In many ways Angus Taylor is like Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts and unsuccessful 2012 Republican Presidential Nominee.
Both are clearly intelligent, high-calibre individuals. Romney graduated with top-tier results from Harvard Law and Business School. Taylor famously did the same at Sydney University and Oxford.
Each spent a large part of their respective successful careers in management consulting – Romney at Bain & Co, Taylor at McKinsey & Co and are very data-focused and analytical as a result.
Both are decent, well-grounded people, and have wonderful families.
Unfortunately, Romney did not recognize the fundamental change that his party and nation needed to turn things around.
Like Romney, Taylor also gives the impression that what is needed – more or less – is a return to the era of George W Bush and John Howard.
For example, there is little evidence that Taylor believes any serious reassessment of Australia’s trade agreements are needed.
The new leader of The Party of Menzies has said he “doesn’t like tariffs”. Howard similarly has said that tariffs are “stupid” and “not conservative”. George W Bush continues to carp on unreflectively in retirement about the current White House being “protectionist”.
But this stale “end of history” consensus on open-borders trade is intellectually and politically dead.
What might have made sense in the 80s or 90s does not make sense now. While the much-ballyhooed Hawke-Keating-Howard governments adjusted trade policy for the times, they did not determine the best trade settings for all time.
In his speech at the recent Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio reprimanded leaders for the “foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.” In his confirmation hearing, the US Secretary of State criticized the “almost religious commitment to free and unfettered trade” that advanced economies like Australia have adopted.
What America’s top diplomat is saying clearly is that doctrinaire “free trade” is utopian, out-of-date, and foolish. A new trade realism is required across the West, including here in Australia. Continuing to allow 100% of manufactured goods from China and many other places to enter duty-free must end.
On foreign policy too, there is little sign that the new Liberal leader has moved on. Despite being previously shadow defence minister, Taylor has expressed no notable statements about the interventionist foreign policy of the last 30+ years which lead to Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. and other “forever wars”.
Rubio once used to talk in a moral crusading way too about the need to spill blood and treasure whenever some long-standing ethnic dispute somewhere on the planet flared up. But now he stresses that: “Prudence in the conduct of foreign policy is not an abandonment of our values… placing our core national interest above all else is not isolationism; it is the common-sense realization that a foreign policy centered in our national interest is not some outdated relic.”
There is little evidence of any similar sense of deep reflection, restraint, and realism from the Howard era right who often seem far more gung-ho than the Americans to get involved in new conflicts.
On immigration and social cohesion, it is also unclear whether Taylor has truly understood the problem at conceptual level. He stresses repeatedly the need for immigrants to adhere to our “values”. But that alone is insufficient glue to hold nations together.
Nations are “more than an idea”, as JD Vance memorably said in his acceptance speech for Vice President. They are a “group of people with a shared history and common future.”
Rubio said similar in Munich: “We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”
He is talking about more than ill-defined “values”.
The goal in Australia instead, as elsewhere in the West, should be to reforge a common people and culture.
On these and other areas the policy transformation required across the board is huge in Australia. The hour is also late.
I sincerely wish Angus Taylor well. There is the clear opportunity for someone super smart like him to constructively engage with the thinking of the “new right” now ascendant globally. But being dismissive or retreating to the world of yesteryear is not going to cut it. To be successful he needs to be more a Rubio, not another Romney.
First published in Daily Telegraph 16 February 2026 © Dan Ryan 2026. All Rights Reserved.
