The new leader of the Australian Liberals has nailed his party's colours to the mast in a rallying call for getting "all fuels into the system" and "more gas out of the ground."

Just days after taking the reins from Sussan Ley, Angus Taylor spoke earlier this week to a notably receptive audience at the Centre for Independent Studies and zeroed in on the cost-of-living crisis and energy bills.

"The key is to get all fuels into the system. This is what Chris Bowen has got so badly wrong - he looks across the different sources of energy, he says, ‘I like that one. I don't like that one. I like that.'

"That's not how you do it. You open it up. This is a country that has incredible resources. We should have amongst the most affordable energy in the world, but by restricting it in the way that he has and this government has, we pay more. And that's exactly what's happened."

For Taylor, this clearly means gas will play a big role in a Liberal-run Australia.

"We need more gas in our system. We need to get more gas out from under the ground…That is one of the keys to getting prices down. We need the full range of fuel sources and more fuels, and gas is absolutely crucial because it's a flexible dispatchable source of energy.

On the issue of possible government intervention in the east coast gas market, he struck a tactful and succinct note, saying it is the responsibility of gas producers to ensure enough gas is entering the domestic system.

Nuclear

While Taylor and his deputy Jane Hume have deftly avoided overly commenting on the thorny nuclear issue, which brought down the party's previous leader, Peter Dutton, at the last election, Taylor was happy to mirror Hume's desire to be "open-minded" on the nuclear question.

"We should have every fuel source in the mix. We also have to respect the fact that the market has to make the choices as to which ones it wants to use, and that's important - the private sector has an important role to play in all of this," he said.

Subtly alluding to the whether nuclear is avoided by Labor due to ideological or economic reasons, he added: "There'll always be a mix of public and private sector in our energy system, but those choices need to be commercial. They need to be based on the economics, and we should respect that."

Leaning into typical Liberal rhetoric, criticising the use of taxpayers' money, Taylor attacked what he said was the Labor's moral duty to reduce emissions.

"Driven by their net-zero ideology, Labor has turned its back on cheap and reliable energy. Albanese and Bowen would gladly spend trillions of taxpayers' dollars over decades to try to reach net zero.

"Labor is driven by a moral duty to reduce emissions that will reduce our living standards. In contrast, my moral duty is to restore our standard of living by restoring cheap and reliable energy."

He attacked Labor's spending record in the energy sector, saying it had been wasteful and poorly targeted.

"Billions have been spent on energy subsidies addressing the symptom not the cause of Labour's policy disaster on energy Billions have been handed out to green energy industries and billions have been expanded expended to bloat the bureaucracy.

"Building tens of thousands of kilometers of power lines to nowhere, frankly, right now is not what we need. It's only going to make the energy system more expensive and is going to drag down the government budget.

Regulatory miss

Taylor also said he believed the recent reforms to the country's environmental protection laws had missed the mark.

"What we see time and time again is this government using the EPBC Act and other acts to make it harder to invest - we have seen that time and time again. We want to make it easier to invest in this country.

"We need the regulators to be focusing on the outcomes that matter to hardworking Australians. And of course, the outcome that matters most to hardworking Australians is affordable energy right now. And they are not getting it…We absolutely need to get the regulators aligned," he added.