Taylor sends a “razor gang” after red tape, but his $220 billion tax promise is still well ahead of the savings he has found

Angus Taylor has picked an old Canberra weapon for a new target. In an economic speech to Business Sydney on Monday morning, the Opposition Leader announced a “Red Tape Razor Gang” to go after federal regulation in the way razor gangs of past governments went after spending.

Jane Hume, his deputy and the shadow minister for deregulation, will lead it. Each shadow minister will be asked to identify rules in their own portfolio that a Coalition government could scrap, and Taylor said the process would continue in government.

“The more Labor spends, the more Australians pay,” Taylor said.

What is the actual promise?

Taylor set a target of cutting the federal regulatory burden by 25 per cent over a Coalition government’s first term, which he said would save businesses about $40 billion a year.

He told the audience business compliance costs had risen from $65 billion in 2013 to about $160 billion today. He also promised to cut the national construction code from about 2,000 pages to fewer than 100, a change he claimed could take up to $70,000 off the cost of a new home. Those figures are the Coalition’s own and have not been independently tested.

What else did he promise?

The speech pulled together the Coalition’s economic pitch ahead of the next election. Taylor said he would cap growth in government spending below the growth of the economy, restore a cap on tax as a share of the economy and target a return to surplus.

He repeated the Coalition’s plan to scrap net zero, the safeguard mechanism and the vehicle emissions standard, to more than double the instant asset write-off to $50,000, and to reverse the government’s changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and trusts. He also proposed a Future Generations Fund that would save 80 per cent of future commodity windfalls, and repeated his promise of what he called the biggest cut to migration in Australia’s history.

Does the maths add up yet?

Not on the numbers published so far, and Taylor conceded as much. The Coalition says its tax cuts are worth more than $220 billion over eight years. The savings it has named, about $31 billion over four years, are on a shorter timeframe and a fraction of the size. The largest single item in that package is $9.4 billion from climate change programs.

Taylor said more work was needed to balance the tax cuts. The razor gang is pitched as a cost saving for business rather than for the budget, so it does not close that gap on its own.

Why does it matter to voters?

Red tape rarely moves votes on its own, but the cost of housing does, and that is where Taylor aimed the sharpest number: the claim that a slimmer building code could cut tens of thousands of dollars from a new home. Business groups have long pushed for lighter regulation, and the speech was built for that room.

Asked about a recent poll showing the Coalition’s primary vote recovering, Taylor said, “You always welcome a good poll,” before returning to economic policy.

The speech comes as the Senate begins its inquiry into the government’s digital duty of care laws, and as several large Australian employers announce job cuts, which Taylor cited as evidence of an economy under strain. No government response to the razor gang plan had been issued by late Monday morning eastern time.