Peta Credlin: Many voters starting to think they’ve been dudded by Albanese government

With a first term government struggling in the polls, with its primary vote well down even on the last election’s record low, many voters are starting to think they’ve been dudded, writes Peta Credlin.

The fact that a first term government is now struggling in the polls, just 50/50 in two-party preferred terms, with its primary vote well down even on the last election’s record low, and some 30 seats in play, shows that many voters are starting to think they’ve been had.

Dudded.

Worried that a great country is now in decline, Australians look at Anthony Albanese and see that, far from trying to improve economic competitiveness and social cohesion, his government is making things worse.

Sometimes, deliberately.

Take energy. Our electricity bills tell the story of renewable power; the more of it we have, the more expensive our power has become. The government keeps insisting that power from the sun and wind is “free” as if there’s no capital cost, no transmission cost and no firming cost, but all of that must be paid for.

Take the so-called “Made in Australia” program. This government talks constantly of so-called “investments” that will supposedly “unlock” private capital – especially as part of the so-called “green economy” – when, in fact, all this will do is create a sector of subsidy dependent crony capitalists. Likewise, it boasts about job creation even though statistics prove that two-thirds of the recent jobs created are in the public sector, so jobs we pay for as taxpayers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Take rights. Of course, Australians have a right to protest but they don’t have a right to disrupt the daily lives of others and they certainly do not have a right to use violence no matter how strongly they feel about climate issues or about life in Gaza. And, while no one wants to see trans people disrespected, that doesn’t give biological men the right to invade women-only spaces such as change rooms and sporting competitions. On issues like these, the Albanese government can’t quite seem to decide whose side it’s on.

Australians have a right to protest but they don’t have a right to disrupt the daily lives of others and they certainly do not have a right to use violence no matter how strongly they feel about climate issues or about life in Gaza. Picture: NewsWire

At least for a time, most prime ministers grow into the job, as they transition from party to national leader. But because he chose the divisive Voice as his “signature” policy, Anthony Albanese has never really transcended intense partisanship. Even the couple of issues where a measure of bipartisanship has just been achieved, such as putting the CFMEU into administration and aged care reform, reflect more on Peter Dutton’s growing political maturity than that of the PM.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the PM’s heart is still basically with the far left he championed as a student activist. You want to know why preschool kids are expected to participate in reconciliation week activities; why nearly all official business starts with an “acknowledgment of country”; why the military now have diversity targets; and why schools won’t tell parents that their kids want to change their gender? It’s the impact of the rampant cultural Marxism that holds that societies like ours are essentially illegitimate because they’re supposedly based on white, male, settler “privilege” and are bent on destroying the environment. And it’s this cultural Marxism that Labor finds hard to resist because it now depends on the preferences of the Greens to survive.

For the best part of 50 years, the hard left has been trying to undermine our institutions and corrode the self-confidence of western democracies, especially the English-speaking ones. The phrase “the long march through the institutions” well describes the left’s tactics: To infiltrate leftist thinkers into key institutions, especially educational ones, and to put committed, or at least malleable, people into key jobs so that, over time, institutions such as universities, bureaucracies, courts, and even the army and the church become agents of radical social change rather than social stability.

Anthony Albanese’s unleashing the Voice onto an unsuspecting public was a massive sneak attack on a constitution that had served us well for over a century. Picture: Tim Hunter

As it’s turned out, the Marxists who could never persuade the working class to revolt over strict economic equality have been much better at persuading the middle class to revolt over saving the planet, ending the patriarchy, and fighting racism, even though environmental protections have never been greater, and minorities of every type have never been better looked after.

It was the PM’s identity obsessions which saw him unleash the Voice onto an unsuspecting public: a massive sneak attack on a constitution that had served us well for over a century, that would have given some people a special say over everyone, based on their ancestry. Naturally, Albanese dressed it up as just being “polite” and “gracious” to Aboriginal people and a way of saying sorry for the past even though that had supposedly been addressed with Kevin Rudd’s apology in 2008.

This is why Anthony Albanese stressed, pre-election, that he was “safe change” and really only wanted to swap out an unpopular incumbent in Scott Morrison, plus cut power bills, boost real wages and ease mortgage pressure – none of which, in fact, he’s done. Instead, cost of living has never been higher, hospitals are in crisis, he’s massively boosted union power, made new resource developments almost impossible, weakened border protection and released foreign criminals into the community.

More and more, the Albanese government looks like it could really be a “oncer”.

MEDAL-STRIPPING DEBACLE WHY WE HAVE ADF SUICIDE EPIDEMIC

The Albanese government has just stripped medals off mid-ranking officers who fought in the Afghanistan campaign.

We don’t know how many are involved because the Defence Minister refuses to tell us, but his reason is that possible war crimes were committed on their watch. It’s hard to overstate how badly this whole business has been handled.

First, it’s very hard from the comfort and safety of our lounge rooms to judge the conduct of people whose lives are at risk every day, and have seen their mates killed, in part, because of rules of engagement specifying catch and release.

It’s wrong for soldiers to take matters into their own hands – if that’s what’s happened – but it’s not entirely their fault when we ask impossible things of them.

Second, if there must be punitive action, it can’t drag on and on and on and on.

Our part in the actual fighting finished in 2013, more than 10 years ago. The Brereton investigation began in 2016.

A redacted version of his conclusions was published in November 2020. For some eight years, 25 special forces soldiers have been living under the shadow of possible war crimes trials – yet still, only one individual has ever been charged. It’s just not right that people who volunteered to put their lives on the line for our country have been treated like this, even if some of them might have made serious mistakes.

Earlier this week, with the release of the royal commission on veterans’ suicide, we collectively resolved to treat our soldiers better.

How is this latest humiliation and indignity consistent with that? If this is a national shame, it’s at least as much about how our soldiers have been treated as anything done on the battlefield.

And please, the idea that senior command was completely without fault, that they were blameless? Don’t insult our intelligence. Senior command can’t claim ignorance, many of them, including the current Chief of the Defence Force, all served on the ground in Afghanistan. I went there three times, I sat in their briefings at our base in Tarin Kowt and now, from the safety of Canberra, they say they never knew? Truth, they say, is the first casualty of war.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Many voters starting to think they’ve been dudded by Albanese government