Opposition MPs appeared rejuvenated on Monday as Angus Taylor took the leader’s chair for his first Question Time since taking over the Liberal party’s top job.
However, the legacy of his predecessors loomed large inside Parliament.
Weeks after ousting the party’s first female leader Sussan Ley, Mr Taylor also appeared in good spirits in the chamber as he regularly interacted with his reshuffled frontbench.
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Unlike the final difficult days for his immediate predecessor, the new opposition leader regularly interacted with the parliamentary team around him, including leadership rival Andrew Hastie.
His relationship with Nationals leader David Littleproud also seemed warmer, suggesting a more unified coalition leadership team than the on-again, off-again marriage under Ms Ley. Mr Taylor also shared several light moments across the dispatch box with the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who began Question Time by congratulating his new opponent and paying tribute to Ms Ley for her “grace and dignity” since being deposed.
The two leaders laughed together when Mr Taylor clocked that both Jim Chalmers and Mr Albanese were celebrating their birthdays on Monday.
The easy interaction contrasted those shared by the Labor leader and Ms Ley during her nine-months at the helm.
A period where the Prime Minister had appeared more restrained and perhaps not certain of how to deal with the first female opposition leader, with little back-and-forth between the pair.
South Australian MP Tony Pasin was a vocal addition to the boisterous front bench, while his neighbour — the recently promoted Aaron Violi — was booted early on from the House for interjection by Speaker Milton Dick.
Visually, the Coalition bench remained notably female-lacking compared with Labor’s — with just Angie Bell and Melissa McIntosh in prominent positions among the suits. They say keep your enemies close and Mr Taylor has done just that by keeping leadership aspirant Mr Hastie just behind him. Mr Hastie delivered pointed questions, but overall the Coalition missed a chance to have a more targeted attack on Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on the ISIS brides. Several Coalition MPs were quick to reinforce Mr Taylor’s new status after Labor kept labelling him the member for Hume rather than Opposition leader.
Kevin Hogan and Dan Tehan interjected to criticise Labor members for referring to Mr Taylor at the dispatch box while several hecklers echoing the complaint.
It marked a contrast from when Labor figures pointedly referred to Ms Ley as “Liberal leader” rather than “Opposition Leader” at the beginning of her tenure. On the government side, Mark Butler observed that the Prime Minister has now faced three opposition leaders — Peter Dutton, Ms Ley and Mr Taylor — across the dispatch box since he took the top job in 2022. Dr Chalmers similarly noted he has now also had three shadow treasurers and gleefully quoted from sections of the Liberal Party’s election review that were critical of Mr Taylor’s tax policies, after the confidential document was leaked to The Nightly.
That 64-page document gave new internal party insights into the disastrous 2025 campaign by Mr Dutton as former opposition leader, where the Liberals recorded its lowest vote on record.
At one point, Mr Albanese quipped that it was hard to keep up with the members moving “back and forward, back and forward,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Coalition’s shifting seating arrangements.
Throughout Question Time, the new Taylor-led opposition focused entirely on the controversy of ISIS brides returning to Australia, previewing its performance an hour beforehand in a press conference with members of the local Yazidi community.
However, under intense questioning from reporters about the Coalition’s hardline stance, Mr Taylor snapped back at one journalist’s interruptions, suggesting the inquisitive Press Gallery member was an “activist”.
Mr Taylor recalled atrocities committed by ISIS and said people in his southwestern Sydney electorate who did not want to see “sympathisers return”, before telling Saturday Paper journalist Jason Koutsoukis “can I finish?”.
“Either you’re an activist or a journalist, you need to make up your mind. You need to make up your mind which one you are,” he continued, before winding up the press conference to prepare for his own Question Time debut.
