NEARLY THREE WEEKS AGO, ANGUS TAYLOR SPOKE AT THE CANBERRA PRESS CLUB... I MEAN TO SAY "NEARLY THREE WEEKS AGO, ANGUS TAYLOR LIED THROUGH HIS TEETH AT THE CANBERRA PRESS CLUB..."

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Whatever the result on May 3, even people within the Liberals think they have run a very poor national campaign. Not just poor, but odd. 

Nothing makes the point more strongly than this week’s release of the opposition’s defence policy.

As things played out, its Wednesday launch in Perth was overshadowed by the death of Pope Francis on Monday. But regardless of that unforeseeable event, the timing was extraordinarily late. Early birds had started voting at pre-poll places on Tuesday. The popularity of pre-polling means that, for many voters, the tail end of the formal campaign is irrelevant. 

The Coalition regards defence and national security as its natural territory. It is pledging to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP within five years – $21 billion extra – and to 3% within a decade. The policy set up a contrast with Labor. 

So why leave its release until the campaign’s penultimate week? The opposition’s line is that it wanted to see what money was available. Dutton said, “It would have been imprudent for us to announce early on, without knowing the bottom line”. The explanation doesn’t wash. If defence is such a priority, it should have been towards the front of the queue for funds. 

That wasn’t the whole of the problem. The announcement consisted literally of only these two figures, wrapped in rhetoric. It didn’t come with any meat, any policy document setting out how a Coalition government would rethink or redo defence.

Shadow minister Andrew Hastie was at the launch, but he has been hardly seen nationally in recent months. He says he’s been working behind the scenes, and also he has a highly marginal Western Australian seat (Canning) to defend. 

But Hastie, 42, has been underused. From the party’s conservative wing, he is regarded as one of the (few) bright young things in the Liberal parliamentary party. He has been touted as a possible future leader. Given the general weakness of the Coalition frontbench, wasting Hastie has been strange. 

A captain in the Special Air Service Regiment who served in Afghanistan, Hastie has seen his share of combat. In 2018, he expressed the view that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles, saying “my personal view is the fighting DNA of close combat units is best preserved when it’s exclusively male”.

This week he was peppered with questions about his opinion (questioning triggered by a similar view being expressed by a disqualified Liberal candidate). But the issue is a red herring. 

Hastie, a former assistant minister for defence, says he accepts the Coalition’s position that all defence roles are and should be open to qualified women. In the Westminster system, the obligation is for ministers to adhere to the agreed policy – that doesn’t mean someone might not have a different personal view. 

Putting together an election campaign requires judgements at many levels, ranging from how big or small a target to be, and the balance between negative and positive campaigning, to candidate selection and which seats the leader visits. 

The length of the formal campaign is in the prime minister’s hands. Anthony Albanese has sensibly kept this one to the typical five weeks, but a couple of past PMs made bad decisions, by running very long campaigns: Bob Hawke in 1984 and Malcolm Turnbull in 2016. Both lost seats, while retaining power.

While keeping the formal campaign short, Albanese was canny in hitting the road as the year started with a series of announcements. That gave him momentum and some clear air. This also became more important when Easter and the Anzac holiday weekend intruded on the formal campaign. The Coalition looked dozy in January.

In the event of a Coalition loss, the nuclear policy will be seen as a drag. In campaigning terms, it has been a bold throw of the dice, although admittedly not nearly as bold as the Coalition’s sweeping Fightback blueprint for economic reform in the early 1990s. That looked for a while as if it might fly, but was eventually demolished by Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Elections are not conducted in vacuums. Context can be important, and it has been particularly so in this campaign. 

As has repeatedly been said, Donald Trump hovers over these weeks, and it’s the Coalition that is disadvantaged. This is not just because Dutton struggles to deal with the government’s barbs that he is Trump-like – more generally, some voters who might have been willing to change their vote appear to be thinking now is not the time. 

If the Coalition defies the current apparent trend to Labor and scores a win in minority government, critics of its campaign will be eating humble pie. Seasoned election watchers remember the salutary lessons of 1993 and 2019, when the polls were wrong. In those elections, the government of the day was expected to lose, but was returned. 

Peter Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud have both suggested the Coalition’s internal polling, which concentrates on marginal seats, is better for it than the media’s national polls.

If Labor loses this election, it will be left wondering how an apparently textbook campaign failed to nail the votes.

If the Liberals lose, their post-mortem reviewers will home in on various faults. One will be the policy lateness (not just the defence policy), meaning voters didn’t have time to absorb the offerings. Another will be the fact some policies were not fully thought through, or road tested. The consequences of the foray on working-from-home should have been anticipated. “Shadows” have often put policy preparedness behind going for a political hit on the day. 

Read more: Election Diary: Dutton backs down on working-from-home crackdown after outcry threatens to cost votes

Even now, the opposition is struggling when quizzed about its plan to cut 41,000 from the public service. Dutton says the numbers will only go (by attrition or voluntary redundancy) from those working in Canberra. The Coalition also says frontline services and national security areas will be protected.

A source familiar with the public service points out, “If you sacked 41,000 in Canberra, you would decimate the national security bureaucracy and if you exempted national security you would barely have 41,000 public servants to sack”.

If the Coalition has a disastrous loss, with few or no net gains, the criticism of its campaign will be scarifying. If it loses by only a little, the critics will say that a better planned and organised campaign, preceded by a lot more policy work, might have pushed it across the line. 

To be successful, an opposition needs a great deal of elbow grease, and so far the Coalition doesn’t look as though it has used enough of that.

https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-coalitions-campaign-lacks-good-planning-and-enough-elbow-grease-254992

APART FROM "NOT ENOUGH ELBOW GREASE", DUTTON'S LOT HAS USED TOO MANY SCARECROWS....

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

f Peter Dutton wins next Saturday’s election, one of his earliest tests will be whether to keep Labor’s ministerial code of conduct. The decision is particularly personal: under the current code, Dutton’s opaque financial arrangements are outlawed.

The code, introduced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 2022, says ministers must divest themselves of financial interests that pose a real or perceived conflict. It forbids them from holding blind trusts.

The rules were designed to restore integrity to public office and prevent ministers from shielding assets behind impenetrable financial structures.

Dutton is not the only senior Coalition figure whose financial arrangements would be incompatible with the standards now in force.

Angus Taylor, his would-be treasurer, has also built a personal fortune – not in residential real estate, but through farmland, agribusiness and tightly held private companies.

Both men have among the largest fortunes of anyone to lead the country – although the exact size and nature of their wealth is hidden by complicated financial arrangements.

Over more than two decades in parliament, Dutton has assembled extraordinary personal wealth – routed through family trusts, investment companies and real estate deals, most of it invisible to voters. Taylor took a different path but ended up in a similar place.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s assets are, by contrast, few and well known, including a house in Sydney’s inner west and a $4.3 million weekender on the Central Coast – the latter having been the subject of a sustained political attack.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has disclosed two properties, along with joint assets held with his wife.

“It’s well recognised these days that any significant asset has the potential to cause a conflict of interest. That’s why disclosure requirements exist.”

For government ministers, the rules are strict and the scrutiny formalised. For those seeking to replace them, the bar is lower – and the blind spots greater.

“To effectively address conflicts of interests of parliamentarians, there needs to be transparency in relation to their assets,” says Professor Joo-Cheong Tham of the University of Melbourne Law School and the Centre for Public Integrity. “Family and blind trusts undermine such transparency.”

Peter Dutton was elected to federal parliament in 2001 at just 30 years old, representing the outer Brisbane seat of Dickson. Before entering politics, following a nine-year stint in the Queensland Police Service, he co-founded Dutton Holdings — a company focused on buying and selling residential and commercial real estate.

Angus Taylor arrived in federal parliament 12 years later, in 2013, representing the conservative rural New South Wales seat of Hume. A Rhodes scholar and former McKinsey consultant, Taylor brought with him a deep fluency in finance and agri-capital. He was celebrated within Liberal ranks as an economic purist and policy intellectual.

“It’s well recognised these days that any significant asset has the potential to cause a conflict of interest. That’s why disclosure requirements exist.”

In the decades since, both men have built reputations on the political right: Dutton as the enforcer on borders and national security, Taylor as the architect of the Coalition’s energy and economic strategy. Less known is the wealth each has accumulated – and the financial structures that keep it out of view.

Dutton’s financial journey is long and methodical, largely rooted in real estate. He began investing in the early 1990s, acquiring properties across south-east Queensland with his father, Bruce. By the time he arrived in Canberra, Dutton was part-owner of multiple residential and commercial properties. These early ventures laid the foundation for what would become one of the more extensive personal property portfolios ever amassed by a federal MP.

Over the next two decades, Dutton bought and sold 26 properties, according to reporting by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and cross-referenced with parliamentary declarations. The total value of transactions is estimated at more than $30 million.

Properties ranged from beachfront investments and rural retreats to inner-city apartments and childcare centres. Some were purchased in his own name. Others were held through the RHT Family Trust – named for his three children – or via company structures such as Dutton Holdings Pty Ltd and RHT Investments, often managed in conjunction with his wife, Kirilly.

By 2016, Dutton was listed as the simultaneous owner of five properties: a Camp Mountain estate, a Spring Hill apartment in Brisbane, a Moreton Island holiday house, a Canberra apartment, and a $2.3 million beachfront investment property in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. Many were negatively geared. Others were rented or used for family business purposes, including childcare operations that attracted government funding.

In 2018, Dutton’s private investments came under scrutiny during his bid for the Liberal leadership. Critics raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, especially around properties indirectly tied to federal childcare subsidies. Dutton dismissed the criticisms, declaring he had done nothing wrong and had fully complied with disclosure obligations.

Then, between 2020 and 2022, Dutton began to divest. The Camp Mountain acreage sold for $1.8 million. The Palm Beach home fetched $6 million. The Spring Hill unit was sold for $482,000. A Brisbane apartment changed hands for $3.47 million. Other properties, including the Moreton Island house, were quietly offloaded. Dutton has told journalists he was simplifying his affairs. By 2023, only one property remained in his name: a 68-hectare rural block in Dayboro, purchased for $2.1 million in 2020.

Parallel to these sales, Dutton wound up several entities. Dutton Holdings was deregistered in 2022. RHT Investments, once the family vehicle for a shopping plaza and multiple childcare centres, no longer holds any assets. Dutton resigned as director of these companies years earlier but remained a beneficiary of the associated trust until 2019. His self-managed super fund, PK Super, has been closed.

In public, Dutton insists he has “no hidden assets” and is no longer a beneficiary of any trust. However, the structure of Australia’s parliamentary register means there is no way to verify that claim. What a particular trust owns does not have to be disclosed. Nor do historical transactions or passive interests. In the current register, only the Dayboro property appears under Dutton’s name.

Taylor’s wealth is harder to trace but no less substantial. Estimated at between $10 million and $20 million, Taylor’s fortune is tied up in agricultural land, corporate farm management and family trusts. Before politics, Taylor co-founded Growth Farms Australia, which managed $400 million in farmland assets across Australia. He also held interests in companies such as Jam Land Pty Ltd, which became the subject of a high-profile land-clearing investigation while Taylor was in office.

Taylor’s disclosures include a family farm near Goulburn, a Sydney investment property in his wife’s name, and stakes in entities including Gufee Pty Ltd and the AJ & L Taylor Family Trust. While these interests are technically declared, the contents of the trusts, the value of the assets and the financial relationships they enable remain opaque – and legally undisclosed.

When asked about his holdings, Taylor has said he stepped back from business management when he entered politics. No record exists of the terms of his departure from Growth Farms, and he continues to appear on property title records and company databases tied to family-linked entities.

A spokesperson for Taylor tells The Saturday Paper that “all of Mr Taylor’s interests have been declared in accordance with parliamentary rules”. Peter Dutton did not respond to requests for comment. The Saturday Paper is not suggesting either Dutton or Taylor have breached any rules or requirements in their disclosures.

Trusts play a central role in Australia’s political wealth architecture. While commonly used for tax planning or family succession, they also allow politicians to remain the beneficial owners of significant assets without the requirement to disclose what those assets are. A trust can own property, companies or shares. It can pay income to spouses or children. It can also shield financial interests from the public register.

“Family trusts can be legitimate financial structures,” says Clancy Moore, chief executive of Transparency International Australia. “But they also can be used to keep financial interests in the shadows away from public scrutiny. This can be a red flag for elected officials, as they raise questions about transparency and potential conflicts of interest.”

The public, argues Moore, has a right to know not just whether a politician has a trust but what financial interests or investments are held within it – especially if those interests could be influenced by, or benefit from, government decisions.

“More broadly, trusts are often used as tax minimisation tools and have been used by criminals to launder money,” Moore says. “So we are very supportive of moves by Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh in the last parliament tasking Treasury to explore creating a transparency register of who ultimately owns, and benefits, from trusts as part of broader beneficial ownership reforms.”

When the Albanese government came to power in 2022, one of its early priorities was to overhaul the ministerial code of conduct.

Under Scott Morrison, ministerial standards were inconsistently enforced, rarely invoked, and viewed as a political tool rather than a genuine ethical framework. Christian Porter’s use of a blind trust to pay legal fees – which eventually forced his resignation from Morrison’s ministry – became a tipping point.

Labor promised to do better. In doing so, however, it resisted pressure from some integrity advocates who argue only people with no financial interests should be allowed to serve. That, Labor argued, would restrict politics to billionaires and volunteers.

The result was a code designed to be both firm and survivable. Under the current code, ministers must divest or restructure interests that pose real or perceived conflicts, are banned from holding blind trusts, and must formally apply the code to themselves in writing. The prime minister enforces the rules directly.

The same standards were extended to ministerial staff, with a binding code of conduct written into their employment contracts – no longer a vague values statement but grounds for dismissal if contravened. The aim was to ensure transparency, prevent conflicts and preserve public trust, without making it impossible for people with careers, families or assets to serve either as a politician or as a government adviser.

Dutton and Taylor, as opposition members, are under no obligation to comply with the code because they are not in government. Were they to be, they would be required to either restructure their finances or weaken the rules that currently apply.

“Ministers, prime ministers, are held to a higher standard than others,” Labor’s finance minister, Katy Gallagher, tells The Saturday Paper. “That’s the privilege of being in these roles – you have to be very clear you’ve got no conflicts, or no perceived conflicts, about your financial holdings.”

While calls for broader reform such as the establishment of a public register of beneficial ownership are mounting, A. J. Brown, professor of public policy and law at Griffith University, where he specialises in public integrity, accountability, governance reform and public trust, believes the problem is structural.

“It’s well recognised these days that any significant asset has the potential to cause a conflict of interest. That’s why disclosure requirements exist,” he says.

“Most people’s wealth isn’t just cash in the bank – it’s in property, businesses, trusts. These are precisely the things that should be disclosed if we want a meaningful integrity system.”

Brown adds: “If you’re a politician working full-time for the public, then your private business dealings – even if they’re asleep – shouldn’t be interfering with your public duties. That’s the principle we’ve lost sight of.”

Australia remains one of the few liberal democracies where MPs are not required to disclose the value of their assets or the holdings of trusts from which they benefit. Compliance is largely self-regulated. There are no independent audits, no penalties for omissions and no serious enforcement.

“They’ve got a choice to make if they were to win,” one Labor adviser tells The Saturday Paper. “Do they water shit down, back to where they had it? Or do they sell their stuff to divest themselves of the conflicts? And how do they divest themselves of their conflicts in an appropriate fashion?”

Kate Griffiths, deputy program director at the Grattan Institute, says that while Australia still outperforms many peer nations on public trust in government, corporate influence and opacity around political power are key concerns.

“Corporate and vested-interest influence is the main area where Australians tend to be more sceptical,” she says. “Reforms that reduce the influence of money in politics and improve transparency around lobbying activity are important to give the public greater confidence that decisions are being made for all Australians, not for vested interests.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 26, 2025 as "How much are Dutton and Taylor actually worth?".

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2025/04/26/how-much-are-dutton-and-taylor-actually-worth

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.