Taylor takes up fight with rocket under his new team

Thursday 19 February 2026

Andrew Bolt

The Adelaide Advertiser

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On Tuesday, new Liberal leader Angus Taylor picked a team of warriors. On Wednesday, we learned exactly why they’re so needed.

We are getting poorer. Under this incompetent Albanese government, inflation is rising faster than wages. Wages in the last December quarter rose 3.4 per cent, but inflation rose even more – by 3.8 per cent. Worse, the Reserve Bank expects real wages to fall for at least another year.

The government’s economic failures now stand raw and exposed. Interest rates, power prices and government debt are also up, and productivity disastrously low.

Meanwhile, government waste is exploding – especially on dud green programs, a metastasising public service and the fraud-riddled NDIS.

Australia is in dangerous decline and never have we so needed an Opposition to hold the government to account and puncture the cocksure arrogance of Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Taylor has now delivered.

Back from exile under former leader Sussan Ley are Andrew Hastie, now shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, Liberal darling Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, in charge of small business, and Sarah Henderson, given communications.

It’s crazy that they weren’t being used, and they join another Ley exile, new deputy leader Jane Hume, in charge of employment and productivity. All four are media savvy. All four are fighters.

So is Taylor’s pick as shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, who will get under Chalmers’ skin like no one who’s opposed him before. New finance spokesman Claire Chandler is also handy in debate and more than a match for Finance Minister Katy Gallagher.

I could go on. Even lesser promotions show Taylor has rewarded those who can argue the party’s case – Tony Pasin, fighting government waste, Zoe Mackenzie, Garth Hamilton and more.

Those dumped to make way for the fighters include people who rarely said boo to a Labor goose, including Scott Buchholz, faction heavy Alex Hawke and Paul Scarr.

I know, I keep talking about Taylor’s team being warriors, as if I somehow wanted fighters rather than thinkers. But, dear God, aren’t you grateful that there’s an Opposition prepared to fight like hell as Australia sinks?

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