Phillip Coorey

One of the key differences now is young people are far more politically aware than they used to be because I think, you know, principally the housing crisis has made them have to take notice of politics earlier than they normally would.

Like when I was...

I was just drinking beer and chasing girls and, you know, I didn't really think too hard about politics and I knew that if and when I decided to settle down, I would be able to buy a house, you know.

And now people are much more clued in earlier, their views are forming earlier, the fragmentation of the media, you know, formats like yours didn't exist, you know, 30 years ago, 20 years ago.

So there's a lot more opinion and news around.

And so it's a bit difficult to go back to the olden days, if you like.

You know, I think Abbott's view of the world is, and Angus Taylor's view of the world, is that if you just get back to first principles, and which have always served the Liberal Party well, and that is basically, Chris, live within your means.

You know, a government and a country has to live within its means just as much as a household does or a business does.

And one of the problems we have at the moment is this country is spending money like crazily and not living within its means.

We have a government which operates on debt and deficit.

And that limits its capacity to respond to problems.

It limits its capacity, say, when it handed down its budget last week, to offer a meaningful tax cut in return for all the tax increases because they just don't have the money.

And during COVID, when the government opened up the till and everyone got free stuff, and we've sort of really haven't snapped out of that mindset yet.

There's now this expectation that the government should always be there.

We have these

really generous sort of systems now on childcare and NDIS and paid parental leave and stuff.

And they cost a lot of money.

So I think the challenge for the Liberal Party is to sort of try and push back at that mindset.

And it's not easy.

It's just because people just, you know, they just expect stuff.