Has any Australian government been so wrong on so much, making us poorer, weaker and more divided?

Is Anthony Albanese spending everything – including money he doesn’t have – just to avoid the humiliation of becoming our first first-term prime minister to lose an election in 93 years?

I must apologise for another attack on the Albanese government, now that it’s found the biggest gold mine in the world.

So much criticism may seem unfair, but my concern about this government’s incompetence and wrongheadedness has turned to panic.

Has any Australian government been so wrong on so much, making us poorer, weaker and more divided?

But to this gold mine. What else can explain Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday announcing he’d spend even more – now $8.5bn to make even more doctor visits free?

My concern about this government’s incompetence and wrongheadedness has turned to panic. Picture: Tertius Pickard

“Free”? Your taxes paid for these “free” services, which you might have thought not worth using if you had to chip in a few bucks yourself.

Still, very nice, except for this: this government has already admitted the mining boom is running down, and it will now run deficits for a decade.

So maybe I was wrong. This government I blasted for blocking even a gold mine because of supposed secret Aboriginal business, has opened a massive one of its own to fund a staggering spending spree over these past four months.

Take Albanese’s promise last November to cancel $3bn of student debt, making fools of the dutiful who’d already paid off their own and must now help pay the debts of others.

Last month, Albanese promised $7.2bn to upgrade Queensland’s Bruce Highway and another $1.7bn to cut hospital waiting lists.

He also promised another $3bn to upgrade the National Broadband Network which we were once told would pay for itself.

Albanese even flung $2.2bn at Australia’s biggest white elephant – Victoria’s $250bn Suburban Rail Loop to link suburbs no one visits to other suburbs no one visits.

The Suburban Rail Loop is Australia’s biggest white elephant.

And last week he backed a $2.4bn package to save Whyalla’s steel mill, plus another $2bn to help it and other mills go green. But this package wasn’t spending, he insisted, rather an “investment”, so won’t go on the Budget. What a dodge.

Remember: every billion means $40 from every Australian man, woman and child.

Now this Medicare bonanza, so massive that the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners admitted it was “the likes we’ve never seen”.

Does this seem prudent?

Or is it desperate? Is Albanese spending everything – including money he doesn’t have – just to avoid the humiliation of becoming our first first-term prime minister to lose an election in 93 years?

Originally published as Has any Australian government been so wrong on so much, making us poorer, weaker and more divided?