When will the Coalition give Angus Taylor the flick?

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley might have thought that by burying Angus Taylor in the defence portfolio, she could keep him from inflicting too much damage on the Coalition. Taylor’s record, after all, is an abysmal one: he damaged Scott Morrison’s government with his bizarre, enraged performance as energy minister — remember Coalkeeper? — and then proved wholly inadequate as Peter Dutton’s shadow treasurer. His performance in that role was sufficiently awful for most of his colleagues to decide he wasn’t worth the risk as leader after the May 3 election disaster.

Ley dispatched her vanquished foe from the politically important domestic portfolios, despite the absolute dearth of talent in her ranks. In defence, he could safely demand we spend 5% of GDP on defence, or whatever figure has emerged from the Trump administration lately, and rail at the litany of procurement and contract management disasters that plague the defence bureaucracy regardless of who’s in government.

But Taylor first popped his head up post-election to attempt to manufacture a proxy war with Ley over increasing female representation in Liberal ranks, by attacking quotas and accusing the government of “subverting democracy” (Taylor never explained how Labor “subverts democracy”, especially given the extensive use of gender quotas within the Liberals’ organisational wings, and the Coalition quota system that hands ministerial spots to Nationals).

The irony is that Taylor is the perfect embodiment of what women in the Liberal Party should be aiming for. There will only be true equality within the Liberals, as with anywhere else, when a mediocre woman can ascend to the same lofty heights as a mediocre man. And Taylor is the Platonic ideal of mediocrity — a man with grotesquely hypertrophied ambition anchored to zero political or policy judgment. Like so many mediocre white men before him, he hopes to fail upwards into the highest office, Abbott or Morrison style.

Taylor spent much of yesterday attacking Anthony Albanese for not having a strong enough relationship with the Trump administration. He was asked several times about the demand from the administration to know what Australia and Japan would do in the event of a war with China over Taiwan. His answer during the day was a variation of “you can’t codify a response to every possible conflict scenario. That’s not a realistic objective. But what you can say is that there is a joint commitment to peace in our region, and that peace will be achieved through deterrence, through strength, and through alliances.”

While lacking the crucial support Albanese expressed for the maintenance of the status quo on the issue, that was a suitably nebulous answer. But that changed dramatically when Taylor, foolishly, ventured onto 7.30. Without even being asked specifically about Taiwan, Taylor said about the United States, “We should have a joint commitment with them to the security of Taiwan”. When asked to clarify, he said: “We need to have a joint commitment with the United States, regardless of who the president is, about peace in our region, and that means the security of Taiwan and peace through strength and deterrence in the Taiwan Strait.”

When Sarah Ferguson asked Taylor if that was a precommitment to a US-China war over Taiwan, Taylor effectively affirmed it: “I think I’ve been pretty clear in saying that you can’t codify for every possible scenario, but you can make principled commitments to the security of Taiwan …”

Taylor then added AUKUS to the mix and explicitly linked the nuclear submarines that will never arrive with attacking China: “That commitment should underpin what we are doing in AUKUS. It should underpin our purchase of the Virginia class submarines …”

So, the Americans have their answer, at least from the opposition: Australia under the Taylor government (which he likes to imagine will exist in the future) will send our second-hand subs to fight China when asked. This was no slip of the tongue by Taylor, but a ramping up of his position from earlier in the day.

That goes even further than the commitment of Richard Marles — Labor’s Angus Taylor in many senses — that “Australia’s geography today is more relevant to great power contest than it has been at any point since the end of the Second World War” — effectively a precommitment of Australia as at least a supply base and staging post for a US assault on China.

Taylor also spent the day trying to make some sort of point about Albanese and sovereignty, although even after repeated reading, it’s not clear what he was getting at. “Strong alliances underpin sovereignty,” he said earlier in the day. “They always have through history. The prime minister doesn’t seem to understand this. He seems to think there’s some kind of trade-off between sovereignty and alliances.” Then, he said to Ferguson, “You know, the prime minister would like to say that alliances like this override sovereignty.”

While Albanese has never said anything such thing, someone else has discussed trade-offs around sovereignty — Andrew Hastie, who said recently: “We’re very much part of the integrated deterrence that the US is building in the region. And I think the government needs to be clear with the Australian people what that means. We need greater transparency. I think we need to talk about operationalising the alliance, building guard rails for combat operations, and of course defining our sovereignty.”

Oops.

So what are Taylor’s achievements so far in the defence portfolio? Lurid claims about gender quotas, implicitly contradicting his colleagues, preemptively signing the Coalition up to a US war with China, and confirming the AUKUS submarines exist only to fight China — effortlessly giving away Australian sovereignty in the process.

Given the Coalition could be back in power in 2028 — however improbable that may seem now — the Chinese regime might have to take such utterances seriously, and react accordingly. The other question is whether Ley, and Taylor’s colleagues, will take them seriously as well — and how long he’ll stay in his job if he continues demonstrating such colossal lack of judgment.