AARON PATRICK: Angus Taylor just declared war on One Nation, the protest party that wants to be his ally

A couple of weeks ago, Liberal leader Angus Taylor walked out of Parliament’s Great Hall wearing a dinner suit and the disappointment of someone who just bombed.

Last night, he recovered from a poorly received mid-winter ball appearance by telling 150 guests of the Sydney Institute what Liberals have been waiting all year to hear. Pauline Hanson and One Nation are not fit to govern Australia and would wreck the economy, he said in a speech that could turn out to be one of the most important of his time as opposition leader.

“One Nation is a column of smoke,” he said. “Long on rhetoric but short on substance, One Nation’s offering is a random grab bag of poorly defined, contradictory, and constantly changing positions that leave no clear sense of who they are or what they stand for.”

Until now, Mr Taylor restrained from criticising One Nation too much, wary of upsetting ex-Coalition voters who might offended by tough talk about their new political home.

Now, there is no restraint. One Nation is the enemy. “One Nation would send us broke,” he said Thursday evening. “Deep down, their true instincts are toward big government interventionism.

“Their top four financial commitments alone could cost the Budget in the order of a trillion dollars over a decade.”

A pained-looking Senator Hanson responded from England with disappointment that essentially said: Hey, I thought we could be friends? She also made the legitimate point that Mr Taylor’s key policies copy One Nation’s, including big immigration cuts, abandoning the net-zero climate-abatement target and raising tax brackets in line with inflation each year.

“Angus Taylor says he would fund those same policies by cutting net zero — yet another One Nation policy he’s copied in the Liberals’ usual half-hearted, fence-sitting, clumsy fashion,” Senator Hanson wrote on X Friday morning.

“One Nation will scrap net zero and pull out of the Paris Agreement on day one. Angus Taylor doesn’t have the conviction or courage — or the support in his own party — to get out of Paris.”

Mr Taylor is trying to convince Australians unhappy with the Albanese Labor government they risk two things by voting for the populist party. Either the Labor Party is re-elected, or an unpredictable and out-of-its-depth One Nation ruins the nation’s finances.

By attacking One Nation on economic grounds — he argues its policies would cost average Australians $20,000 a year in extra interest payments — Mr Taylor is shifting attention away from One Nation’s strongholds in the debates over culture, identity and immigration.

Coming from behind

The Liberal leader comes from a position of weakness. The Coalition hasn’t beaten One Nation in a mainstream opinion poll since April, and has been as far behind as 13 percentage points in past month. In coming months a by-election in Perth’s outer suburbs could crystallise One Nation support in the West. If One Nation support holds in Victoria, the Labor government there is more likely to win November’s state election.

Liberal advisers believe One Nation is operating on a myth, the myth that the party has the capacity to run government. Voters seem to accept a One Nation government is feasible. A poll in June by Resolve found Senator Hanson briefly had even overtaken Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister.

One Nation is a “one-person party”, Mr Taylor said on Thursday night, an assertion he repeated in interviews on Friday morning.

The person best-placed to respond, former deputy prime minister and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, emerged from discussions on Friday about how to reform the Reserve Bank with a rebuttal.

“It’s not a one-person party,” he told The Nightly. “It’s a political movement. Pauline’s most definitely the leader but it’s bigger than one person.”

Mr Taylor’s attack on One Nation was misguided, Mr Joyce said. “It’s like if the West Coast Eagles and the Dockers ran on the paddock and started talking about Geelong — their minds are probably not in the game,” he said.

One Nation is having it both ways. While trying to win Coalition seats, notably industry spokesman Andrew Hastie’s, One Nation presents itself as a helpful anti-Labor ally. “I’m very disappointed with this,” Senator Hanson said from Britain in response to his speech. “You know, Angus, I’m not your enemy.”

Coalition strategists aren’t fooled. They know their seats are more vulnerable to a surge of support to One Nation than the Labor Party, which could save Coalition seats by preferencing One Nation last.

The election is likely a couple of years away. In the meantime, as Mr Taylor got his message out through traditional media outlets on Friday, Senator Hanson used a more modern medium to communicate her story. She had help from an iconic Australian, Paul Hogan, in the form of an animated version of the Crocodile Dundee actor.

In a six-minute cartoon posted on social media sites, Hogan experiences One Nation’s perspective of modern Australia: mass immigration, firebombed tobacco shops, a 47 per cent income tax rate, Snowy Hydro 2.0, the NDIS, a Rugby League team for Papua New Guinea and a trillion dollars in government debt.

Faced with a country very different to the one he promoted in the 1980s, Hogan takes a drastic step: he emigrates to America.