Angus James Taylor (born 30 September 1966) is an Australian politician who has served as the leader of the Opposition since 2026, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party. He has been the member of Parliament (MP) for the New South Wales division of Hume since 2013, and previously served as a minister in the Turnbull and Morrison governments.
Born in Cooma, Taylor was raised in rural New South Wales. He graduated from the University of Sydney and New College, Oxford, attending the latter as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to entering politics, he worked as a management consultant and in agribusiness. Taylor was elected to the House of Representatives at the 2013 federal election, becoming an assistant minister in the Turnbull government in 2015, and Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity in 2017. He held office as Minister for Energy, Energy and Emissions Reduction, and Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction in the Morrison government.
Following Peter Dutton's defeat at the 2025 election, he contested the subsequent leadership election, losing to Sussan Ley. Taylor, a prominent member of the National Right party faction, resigned from Ley's shadow cabinet in 2026 amid historically low polling for the Liberal Party. He successfully challenged Ley in a subsequent leadership spill, becoming the leader of the Liberal Party and the leader of the Opposition.
Taylor was born on 30 September 1966 in Cooma, New South Wales, to Anne and Peter Taylor. He was raised alongside his three brothers on their family property "Bobingah", a sheep and cattle farm in Nimmitabel. He is partly of Jewish descent, with a Jewish grandmother.
Taylor's father is a fourth-generation sheep farmer. Taylor's maternal grandfather was engineer Sir William Hudson. His mother died from cancer in 1988 at the age of 48. Contemporaneous to her death was a collapse in wool and beef prices due to drought, an event that brought financial stress on the Taylor family. His father eventually became President of NSW Farmers and Vice President of the National Farmers Federation.
Taylor completed primary school at Nimmitabel's local primary school. He then boarded at The King's School, Parramatta. Upon graduation, he studied at the University of Sydney while residing at St Andrew's College, graduating with a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws.
Taylor then won a Rhodes Scholarship, and elected to study a Master of Philosophy in Economics at New College, Oxford. He studied "Smith, Bentham, Burke, Mill, Marshall, Schumpeter, Galbraith, Keynes and Friedman". During his studies he developed an interest in the game theory of John Forbes Nash Jr. He applied Nash's theories to make an analysis of English pubs, to argue that they ought be protected from being dominated by large brewing companies. While at Oxford in 1991, Taylor also met future Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney, who was also studying at Oxford and both had attended an economics post-graduate course together.
Taylor had a career in management consulting and then helped launch a number of agribusinesses with his brothers and other business partners, including Growth Farms.
Taylor joined his brother Charlie at McKinsey & Co, a global management consulting firm, in 1994. Projects took him to Korea, the US, and the UK and to New Zealand, where he worked with dairy farmers to create a new business model. Taylor returned to Sydney and was made a partner in 1999.
Around this time, Taylor developed a digital agribusiness called Farmshed. He convinced his employer, McKinsey, to back the project along with Wesfarmers, Rural Press and, later, JB Were and NAB. Based in Surry Hills, Taylor was the MD. However, when Wesfarmers merged with IAMA, they began to see Farmshed as undercutting their own business. The online business failed, with a loss of several million dollars.
Taylor went on to become a director at Port Jackson Partners, an Australian management consulting firm. During this tenure, he was a member of the Victorian government taskforce to investigate the development of a coal seam gas industry in the state. Reporting in November 2013, the taskforce recommended that the State of Victoria should promote the production of additional and largely on-shore gas supply. He also worked as the director of Rabobank's Executive Development Program for leading farmers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as their Farm Managers Program which focused on younger farmers.
After leaving Port Jackson Partners, Taylor developed several businesses with family members and fellow investors, largely connected to irrigation and agriculture. Some of these businesses were relinquished on his taking his seat in parliament, while others continue, wholly or partly owned by the holding company of Taylor's family Gufee Pty Ltd, a family trust.
Eastern Australia Irrigation (EAI) was co-founded by Taylor and he was a director from 2007 to 2012. In mid 2008, he was also a director and secretary of its parent company, Eastern Australia Agriculture (EAA). By the end of 2009 he had ended his relationship with the company. In 2019, Taylor's earlier dealings with the company were given media attention as EAA had sold water licences from two of its agricultural properties back to the Australian government in 2017 for $79 million— a profit to the company of $52 million. At the time, Taylor reiterated that he was not connected to the company at the time of the water licence transaction, had not been since 2009 and had not received any financial benefit from the water purchase.
Farm Partnerships Australia was a farm-leasing business venture owned by Gufee. By 2015 it was managing 35 properties in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland, with a total of 109,000 hectares of land under management.
Growth Farms is an agribusiness formed by Taylor with his oldest brother, Richard in 1999, holding a non-controlling stake through Gufee until it sold its interest in early 2020. At first the company focussed on leveraged-leaseholds of high-rainfall properties in the Southern Tablelands and Monaro. The approach caused serious financing issues as "the cost of it doubled market-wise". The company then shifted to consulting. It enjoyed early expansion when it won Sir Michael Hintze as a client, managing his 12 properties across Australia. The company manages the Queensland properties Clyde and Kia Ora as well as the Kerry Stokes-owned Cygnet Park on Kangaroo Island. The group owns "Hyland Grange", "Bellevue" and the old Taylor family property "Bobingah" all in the South East of NSW. One of the farms managed by the group is at Corrowong near Delegate. Operations at this property came under the scrutiny of environmental agencies when managers used a herbicide that was later seen to be a threat to an endangered species of native grass. The investigation by NSW Environment & Heritage concluded in April 2017, finding there was no case to answer. The Federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment began its own investigation and Taylor met with officers from the Department of Environment. This was seen as "a potential breach of the ministerial code of conduct", generating intense media scrutiny, particularly in The Guardian and came to dominate Question Time in Parliament by late 2019. Taylor was unrepentant, saying, "If I'm not standing up for farmers in the federal parliament, then who is?"
Jam Land is a holding company also part owned by Gufee Pty Ltd. Taylor's brother and business partner, Richard, is one of the three owners.
JRAT International was a company set up for consulting projects in the early 2000s. The company appears to never have begun business operations. Taylor admitted in 2020 that while the company should have appeared on his register of parliamentary interests "the company did no business, and earned no income, and I received absolutely no benefit from it".
Taylor first showed an interest in politics when he returned from Oxford, joining the Liberal Party when he was 26. He volunteered as a staffer for Barry O'Farrell, then a member of NSW state parliament. O'Farrell encouraged him to "have a career before politics" and Taylor moved to consulting. About twenty years later, he met John Howard at a Heart Foundation fundraiser where the Prime Minister strongly encouraged Taylor to run for Parliament. Learning that Alby Schultz, the Member for Hume was considering retirement, in 2011 Taylor moved his family from Woollahra to the Southern Tablelands, on a farm outside of Goulburn, enrolling his children in local schools.