Coalition concerns reignite following Angus Taylor’s scant policy offering

Angus Taylor has been unable to say whether the Coalition would increase defence spending, repeal price caps on coal and gas, or by how much it would reduce net overseas migration.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

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Opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor has been unable to say whether the Coalition would increase defence spending, repeal price caps on coal and gas, or by how much it would reduce net overseas migration, leaving the Coalition open to criticism it has a scant agenda just weeks out from a federal election.

Jane Hume, the opposition fin­ance spokeswoman, also would not commit to delivering income tax cuts for workers, despite vowing “lower and simpler and fairer taxes under a Coalition government”.

Allaying concerns that the ­Coalition was not providing enough policies, Peter Dutton on Sunday foreshadowed a “big announcement” in his budget reply address, slated for Thursday, which backbenchers regard as an opportunity to reset after a challenging few weeks for the Opposition Leader’s campaign.

“We’ll outline the next stage of what we believe is required to get our country back on track,” Mr Dutton said in Parramatta after unveiling an $8.5m spend for establishing Australia’s first Hindu school.

Earlier on Sunday, however, the concerns of Coalition MPs were reignited after Mr Taylor refused to provide key details of the opposition’s policies, including whether it would repeal price caps for coal and LNG in electricity generation. “I won’t announce our policy ahead of time,” he told the ABC, even as the Coalition has previously opposed the measure.

On defence expenditure, he was similarly scant on detail, and said the Coalition was yet to determine its position, despite fervent speculation it planned to increase such spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

Asked on seven occasions to nominate a specific costing for the Coalition’s taxpayer-funded tilt towards nuclear energy, Mr Taylor would not provide a figure, instead claiming the total cost of the opposition’s proposal would be 44 per cent lower than Labor’s plan.

Mr Taylor was also pressed on how the Coalition could afford to match many of Labor’s spending commitments, which have totalled almost $40bn since December’s mid-year budget update, to which he replied that the Coalition had opposed $100bn in previous Labor spending commitments.

Yet given much of this spending has been allocated to legislated off-budget funds, these commitments will be difficult to unwind and would therefore be difficult to translate to savings measures.

One Coalition MP described Mr Taylor’s performance on Sunday as “very strange”, questioning his grasp of the opposition’s previously announced policies.

“You’ve got to know your numbers, that’s very important,” the MP said, also pointing to several occasions when Mr Taylor was seemingly at odds with Mr Dutton during the ABC interview.

“It’s very hard to contradict your leader … it might not be an accident if it happens three times in a week.”

Mr Taylor’s performance was “what you’d expect”, another opposition MP commented dryly.

The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton. On Sunday he foreshadowed a ‘big announcement’ in his budget reply address, slated for Thursday. Picture: Jeremy Piper

After The Australian revealed earlier this month that there was growing discontent within ­Coalition ranks regarding Mr Taylor’s performance, a different ­Coalition MP said the revelations had sparked a “witch hunt” to determine who had privately briefed this masthead. “It was very ugly internally,” they said.

Another MP lamented that while it had “not been the greatest couple of weeks” for the opposition, they remained confident that the Coalition could claw back lost ground once the campaign commenced.

Mr Taylor’s recent performance had not registered among voters, they claimed, arguing Anthony Albanese’s stewardship of the economy still remained front of mind for the electorate which had been crunched under elevated interest rates and high inflation.

Earlier in his pre-budget interview, Mr Taylor also signalled that the Coalition would announce its planned targets for net overseas migration after the federal budget.

The comments suggest the ­Coalition will take a net overseas migration target to the federal election, but stand in contrast to remarks made by Mr Dutton, who on Thursday denied he had dumped a previous pledge to cut the net overseas migration intake to 160,000 next financial year.

“I haven’t walked that back at all,” Mr Dutton told Nine Radio.

Asked about that policy on Sunday, Mr Taylor said the ­Coalition would be guided by fresh forecasts for net overseas migration contained within Tuesday’s federal budget.

“We’ll put out the numbers when we see the budget,” Mr Taylor said, before committing that the Coalition’s target would represent a reduction on planning levels announced by Labor, which have forecast net overseas migration at 260,000 people for the next financial year.

Given, however, that approximately 60 per cent of those awarded permanent visas are already in Australia, migration experts believe the Coalition’s proposed cut to visa numbers will have only a limited impact on overall intake.

Also speaking on Sunday, Jim Chalmers refused to reveal whether the budget’s net migration forecasts would be revised higher, as Labor has struggled to contain a record surge in foreign arrivals and lagging international departures.