Chalmers policy cocktail: 1950s-style protection and 2020s climate change hysteria

Jim Chalmers’ speech on Wednesday revealed the sort of insane dystopian future that will be built if the treasurer and his colleagues aren’t stopped.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the Lowy Institute on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Despite trainee Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ attempt to paint his investment policy changes as “cutting-edge, even mid-21st century-anticipating, realistic”, it’s all if utterly unknowingly built on a mid-20th century mindset.

Put at its simplest: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you with your money.”

“We – that’s me and my bureaucrats in Canberra – will pick the ‘winners’, and hand out your money to fund them.”

It’ll be right back to a 1950s, albeit supposedly climate crisis-combating, 2020s-style, future.

Indeed, in one of the greatest exercises in lack of self-awareness that I’ve seen, Chalmers actually founded his entire, supposedly Keating-style landmark speech Wednesday, on what the Australian – naturally, Labor – government had done in the mid-1940s.

I kid you not, and I quote from right up the front of his speech: “As early as 1942, (then Labor Treasurer Ben) Chifley had Roland Wilson in London for discussions….”

“In 1943, (then Labor’s chief economic bureaucrat and subsequent foundational governor of the Reserve Bank) Nugget Coombs was in Washington….”

Yet, despite his rather amateurish attempt to paint his undergraduate history of “successful” Australian economic policy, as jumping from Curtin-Chifley in the 1940s to Hawke-Keating in the 1980s to Albanese-Chalmers in the 2020s, he was actually embracing the protectionist dynamic of the, entirely non-Labor, 1950s Menzies government.

Again, in brief: “Everyone else is pouring billions, if not trillions, into picking and subsidising supposed winners; so we will as well.

“But whereas, those ‘others’ – China, Europe, the US – are just mindlessly pouring out money, ‘we’, as in ‘me’, will be ‘smart and strict’.”

You certainly can’t fault his childish hubris, and his ability to fashion a cliche: “By designing new markets and modernising old ones….”

Hmm. How exactly do you “design” a “new” market? Indeed, what exactly is one?

The sub-heading in his speech was disturbing enough: “A Future Made in Australia”.

Translated: “Made by me and ivory-tower Canberra bureaucrats and all too-eager (to accept your money) climate main-chancers.”

But then came the shuddering, run screaming for the exits, “detail”.

I can’t reproduce it all here, so I invite you to read each and every alarming sentence; and be afraid, really afraid, of what sort of insane dystopian future will be built if Chalmers and his colleagues aren’t stopped.

To nominate just the biggest most destructive two: the utterly uncontrolled flood of migrants and the massive 25 per cent-plus, productivity-destroying, surge in energy prices.

The tens of billions to be handed out are all going to be streamed under two heads: building stuff in Australia and heading for net zero.

Just when the climate boondoggle was faltering, when even the lavish subsidies were failing to spark enough more useless wind farms, Chalmers has hung out his shingle.

“I’m an idiot with a limitless cheque book: my door is wide open to all the main-chancers around the world.”

Originally published as Chalmers policy cocktail: 1950s-style protection and 2020s climate change hysteria