Editorial: Don’t flirt with the Greens, you might regret it

On election day do not throw your vote away by voting on “the vibe”, writes the editor.

The most vital thing in tomorrow’s election is that Australia does not end up with a parliament being held to ransom by the Greens.

We therefore urge our readers to resist the temptation to lodge a ballot box protest over the uninspiring nature of the two major party leaders by flirting with your local Greens candidate. The result could very easily be one you regret.

The Greens pretend to be a warm and fuzzy organisation focused on policies that would help Australians doing it tough. But the truth is their feelgood yet weak economic “plan” would send the nation broke.

We lead our traditional election-eve editorial today with that plea, because it was voter apathy about the impact of a protest vote in 2022 that led to our federal parliament being encumbered with a record number of crossbench MPs.

Twenty years ago there were just three crossbench MPs in the nation’s parliament. Today, there are 19. Australia may be headed for perpetual minority government. This must be resisted.

One of the key strengths of our democracy has been the stability provided by our two-party system. Without it, our leaders are wont to take a risk-averse approach to governing.

This is what we have seen from the Albanese government, which won a wafer-thin majority in 2022 from a historically low 32.6 per cent primary vote. Three years on and still nobody really understands who Anthony Albanese is. We know he used to be a socialist “Trot” who proudly enjoyed “fighting Tories – that’s what I do”. But despite the spotlight, his core beliefs are less apparent than ever.

What is obvious is that both he and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers are far more to the Left on economic policy than most Australians.

Forget the Hawke-Keating days when Labor pursued reforms that believed in the private sector’s role to grow the economy – and that saw welfare as the safety net it should be, rather than a handout for all. This pair thinks the answer to everything is to spend, means-test be damned.

Greens leader Adam Bandt

Mr Albanese likes to say that his mantra is “no one held back, no one left behind”. But he squibbed that when he undid already-legislated “stage 3” tax cuts designed to be aspirational and pursued the easy political fix of a cut for everyone.

Meanwhile, in his desperation to win back young voters, he has copied the Greens in promising free TAFE, and he is offering a 20 per cent cut to university-fee HECS bills.

Who pays? Who cares! There is simply no will to tighten the budget purse-strings, or attack the long-term debt challenge the federal budget faces – let alone eat away at bracket creep, or to deliver any other meaningful structural economic reform other than to pay lip service to the notion of “productivity” and to talk up a “Future Made in Australia” policy that nobody understands.

The only real risk Mr Albanese has taken in office has been to overreach on his proposal to enshrine in the Constitution an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. It was certainly brave. But it was also the perfect example of a leader misreading public opinion; choosing instead to listen to their sycophantic echo chambers.

That 2023 Voice referendum was rejected in all states, and by 60 per cent of Australians. By choosing to go all-in on such a contentious issue rather than finding a compromise position that both sides of politics could agree to, the Prime Minister blew a historic chance for the nation to show its support of First Nations culture. The opposite happened.

It was a sentiment Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had a far better read on. He took what appeared at first to be the unpopular position, but that turned out to be spot on.

Mr Dutton has also shown bold leadership on his energy policy, by proposing a transition to nuclear power generation in Australia.

Despite the juvenile three-eyed-fish-meme-led attacks from Labor backslappers, this is visionary policy – and, again, one that when properly tested has community support. The truth is that modern nuclear power plants are safe, and used everywhere – and Australians know that.

Meanwhile, Labor continues to doddle about with endless, never-realised promises of renewable solutions that are usually more eye-wateringly expensive than nuclear, and often unfeasible.

The Prime Minister’s pledge from 2022 that his energy policies would cut household power bills by $275 has simply not eventuated, and voters will have absolutely noticed. That, no doubt, has prompted Mr Dutton’s oft-repeated promise to cut the price of fuel by 25c for a year if he is elected prime minister tomorrow.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Perth on Thursday. Picture: Jason Edwards/NCA NewsWire

Mr Dutton, though, has had a shocking campaign. He has kicked too many own goals, most notably the humiliating backflip on his short-lived policy to restrict public service work-from-home arrangements that women saw as an attack on them.

On those policies the Coalition will take to the election, too many have been announced too late.

The big-ticket pledges of a $1200 one-off tax cut in 2026, and to make mortgage payments for first-home buyers tax deductible have not had much airing, perhaps because the final weeks of the campaign have coincided with this year’s weird Easter-Anzac Day week.

Mr Dutton has also struggled to attract voters to his personality, a truth shown by his use of the Sunday newspapers this week to declare: “I have a softer side.”

He also erred over summer in tying himself too closely to the Trump-led MAGA movement. That seemed a good idea at the time, but not now.

Prime Minister Albanese has been the better campaigner. He bizarrely tried to gaslight the nation for a fortnight when he fell off a stage but repeatedly claimed he hadn’t. Otherwise he has been far more solid than in 2022, when support for Labor improved in the week he was stuck at home isolating with Covid-19.

But running a less trouble-plagued campaign than your opponent is not exactly a ringing endorsement that demands another three years as the leader of our nation. Instead, that honour should be hard-won through genuine vision and leadership.

Mr Dutton has shown this in the position he took on the Voice, and in relation to the risk he has taken in promoting a nuclear energy vision.

Mr Albanese, on the other hand, appears likely to continue to govern via handout – an approach that has seen government spending in the past three years rise as a proportion of GDP and in real terms – by $150bn, to a budgeted $777bn in 2025-26.

But it could be worse. Smart young people who rely on the social media algorithms for their political analysis are saying they plan to vote Greens because they think everything will then be free, ignoring that a ballot cast that way is a ballot wasted.

Our message to them is the same as it is to all of our readers today. Do not throw your vote away by voting on “the vibe”. Vote instead on proven vision, and on leadership.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here