20 — What’s the go with Angus Taylor

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