Taylor shuts door on One Nation coalition after Bragg opens it

The Opposition Leader has categorically rejected a governing pact with One Nation after Senator Andrew Bragg advocated electoral “pragmatism”, exposing the strategic tensions confronting a Coalition under pressure from its conservative rival.

The Hon Angus Taylor MP has ruled out forming a coalition with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, moving quickly to extinguish speculation generated by one of his own frontbenchers.

Speaking at Brookfield in Brisbane’s western suburbs on Monday, the Leader of the Opposition declared that the Liberal and National parties’ longstanding partnership would remain the Coalition’s exclusive governing arrangement.

“There will be no coalition with One Nation,” Mr Taylor said.

“Our coalition is with the National Party, and that’s the coalition that can deliver the strong plan and the strong team to get this country back to where it needs to be.”

The unequivocal intervention followed remarks by Shadow Minister for Housing and Productivity Senator Andrew Bragg, who had declined during a breakfast television interview to foreclose the possibility of a future agreement with One Nation.

“We would definitely like to work out whoever would be interested in being in a coalition with us if that’s what the numbers were. Of course. We’re not crazy,” Senator Bragg said.

He subsequently argued that the Liberal Party would need to be “pragmatic” when confronted with the parliamentary arithmetic produced by the next federal election.

Asked whether Senator Bragg had misspoken, Mr Taylor avoided directly rebuking his colleague but reiterated the official position.

“What is very clear is we’re not going to form a coalition with One Nation, and I know Andrew knows that,” he said.

Senator James Paterson also sought to contain the dispute, maintaining that Senator Bragg had principally been discussing preference arrangements and that the Liberal Party was “not in the market for any other coalition partners”.

Coalition’s strategic fault line exposed

The exchange illustrates the increasingly difficult distinction between electoral co-operation and political repudiation as One Nation competes with the Coalition for a substantial portion of the conservative vote.

Mr Taylor has spent recent weeks attempting to establish that distinction in emphatic terms. He previously described One Nation as a “one-person show” that was “not fit to govern” and argued that its economic program would exacerbate inflation, expand government expenditure and expose households to higher interest rates.

Senator Bragg’s comments, however, demonstrate that the matter is not entirely settled within Liberal ranks. Even if a formal coalition remains prohibited, questions concerning preferences, minority-government support and post-election negotiations are likely to recur while the two parties compete over an increasingly fragmented centre-right constituency.

The predicament is sharpened by polling. A July Newspoll placed Labor and One Nation level on 30 per cent of the primary vote, with the Coalition on 19 per cent. Other surveys have produced a less dramatic result, but collectively indicate that One Nation is no longer merely drawing protest votes at the political periphery; it is contesting constituencies that the Liberal and National parties have historically regarded as their own.

Mr Taylor’s response was therefore more than an exercise in internal discipline. It sought to reassure voters that the Coalition remained a coherent prospective government while denying One Nation the institutional legitimacy that would accompany recognition as a possible governing partner.

Forrest returns for Ryan

The press conference also marked the return of Maggie Forrest as the Liberal National Party’s candidate for Ryan.

Ms Forrest contested the inner-Brisbane electorate at the 2025 federal election, receiving 34.61 per cent of the primary vote before losing to Greens incumbent Elizabeth Watson-Brown by 53.27 to 46.73 per cent after preferences, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

Mr Taylor praised Ms Forrest’s legal and private-sector experience, presenting her re-endorsement as representative of a broader Coalition effort to recruit candidates with careers beyond party and union structures.

Ms Forrest framed her candidacy around parental autonomy and childcare choice.

“Parents know their children best and know what’s best for their children, and they should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to childcare,” she said.

Her selection provides the LNP with an experienced candidate in a seat that remains electorally complex. Ryan was once a dependable Liberal electorate but has become a contest between the LNP, Labor and the Greens, with preference flows proving decisive.

Taylor demands further childcare safeguards

Joined by Maddie Simmons, co-founder of Child Care Choices, Mr Taylor used the appearance to press the Government over childcare regulation and worker screening.

He called for a nationally consistent Working with Children Check system and proposed a publicly accessible “perpetrator register”, arguing that parents required greater transparency about those employed in early childhood settings.

“Parents need to know what they’re getting when they take their kids to childcare, and right now that is not the case with this government,” he said.

The Opposition Leader accused the Government of failing to complete reforms it had said would be advanced by the end of 2025. The institutional position is, however, more developed than his criticism alone might suggest.

Commonwealth, state and territory governments endorsed a National Agreement on Working with Children Checks in November 2025. That agreement included mutual recognition of adverse decisions and a National Continuous Checking Capability intended to provide near-real-time monitoring of changes to workers’ criminal histories.

Separately, the National Early Childhood Worker Register became operational in February 2026. Providers are required to record who works at their services, enabling regulators to identify where workers are employed and respond to emerging risks.

Those initiatives do not amount to the completely uniform national Working with Children Check regime advocated by Mr Taylor. Nor is the regulator-facing worker register equivalent to his proposed publicly accessible perpetrator register. The latter would require careful consideration of evidentiary thresholds, privacy, procedural fairness and the distinction between criminal convictions, regulatory findings and untested allegations.

Mr Taylor did not provide detailed design parameters for the proposal during the press conference.

Conditional support for extending fuel relief

Mr Taylor was also pressed on whether the Government should extend the temporary reduction in fuel excise, which is scheduled to expire on 2 August.

The existing measure reduces excise on petrol and diesel by 16 cents a litre. Its expiration comes as renewed international instability places upward pressure on oil and transport costs.

Mr Taylor stopped short of giving unconditional support to an extension but said the Coalition would work constructively with the Government on any proposal.

“It cannot be inflationary,” he said, arguing that additional relief should be offset by reductions in what the Opposition regards as wasteful government expenditure.

The formulation gives the Coalition room to support continued relief while maintaining its wider contention that fiscal policy has contributed to persistent domestic inflation. It also transfers the immediate burden of producing a fully costed proposal to the Government.

Albanese urged to confront Trump over tariffs

On trade, Mr Taylor said Prime Minister the Hon Anthony Albanese MP should seek a direct meeting with United States President Donald Trump following the imposition of a new 12.5 per cent tariff on many Australian imports.

The levy, which took effect on 24 July, followed a United States investigation alleging that Australia and dozens of other economies had not done enough to prevent goods produced with forced labour from entering their supply chains. Several important product exemptions remain, but the measure nevertheless represents a deterioration in Australia’s trading position.

Mr Taylor described the tariff as unjustified and incompatible with the expectations of a longstanding strategic ally.

“We’ve fought alongside the United States in every major war since Federation,” he said. “He needs to sit down with the President and get an exemption for Australia.”

The Government has also rejected the tariff and continues to advocate for its removal. The substantive political disagreement is therefore less about whether the levy is warranted than whether the Prime Minister’s diplomatic approach has been sufficiently forceful and personally engaged.

Opposition consolidates its electoral argument

Mr Taylor ranged across the economy, migration, energy policy and the Labor National Conference, but the unifying purpose of the appearance was political definition.

He portrayed Labor as managerial but ineffective, One Nation as electorally potent but unsuitable for government, and the Coalition as the only opposition force capable of translating public dissatisfaction into an administratively credible alternative.

That argument will become progressively harder to sustain if Liberal frontbenchers continue to speculate publicly about accommodation with the very party their leader is attempting to disqualify.

Mr Taylor has now stated the position without qualification: the Nationals remain the Coalition’s sole partner, and One Nation will not be invited inside the governing arrangement.

Whether all Liberal parliamentarians regard that prohibition as permanently settled is another matter.