We all have heard Benjamin Franklin’s famous advice to the American revolutionaries: ‘We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.’ Whether that’s apocryphal or actually Franklin’s words, most everyone understands the sentiment. Well, maybe not today’s Liberal party and its leader Angus Taylor.

I refer to Mr Taylor’s blast of One Nation in his recent Sydney Institute speech. Now it’s fair enough to point out that Hanson and One Nation are not offering up anything remotely focused on reducing our debt and deficit. That is undeniable. But what Taylor did was to focus on One Nation’s four big policies of a) indexing tax thresholds; b) allowing US and Canadian-style income splitting (as in married couples can combine their incomes and pay a joint tax on that which is a huge savings for single income families, and something that lets those who wish to do so to stay home with their little ones for a few years rather than put them into union-run daycare); c) upping defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP; and d) going for a huge cut in mass immigration down to ‘net zero migration’.

So, first question to readers. How many of you disagree with any of those four policies, putting aside supposed costs for a moment? I like all of them, especially the last, though the other three are also well worth implementing. But Taylor asserted that One Nation’s plan to significantly pare back the Canberra bureaucracy would not come close to covering the costs of these four policies. (As an aside, Mr Trump in the US, in a year and a half, has reduced the federal public service there massively, bringing it below what it was in 1966.) Big savings and worth doing in its own right, no?

But how does Mr Taylor get this tripling of the debt number? I have no idea. Lots of countries have all four of these policies that One Nation wants and nothing like a debt that Taylor fears. Also, what will the effects of scrapping Paris and net zero be to our debt? On both these One Nation has the great virtue of simplicity – we’re against it and getting out. The long-term savings will be huge. The Libs look shifty and equivocating, and helped get us into this climate mess. So, while government needs to be funded and taxes raised, claiming the mantle of frugality for the Libs seems overdone. Remember, the second Morrison government was the most profligate, money-printing, big-spending in recent memory in the name of completely mishandling thuggish lockdowns. So, Hanson is right that the Coalition destroyed its economic credentials under Morrison. In fact, nine years of Coalition governments left its conservative credentials in tatters.

Still, Taylor asserted that these four One Nation policies would blow up inflation (causing the RBA to raise interest rates by 3 points), nearly triple our current almost one-trillion-dollar debt, and (wait for it) force deep cuts to pensions and Medicare. Alas, playing that Medicare scare card reminds us all of a Labor attack ad. As for net zero migration, the idea that it is expensive is based solely on the left-leaning Keynesian idea that we focus on GDP, never on GDP per person. Poland, which has taken very few immigrants, has a booming economy. It is projected to surpass those of Britain and France in the not-too-distant future. Big-scale immigration here has consistently been lowering individual economic wellbeing (GDP per person) so as to prop up a worthless GDP measure – a measure that goes up almost automatically as you allow in big numbers, and one that counts government spending as automatically making us richer. As the great Thomas Sowell liked to point out, government could hire ten men to dig eighty holes, then rehire them to fill them in, and that would count as GDP twice. But none of us would be better off. GDP is a measure beloved by Labor lefties and Mr Taylor should definitely not be in the camp that thinks cutting mass immigration is a cost. To restore the Libs’ credibility, he needs to name a hard migration number, not play Labor’s game.

The other three excellent One Nation policies will cost the bottom line a big chunk of money. So, they’ll take time. But try to remember one small-government thing we got out of nine years of Coalition governments. This was the team that capitulated to Labor superannuation hit jobs and higher taxes; embarrassed itself during Covid (with huge costs to the economy that we will be paying for, for decades to come, including in terms of making huge numbers of people think they can get money for nothing trying out the new sourdough recipe while ‘working from home’); had a decade to index tax thresholds and didn’t; took us into net zero and joined in the attacks on free speech. And capitulated in the culture wars.

Worse, if you read the Australian’s account of Mr Taylor’s speech, you will have noticed that the preponderance of readers’ comments sided with One Nation. More importantly, the paper’s writer characterised the Taylor speech as first running through how awful Labor is right now (true) and then as warning that the future would be even worse under One Nation. That last phrase was not put in quotes, so I have no idea if Taylor himself suggested that or whether it was the journalist’s take on the speech. But let me be clear. It’s a nonsense for any remotely right-of-centre person to believe that a future One Nation government would be worse than a Labor one. Do you ever hear Albo and Labor attack the Greens in anything remotely like these terms? Plus, the suggestion that a One Nation government would bankrupt the country is risible and politically naive. Post-election, nothing will easily get through the Senate because the right side of politics will not control the Senate. It will likely be the Greens (ouch!) or, at best, a few crazy, left-leaning independents (slightly less of an ouch!). But we would get a big cut in immigration. We would pull out of Paris on day one. We would get a real fight on the culture wars front. Oh, and One Nation would show it actually cares about free speech, in a way that the Liberal party room hasn’t for quite some time. It is One Nation’s success that forced the Labor-lite Lib MPs to put Taylor in the top job, right?

Look, Taylor is clearly the best Liberal leader since Tony Abbott, though he’s got too many lefty MPs in the party room. But enough with the extravagant attacks on One Nation. A main reason the Libs look a lot better right now is that One Nation is shifting the political spectrum. As with the upcoming Victorian election, the future of right-of-centre politics lies in the Libs and One Nation working together. Or losing. To hang together or hang separately. If you’re voicing what Albo wants, and thinks, and hopes you’ll say, then you should stop and start thinking strategically. Set out good policies that may take a while to afford. And then start making their implementation possible. You know, the way One Nation is suggesting. Or tell us which of these four policies the Libs won’t ever do and watch the party base wave sayonara.