Whitlam-style Labor agenda mixed with big-spending Green agenda will not end well

Australia is now embarked on a classic big-spending Whitlam-style Labor agenda mixed up with a new-age big-spending Dark Green agenda. It is not going to end well.

Anthony Albanese with his dog Toto as he left his home in Sydney on election day. Picture: James D. Morgan/Getty Images

Australia is now embarked on a classic big-spending Whitlam-style Labor agenda mixed up with a new-age big-spending Dark Green agenda. It is not going to end well.

Even if Labor gets to the 76 seats and majority government in its own right, it will be effectively in a de facto coalition government with certainly the formal Dark Greens and essentially also with the so-called ‘Teals’.

It both has to be, and it will willingly seize the opportunity to do so, because Labor and the Greens will together have a majority in the Senate, even without counting the likely support from Tasmania’s Jacqui Lambie and her possible-to-likely second senator.

Both the formal Dark Greens and the ‘independent’ Teal-Greens demand the same thing: the destruction of our national electricity generation system that has given us plentiful, cheap and reliable power for the last 80 years – albeit, increasingly less so in recent years.

And the speedier the ‘better’, in a mad, bad and dangerous – and utterly pointless – race to 2030.

These assorted Greens also demand a ban on any new coal, gas and oil projects; and then, where it starts to get really ‘interesting’, the actual closures of our existing mines and oil and especially gas production.

That does suggest it will become an increasingly fractious marriage; as the crazy-Green agenda collides with the reality of government and trying to keep the economy this side of Venezuela, far less North Korea.

But at least initially it will be hugs all around as Labor, Dark-Green and Teal-Green rejoice in taking “real action on Climate Change”.

‘Action’ that will have zero effect on either the world’s or our local climate, thanks to China belching more and more CO2, and even ‘woke’ Europe deciding it actually wants to keep its lights on.

Pointless ‘action’, that will have massively destructive impacts on our industry and on household budgets.

Then add on the classic big-spending Labor agenda, which WILL produce bigger deficits and keep the national government debt heading from $1tr to $2tr.

Labor has ‘fessed up to spending at least another $20bn – but that’s only the amount spent over the four years of the formal budget out to 2025-26. And it WILL prove a massive underestimate.

As it unfolds it will grow to a much bigger sum, just in those four years – and build in ever-increasing spending in every year after that.

Look at the NDIS. It was supposed to start at $15bn-a-year and grow ‘modestly’ year-to-year. It’s already at $30bn this year and is projected to hit $46bn by 2025-26.

All this is going to be happening as inflation runs at its highest level since the early 1990s and we are facing the very real risk of a wages-inflation spiral developing.

The Reserve Bank is already going to put up interest rates; if the spiral develops it will have to hike them savagely even if the economy plunges into recession.

Further, it’s not as if all this will be taking place against a benign global backdrop. Globally, things are getting seriously complicated and nasty.

Buckle up. With a full racing harness.

Originally published as Whitlam-style Labor agenda mixed with big-spending Green agenda will not end well