Anthony Albanese spent much of the weekend mocking Angus Taylor and his track record as Peter Dutton’s shadow treasurer. Photo: Peter Dutton Facebook.
Public servants beware, the Coalition is coming after your jobs – again.
Barely two days into his new role as Opposition Leader and Angus Taylor has returned to the Liberal Party’s favourite old chestnut of public service jobs cuts.
Declaring he wasn’t yet ready to reveal all of the policy positions he wants to pursue, the new Opposition Leader was quick to discuss one of them during an interview on Sky News Sunday morning (15 February).
That one is the public service and how the Coalition still thinks it’s overblown and not up to the job.
“I’m not going to announce all our policies today, but what I will say is government has to be fit for purpose, it has to be effective,” Mr Taylor said.
“It shouldn’t be bigger than it needs to be because hard-working Australians have to pay for that government.”
The comments echo those made by Liberal Party leaders Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison in the last two federal elections, which saw them both defeated by Labor.
At last year’s election, Mr Dutton pledged to slash 41,000 frontline public service jobs, all coming from Canberra. He lost that election and his own seat.
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher immediately took to social media to highlight and condemn the new Opposition Leader’s remarks on the same subject.
“Two days in and the Coalition is back to the same Canberra-bashing policies that Australians rejected at the last election,” Senator Gallagher wrote on Facebook.
“Different leadership, same old playbook.”
Mr Taylor is already backing up the rhetoric, however, and shot off a letter on Sunday to Anthony Albanese, urging the Prime Minister to set up a bipartisan taskforce to look into government spending.
“Record levels of government expenditure are contributing to higher inflation, upward pressure on interest rates and a growing public debt burden that will ultimately fall on future generations of Australians,” Mr Taylor wrote.
“The Coalition will not consider higher taxes on Australians.”
The Liberal leader wants to help identify measures that both sides of politics can support to restrain spending.
Cutting public service jobs appears to be Mr Taylor’s first contribution to the discussion, should such a taskforce be established.
But the Federal Government doesn’t appear to be rushing to embrace the offer of a bipartisan taskforce.
Mr Albanese spent much of the weekend mocking Mr Taylor and his track record as Mr Dutton’s shadow treasurer in opposing tax cuts.
“Angus Taylor led the charge to not only oppose but to say that he would legislate, if he had been elected treasurer in the election less than a year ago, that he would legislate to actually increase taxes for all 14 million Australians,” the PM said at a press conference on Sunday.
The day before, Mr Albanese told the NSW Country Labor Conference that the Coalition’s public infighting over the past few weeks – Nationals fighting Nationals; Liberals fighting Nationals; and Liberals fighting Liberals – had nothing to do with serving the Australian people.
“And if you want proof that our opponents have not learned and will never change, then you only need to look at who they have chosen as their leader,” the Prime Minister said.
“Paul Keating famously said of Andrew Peacock: ‘The question is, can a soufflé rise twice?’
“Angus Taylor presents us with a new question: Can a soufflé rise once?
“Angus Taylor is the fourth Liberal leader in my time leading the Labor Party. And while the Liberals keep changing their leader, they never change their agenda.
“He is just another Liberal. Just a different name pushing the same cuts to Medicare. The same tax increases, the same denial and delay on climate and energy, the same fixation with talking Australia down.”
Mr Taylor was elected leader of the Liberal Party on Friday during a partyroom ballot that dumped its first-ever federal female leader, Sussan Ley, just nine months into the job.
Victorian Senator Jane Hume was elected deputy leader.
The new Opposition Leader is yet to announce the makeup of his frontbench or declare if former deputy opposition leader Ted O’Brien will be reappointed as shadow treasurer.
