Taylor's Tough Sell at CPAC Brisbane: Apology, Boos and a Migration Number
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor took the stage at CPAC Brisbane on Saturday, 10 October 2026, the first sitting Liberal leader to appear at CPAC Australia. The Guardian
CPAC billed the Brisbane event as a chance for the leaders of the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation to pitch to rightwing voters and compete for their support. The co-headliners were Taylor, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Nationals leader Matt Canavan. Taylor went first. His office called his opening address a "keynote". Hanson spoke next on the program, and the two then did back-to-back interviews with Karl Stefanovic.
Taylor used his slot to apologise. He said his side had a role in immigration increases, pandemic spending and net zero, the pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions to nil. He said they had "made mistakes" and were now "unashamedly on the right". He told the room net overseas migration, arrivals minus departures, would rise from 100,000 to 160,000 under the Coalition plan. Parts of the audience booed. He was heckled. The Guardian
Hanson criticised the Coalition repeatedly in her own speech, urged voters to abandon the Coalition, and called Taylor a "smarmy management consultant". ABC At the same time, she left the door open to an arrangement to defeat Labor.
As of October 2026, Taylor led the second-largest bloc in parliament, while Hanson led a One Nation party room of five others besides herself. Taylor attended as Opposition Leader. Nine Canavan attended as Nationals leader and took to the stage alongside Hanson and Taylor. news.com.au
The broader context here is a contest on two levels. On stage in Brisbane, it was a pitch for the same voters. Off stage, it is a negotiation about how those votes get counted. Hanson wants defection. She also wants leverage. Taylor wants containment. He cannot afford to lose the right flank and he cannot afford to be seen chasing it.
In my view, that explains the awkward choreography. An apology plus a migration target was meant to neutralise the attack that the Liberals say one thing in opposition and do another in office. The heckling and the booing suggest the audience heard the second part louder than the first. Hanson calling Taylor a "smarmy management consultant" was personal, but the operative line was the other one: abandon the Coalition, yet consider an arrangement to beat Labor. That is competition and cooperation in the same breath — and it leaves Hanson with options while leaving Taylor with the harder sell.
What to watch from here is the language around any arrangement. An electoral understanding, where parties limit contests against each other, is not the same as a coalition agreement to govern together, and neither is the same as a confidence arrangement to support a minority government in a hung parliament, where no party has a majority. Saturday settled none of that. It simply put the three leaders on one bill, in one room, making incompatible pitches to overlapping voters, and showed how noisy that room gets when numbers replace slogans.
