If Angus Taylor is serious about rebuilding the Liberal party, he will need to focus on the issues Australians care about, writes Sisonke Msimang. The Liberal leader’s recent remarks about ‘bad countries’ and ‘bad people’ have drawn sharp criticism for their divisive and heartless nature.
Taylor’s Shameful Remarks
At a time when his party has a real opportunity to discard the playbook of the past, Angus Taylor seems woefully ill-equipped to articulate a vision for Australian goodness. This past weekend, the Liberal leader made comments about “bad people” coming to Australia from “bad countries,” claiming there is a higher risk that some bad people come from those nations. He has form: since unveiling the Liberals’ new immigration policy, Taylor has focused on winning votes from One Nation, bizarrely punching down at communities fleeing harrowing attacks by US and Israeli military forces. He argued that a small group of people from Gaza on visas present “a high risk to our nation,” and cited Iran as an example of a “bad country” that might send “bad people” to Australia.
The Human Cost
The comments are heartless. Fifty-six per cent of the 75,000 people killed by Israeli bombs and snipers in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025 were women, children, and elderly people. In Iran, between 175 and 180 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed by US bombs on the first day of the war. Yet Taylor’s approach is baffling politically. At the last election, voters sent Liberals the message that they weren’t interested in division. Women, young people, middle-aged voters with mortgages, and millennial renters all abandoned the party, as did many culturally and linguistically diverse communities in outer suburbs. But Taylor and his shadow cabinet didn’t get the memo.
Misguided Strategy
The party’s primary support base is dominated by men aged over 55. With Pauline Hanson riding a new wave of popularity, Taylor is betting he can woo some of those supporters. But polling shows One Nation is most appealing to baby boomers and Gen X, hardly the demographic the Liberals should target to grow the party. Cosplaying Hanson may attract press coverage and social media hits, but Taylor’s rhetoric will alienate those it needs to attract. Instead of addressing the party’s deep problems, Taylor seems hell-bent on exacerbating them, driving away younger voters and traditionally more social conservative communities.
Focus on Real Issues
If Taylor is serious about rebuilding, he must focus on what Australians care about: creating sustainable and secure jobs, tackling intergenerational inequality, and addressing growing poverty. So far, he hasn’t demonstrated the capacity to produce well-researched, credible policy positions on these issues. This dogged the Liberals at the last election: when it comes to policy, they have been remarkably lazy. Sowing division is far easier than solving problems, and as their infighting has shown, the party prefers to bicker than to build.
Corrosive Rhetoric
The approach is unlikely to appeal to voters, but it’s important not to underestimate the effect of such shameful rhetoric. Taylor’s words are corrosive and degrade public discourse. As seen in the US and parts of Europe, grievance yields a bitter harvest. The immediate losers are First Nations communities and migrant groups. The disrespect shown to Aboriginal veterans on Anzac Day underscores this, as does the anti-immigrant rally in Canberra where Matt Canavan appeared alongside Hanson to remind voters: “Tony Abbott and John Howard stopped the boats. They secured our borders. We’re going to do it again.” Stopping the boats led to a shameful decades-long bipartisan policy of offshore detention that damaged Australia’s global standing on human rights and created a backlog of temporary visa holders that the Coalition’s new policy threatens to worsen.
Long-Term Consequences
Taylor’s new policy and rhetoric will have long-term consequences for all Australians, not just those directly vilified. Ultimately, the Liberal party’s focus on “bad” people and countries overshadows the more important conversation about what it means to live in a “good” country. Can Australia be considered good when it deems children under 14 “capable of evil” and has laws mandating a minimum age of criminal responsibility as low as 10 in some jurisdictions? What good can the country claim when Indigenous adults are imprisoned at 14 times the rate of non-Indigenous adults? Is a country good when its government approves a massive gas export project for 50 years despite overwhelming evidence it represents a “carbon bomb” incompatible with global climate goals?
Conclusion
Simplistic terms like good and bad don’t do justice to the challenges we face. People don’t want leaders who play games and create imaginary enemies. If the Liberal party wants to win votes, its leader would do well to stop scapegoating those who come seeking peace, offering their hopes, dreams, and skills.
