which forced Ley to sack her, came back to haunt Taylor on Tuesday. This week, Price said she had nothing to apologise for. Taylor ducked questions on her stance, describing her as an “an extraordinary Australian and an extraordinary human being”.
Hastie will be able to prosecute his agenda for reviving domestic manufacturing in his new industry role, which could complicate Taylor’s small government message if the West Australian MP continues to call for subsidies for Australian manufacturing.
Wilson, the energetic new leader of the Coalition’s economic team, was viewed as the best pick for the shadow treasurer role given his campaign in 2019 against Labor’s franking credits policy and his win against teal MP Zoe Daniel last year.
Many right-wingers who were critical of Ley received jobs in the outer ministry or shadow assistant ranks and will now be bound by rules on frontbenches discipline. They included Tony Pasin, the new minister for government waste, and shadow assistants Ben Small, Henry Pike, Garth Hamilton. Other younger members of the Right including Cameron Caldwell and Simon Kennedy also received shadow assistant positions, with Kennedy also the assistant to Taylor. Aaron Violi becomes the new minister for the digital economy, science, technology and cyber security.
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Paul Sakkal is chief political correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect via X or email.