Angus Taylor, who is the shadow minister for Defence (in case you were wondering what he was up to lately) did some of the morning round this morning, where he defended Sussan Ley, by not defending her.

For my pop culture lovers out there, Selena Gomez is an expert at this – Gomez often shades Hailey Bieber on social media (Gomez was on a very torrid on-again-off-again relationship with Justin Bieber, who married Hailey on an ‘off-again’ stage) by calling for kindness from her social media followers, in a way that makes it clear she is painting Bieber as needing some pity). Taylor isn’t as practiced, but he gives it his best shot.

This morning he told Sky News:

Sussan Ley is focused on what I think all of us are focused on, which is seeing more investment in our great nation. We desperately need it. Investment has fallen off a cliff under Labor, and that includes, of course, the mining industry and other resource-based industries. We need to make sure that we see investment increasing, and the key to that is making sure approvals aren’t endless. They are endless under Labor, we’re seeing 14 years, 16 years indeed, between…[finding and approving]

So not exactly a rousing defence.

As for Barnaby Joyce, Taylor says:

Well, it is a National Party issue, but I want to see Barnaby around the table. I’ve been around the table with Barnaby throughout my political career and spent a lot of time with him around the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet table, and he has always been an extraordinary contributor and a contributor with great insight. We don’t always agree, but it doesn’t matter. That’s the point. He is a person you want to have as part of your team, and I strongly encourage him to remain part of that team

And on whether he thinks the Coalition should keep net zero as a policy (not that it matters) Taylor says:

Well, we’ll be talking about it this week. I don’t think it will be all resolved this week, but I think the starting principle here is that we shouldn’t ever accept any target which is destructive to the economy or unachievable, we’ve already rejected Labor’s bad plan for 2035 – a target of 62-70% – which is unachievable.

I mean, Labor’s barely moved emissions since they’ve come to government. Emissions are still at very close to the level they were at when I was Energy Minister, Pete, and to think that they’re going to get to suddenly, to 62 to 70% when they’re struggling at 28% I mean, it’s just not credible, and so we should reject targets that are unachievable, and we should reject targets that are economically destructive.

Make no mistake about it. I mean, Labor’s own plan, they’ve laid it out in their own documentation, requires a carbon tax of around $300 over time, and that’s about 13 times Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. That’s what they’re planning, Pete, we can’t accept that as Liberals, and we won’t accept that.

There is absolutely no evidence Labor is planning a carbon tax.