Opposition Says One Nation’s Economic Policies Will Lead to ‘Debt Crisis’

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor says it was with a “heavy heart” that he criticised the conservative-One Nation’s leadership credentials, arguing Pauline Hanson’s policies are not economically feasible.

Taylor’s comments come after he claimed One Nation was unfit to govern and the party’s policies—like income splitting and raising defence spending—would send the nation “broke.”

“My primary focus is on attacking a rotten Labor government, a dangerous and deluded Labor government,” Taylor told Radio 2GB on July 14.

“But I do say what I say about One Nation with a heavy heart.”

Taylor acknowledged the party’s burgeoning support and performance across multiple polls.

“When you add up even some of their policies, you get to the kind of spending that will create a debt crisis in this country,” Taylor said.

“Now, why does that matter? Because it drives up inflation, it drives up interest rates, and it makes people poorer.

“We saw the UK start to head into this at some time back, and these are not policies that will work to restore our standard of living and to protect our way of life.”

One Nation hopes to cut down the amount of tax the federal government takes, which will increase the need to cut down on government spending with plans to target the Climate Change Department, welfare services, and federal-state duplication.

In terms of specific measures, these include halving the fuel excise to 26 cents per litre for three years, from the current 52.6 cents, as well as removing the excise on beer and spirits.

Other major policies including indexing tax rates to inflation to prevent bracket creep, the other is to allow income splitting, which means couples can combine their incomes on tax returns, divide it in half, and be taxed on the split amounts.

Support for the party has surged across multiple polls for months, forcing Labor and the Coalition to counteract One Nation’s rise.

In response to Taylor’s comments, One Nation’s Hanson claimed the Coalition had copied many of her policies.

“Now they’re claiming those same policies would cause an ‘eternity of pain,'” Hanson wrote on X.

“One Nation will scrap net zero and pull out of the Paris Agreement on day one. Angus Taylor doesn’t have the conviction or courage—or the support in his own party—to get out of Paris.”