Mike O’Connor: PM‘s yuletide surprise of citizenship ceremonies no longer on Australia Day

OPINION: Industrial relations changes, tweaks to Australia Day, barbecues now the devil’s work … the Labor federal government is hard at work delivering a series of pre-Christmas surprises, writes Mike O’Connor.

Our tree is in place, modest though it might be, and our gifts ranged around it, though there will be no surprises on Christmas morning.

My wife knows what I have bought her and vice versa, both of us having learnt from experience that not all surprises are pleasing ones.

The business community could not but agree, having just received a pre-Christmas surprise gift in the form of the realisation that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his merry band of helpers are behaving like a Labor government.

Shock! Horror! Who would have thought it?

But what of all those assurances from Labor that the new government would work with business, heralding the golden dawn of a new era of consultation and compromise for the betterment of the nation and all who live within its bounds?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP Image

I reckon I was about six years old when I stopped believing in Santa.

That was the year that I got a red Cyclops scooter for Christmas. It was obviously second-hand, which was fine, but I figured that if there really was a Santa, he would have been able to lay his hands on a new one.

The business community, however, clung bravely to the belief that Albo in his red Santa suit would deliver as promised.

Ho, bloody ho! The Christmas ham is still in the fridge with the rum balls and the sparkling shiraz, but already the government, dancing to the tune of the trade union puppeteers, has changed the industrial relations landscape in a way that can only take the country back to the bad old days of confrontation and lost productivity.

Nor will those in the coal and gas industry have little to celebrate this festive season, having just undergone a de facto nationalisation by stealth, a move made in the guise of bringing down household energy bills.

The government now decides how much profit companies should make.

Big profits are bad and those who make them are bad people. Small profits, we can presume, or even better still, losses, are fine.

Greens leader Adam Bandt says gas stove bad, electric stove good, writes Mike O’Connor. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Just why any gas or coal chief executive would commit to spending billions of dollars on exploration, extraction and transport in the certain knowledge that any profits would be regulated by Big Brother has not been explained.

Fewer jobs, fewer tax dollars and a fall in overseas investment in exchange for a promised reduction of a few dollars a week in household bills. Sounds like a deal to me.

I’ll be basting the ham on the gas barbie on Christmas morn and heating the glaze on the gas-fired stove top, but not for much longer, for the Greens have declared natural gas to be the devil’s plaything, and a compliant Labor government will now subsidise the cost of getting rid of the gas stove and installing an electric one.

Who will qualify for this largesse? How much will it cost? Will it save the planet?

You might have thought there were issues that were more deserving of your taxpayer dollar, but Greens leader Adam Bandt has spoken.

Gas stove bad. Electric stove good. Ask anyone who enjoys cooking what they think and they will tell you electric stove top is rubbish.

Gas stove top good. If electric stove tops, like electric vehicles, are so good, why does the government have to bribe people to buy them?

T he Greens have declared natural gas to be the devil’s plaything, says Mike O’Connor. Picture: iStock

Perhaps Mr Bandt eats a lot of takeaway.

The PM also dropped another little yuletide surprise package on the electorate last week when he announced that citizenship ceremonies need no longer be held on Australia Day.

Can’t recall any mention of that pre-election? Probably just an oversight. In the same breath he denied that the next step was to abolish the celebration of January 26 as Australia Day. Ho, bloody ho!

There was also an unpleasant pre-Christmas surprise for former high commissioners to the UK with staff at Australia House in London taking down the photographs of our former ambassadors who have served in the role over the last century and hiding them in a warehouse.

The High Commission has said they were removed to be digitised and has denied it was because all the subjects in the photographs were white men.

So will the photographs be rehung when they have been digitised.

Well, no. They won’t. “Woke”-driven history erasure? Surely not.

There’ll be more surprises next year, but in the meantime, Merry Christmas to all and God bless.