Nationals leader Matt Canavan has urged the embrace of work-from-home opportunities as a way to boost the growth of smaller towns and regions.

In a Wednesday speech calling for an “economic revolution”, Canavan told the National Press Club that today many families needed two jobs to make moving to a regional area viable.

“Professional roles in law, finance and engineering can be done from regional areas,” he said.

He said the public service should lead by example.

The Coalition has had a bumpy road with work-from-home policy. Before the last election, frontbencher (now deputy leader) Jane Hume proposed all Canberra public servants should return to the office, a controversial policy the opposition had to ditch very quickly.

Canavan said when people lived in a smaller town they could afford a bigger house and a backyard – “the kind of home that makes it easier to have children”.

“There is no doubt that delayed home ownership and smaller housing is one reason our birth rate has collapsed,” he said.

Arguing Australia needed an “economic revolution”, Canavan declared “our nation’s leaders remain trapped in the narrow thinking of the old economic rationalist superhighway. Most of our leaders grew up in the era of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution. Like ageing hippies, they desperately want to return to the elixir of their youth by performing more economic Woodstock.

"But our times have changed. A microwaved Milton Friedman is not going to solve our economic woes – and it is certainly not going to calm the rightful rage of the Australian people at their political leaders’ incompetence in trashing the promise of the luckiest country in the world”, Canavan said.

“The chief cheerleader of this economic cul-de-sac remains the prime minister [who] still believes that a few more subsidies for batteries and hydrogen will fix everything”.

Canavan put forward a multi-faceted plan, which he dubbed “a Patriot Agenda for an Australian economic revival”:

• key manufacturing industries should be protected, including by tariffs, against unfair competition.

• Australia’s borders should be closed to mass migration so the “intake is properly calibrated to the infrastructure, services and housing we have”.

• net zero should be scrapped, with investment in all forms of energy to bring lower prices and fuel security.

• a national works program should build dams, roads, rail, ports, and space ports, “to renew our pioneer spirit”.

• new cities should be built “so young Australians can afford a home and access the same services offered in capital cities”.

• a new baby boom should be encouraged “so that our Australian way of life can be passed on to the next generation”.

Canavan’s economic agenda, notably on tariffs, sits uneasily with the more free market policy approach of Opposition leader Angus Taylor.

On tariffs, Canavan said while he didn’t agree with Donald Trump that “tariff” was the most beautiful word in the English language “it’s not a dirty word either”. “A tariff is just a tool that we should use with a more consistent and realistic approach.”

“Other countries are trying to steal our jobs and our industries. We must respond with a more permanent approach to protecting the industries that are crucial to our sovereign capability.”

Canavan said that “just as our open borders to trade has cost Australian jobs, our open borders to people is costing Australians their lifestyles”.

He homed in on student visas.

“We are taking in around 100,000 more students per year than before COVID. I speak to many young people who do not feel welcome on campuses where Australian students are a minority.

"Australian universities should primarily be there to teach Australian students and conduct Australian cutting edge research. The student visa system has become a scam and it must be reined in.”