Angus Taylor could learn from Fraser and Menzies

The welfare and tax policies proposed by Angus Taylor stand in contrast to approaches once championed by Liberal prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Robert Menzies, writes Max Costello.

ON 14 MAY 2026, Federal Opposition Leader (and would-be Liberal Prime Minister) Angus Taylor said a government he leads would deny social security benefits (the age pension, unemployment payments, rent assistance and so on) to non-citizens, including permanent residents.

Taylor also flagged indexing the income tax scale. But he could well learn from two actual Liberal Prime Ministers.

Malcolm Fraser on the social welfare rights of citizens and non-citizens

Malcolm Fraser and his team well knew that nation states could not unilaterally determine all the rights – the human rights – of citizens (and non-citizens), as many such rights had already been defined by the United Nations (UN) since its founding in October 1945.

In a wide range of human rights “instruments” – such as conventions, covenants and treaties – the rights of a country’s people, and the obligations of that country’s government, were set out in numbered “Articles”. An instrument starts applying after a country’s government “ratifies” it, thereby making the country a “State Party” to it. One Article in each instrument has the Party agreeing to comply with its obligations.

Feeding the rich, poor fed to wolves. Well done Angus!

Perhaps it’s no surprise that Opposition Leader Angus Taylor would seek to jump on the orange bandwagon by cosying up to One Nation, and emulating Trump, given the PHONies’ recent surge in popularity and the Libs’ ever-plunging support.

In early 1976, Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser ratified the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which (see below) committed Australia to making “social security” available to everyone, not just citizens. (Didn’t Angus Taylor know that?)

“Developing countries” are the only State Parties excused from providing some ICESCR rights to non-citizens: Article 2.3 says they don’t have to provide all ‘economic rights... to non-nationals’. But all non-developing countries implicitly do have to provide all rights to everyone, including non-nationals. One such right is that of ‘social security, including social insurance’ (Article 9). Accordingly, Mr Taylor’s announcement was ultra vires — beyond power, lacking all authority.

But Article 9 has many companions. The ICESCR has so many rights-containing Articles that no State Party could instantly implement all of them, so the Covenant allows – and requires – rights to be gradually “realised” (provided), under Article 2.1’s “progressive realisation” principle.

Accordingly, Australia’s governments, having had, by now, 50 years to achieve progressive realisation, should have already provided all ICESCR rights to everyone in Australia. But they haven’t. Worst example: governments since the 1980s haven’t honoured Article 11’s obligation to ensure that everyone has adequate food, clothing and housing.

To state the obvious: most people (citizens or non-citizens) denied those rights will surely need access to social welfare.

Article 11 states:

1. The State Parties... recognise the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions.

The real assault on aspiration isn’t tax reform: It’s inequality

When aspiration pathways are blocked, the political rhetoric of aspiration becomes detached from economic reality.

According to Australia’s welfare 2023: data insights, p 91:

‘Around 2.2 million Australians [some presumably citizens?] have been without a permanent place to live at some point in their lives.’

Non-citizens need a visa to enter and stay in Australia. Some visa conditions deny access to certain ICESCR rights, despite the Government’s obligations to “everyone”. Most such rights-denied people are on short-term bridging visas.

Depending on which bridging visa variant non-citizens hold, they can be denied their Article 11 rights, but also some – or even all – of their rights to: work (Article 7); social security (Article 9); the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health — in minimalist terms, Medicare (Article 12); and education (Article 13).

Non-citizens denied both work and social security rights (money) can end up homeless, destitute and hungry — or dead.

Denying rights must be ended by the legislation of a national Human Rights Act that not only declares all human rights instruments ratified by Australia to be part of Australian law, but also makes their rights court-enforceable (at civil law). That would give everyone “a fair go”.

As to housing, so would:

a massive federal funding boost to the public housing construction rate;
advertising for rent some of the 1 million homes found empty on Census night 2021 and the 7.4 million unused bedrooms — the August 2026 census is likely to find much higher figures; and
changing planning laws to allow tiny, self-sufficient, portable, affordable homes to be installed in spacious front or back yards.

Such actions could sooner than otherwise help to ensure that everyone, even each new arrival, has or can find a secure place to live.

Why Angus Taylor’s migration cap doesn’t add up

The practical, legal and economic realities behind Labor, Coalition and One Nation migration targets are far more complex than campaign slogans suggest.

Tax indexation needs a Bob Menzies-style, steeply progressive tax scale to be viable

Indexing the federal income tax scale to prevent stealthy tax increases via “bracket creep” is good policy, but the only type of scale that makes it work is what the Liberal Party’s founder chose in 1950.

After winning the 1949 Election, Liberal Leader Robert Menzies, on becoming Prime Minister, sensibly chose to maintain his Labor predecessor’s income tax scale, which was steeply progressive — via 29 tax brackets.

But as well, the top bracket’s tax rate (75%) didn’t apply until incomes reached 18 times average full-time male earnings, so the scale was fair. That’s the positive lesson for Angus Taylor.

Unfortunately (here’s the negative lesson), Menzies didn’t “index” his scale — regularly increase the brackets’ dollar range boundaries to match earnings increases. So, as incomes rose during the 1950s and beyond, more and more taxpayers’ earnings moved up into higher brackets.

Treasury’s 1985 Draft White Paper on tax reform, looking back to the Menzies era, noted that, by 1984–85, the then top marginal rate was cutting in at only 1.6 times average full-time male earnings.

Such “bracket creep” made the scale ever more unfair, but also raised more and more revenue.

The current income tax scale (see chart below) is not fair enough to be “indexable”: it’s barely progressive (five brackets) and the 45% top rate cuts in at 1.7 times average full-time male earnings ($111,685 in 2025).

Further, for a scale to be indexable, it must also raise enough revenue to offset the total absence of bracket creep’s sneaky revenue hikes.

Albanese's Labor Government could well propose to “do indexation better”. How? By legislating a “Menzian” (steeply progressive and fair) tax scale.

But as well, that scale should not only give a set of reduced tax rates to low and lower middle income earners (the majority of income tax payers), who thus keep more of their own income to cover cost of living increases (a vote-winner), but also give higher earners a set of tax rate increases they can afford and that are essential to maintain a sufficient inflow of revenue.

There’s now a yawning and growing gap between rich and poor, as the Australian Financial Review ‘Rich List’ for 2026 recently revealed:

‘The top 178 rankings on the... Rich List carry estimated fortunes of $1 billion and above. The combined fortunes of all 200 entries... now sits at $707.25 billion — a step up from last year’s $667.8 billion, and a giant leap from the collective $197.3 billion... just 10 years ago.’

Accordingly, the top rate of say, 75%, shouldn’t cut in until income is in the tens of billions. At the announcement of such a scale, the how and when of indexation would need to be explained. And a unique promise would be made: “Via indexation, my government’s scale will be permanently fair.”

The rationality, equity and visionary nature of such a scale could confound the Opposition.

Max Costello LLM is a retired WorkSafe Victoria prosecutions solicitor and lecturer in Employment Law at Melbourne’s RMIT University. He has co-written submissions to Senate committees concerning asylum seeker health and safety and is the author of 'Offshore Crimes'.