Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has been sworn in to the government ministry in a ceremony at Government House in Canberra.

Mr Taylor pledged an oath of office to “well and truly serve” the people of Australia in his new role as Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, and to “be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia.”

He has thanked the people of Hume for their support.

“I have been overwhelmed by emails and Facebook messages. It is a very humbling time and I will be doing my best to make my electorate proud.

“I have been given carriage of two exciting areas of policy development – Cities and Digital Transformation, working directly with the resources of the office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

“The digital portfolio is largely about government getting its own house in order. There’s no question that we’re seeing very big changes across all of the economy in how digital technology is being used to reduce costs and provide better services and, frankly, government is well behind on that.

“There’s a second part to my digital portfolio which is the advancement of digital technologies which use government data and provide government services.”

Mr Taylor said he would be bringing many years of experience in infrastructure investment to the Cities portfolio.

“I’m the first to say, I’m the Assistant Minister for all cities, not just inner cities or capital cities. I’m particularly pleased this role has been given to a regional MP because as we all know, we have a different set of concerns in regional areas.”

Caption: Angus Taylor being sworn in to the government ministry on Thursday by the Governor General His Excellency Sir Peter Cosgrove at Government House in Canberra.