Description

In this very special episode we talk about the life, times and scandals of Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction.
 

Angus Taylor, this is your life

• Angus Taylor and his wife Louise are apparently extremely litigious.
• Taylor had a career before politics at McKinsey. His brother, Charlie Taylor is a senior partner at McKinsey.
• While at McKinsey, Taylor played a large role in setting Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest company.
• If you’ve heard of McKinsey, it might have been via the US Presidential election primaries. They have ties to US intelligence.
• Taylor has hated renewable energy for a long time. In 2013 he spoke at a “Stop these things” anti-wind farm campaign.
• Angus Taylor’s brother Richard founded a company called Growth Farms Australia, a $400 million dollar agricultural fund manager. Richard is also the director of a company called Jam Land.
• He also has interests in a whole mess of Cayman-islands registered companies with names like Eastern Australian Irrigation and Agricultural Managers Limited, along with Gufee, the Taylor family investment firm.

2013 was a big year

• In 2013, Angus Taylor was by far far the biggest donor to the LNP, giving $155,000 to the party. He was also elected to the seat of Hume.
• As a backbencher, he was strongly anti-renewable energy.

Jamming up the grasslands

• Jamland is a company Angus Taylor’s family investment fund is heavily invested in, and his brother Richard is a director of the company.
• The company was investigated by the NSW government, but the investigation went nowhere.
• The Federal Government opened an investigation into the poisoning, but Josh Frydenburg’s office started looking into whether they could secretly weaken the environmental protections.
• John Auer—a former part-owner of Jamland—was convicted of illegally poisoning 420 wedge-tailed eagles.

Watergate

• In July of 2017, Eastern Australia Agriculture was paid $79m by the federal government for water licences. This was done without a tender and netting massive profits for EAA.
• EAA then used debt loading and Cayman islands-trickery to avoid paying any tax on the deal.
• The water credits were valued by Colliers, a company previously retained by EAA.
• Tony Reid, who formerly worked with Taylor at McKinsey, was heavily involved in the deals.
• Reid at the time also worked for Growth Farms Australia, a company invested in by Gufee, the Taylor family investment fund.
• Richard Taylor (Angus’ brother), is a director at Growth Farms.

Clover Moore news

• Angus Taylor’s office a document apparently showing that Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney spent $14.2m on travel.
• The document with those figures never existed on the Sydney City council website. (the council actually spent $228,000).
• The investigation into the doctored documents was dropped by the NSW Police (Scott Morrison called the NSW police commissioner, an old mate).
• The Australian Federal Police investigation was dropped too, after they “formed no concluded view”.
• The rumour mill suggests Taylor’s wife, Louise Clegg, was planning a run for Lord Mayor.

Self-congratulatory Angus

• Angus Taylor once wrote a comment on his own Facebook post: “Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus”

Future Angus

• Angus Taylor is up to his usual tricks, pushing gas and coal as the plan for future energy generation.
• There’s also talk of a massive new gas pipeline, and an end to bans on fracking.
• Taylor is also blocking any kind of Australian emissions plan, refusing to put in place any kind of target.
• Australia’s climate policy was ranked 0 out of 100 in a global performance index.

Actions

• Change your electricity provider and buy renewable energy