Opinion: Mother’s Day was pivotal in Coalition’s 2019 victory

Three years on we have another Mother’s Day before an election. Will it prove as decisive as the last, wonders Peter Gleeson.

It was Mother’s Day three years ago that sealed the Morrison Government’s re-election, according to senior powerbrokers within the LNP.

A big family day across the nation, it was just two weeks before the 2019 election and as mums and dads and their kids and grandkids got together around the dinner table, the so-called “quiet’’ Australians gave their loved ones a blunt and pointed assessment of modern-day politics.

They painted a picture of a high-taxing Labor Government under Bill Shorten that would punish their grandparents for having the audacity to invest in shares that paid dividends. Naughty nanna.

They also told their kids that while it was admirable to save the planet, we needed to keep the lights on, and while China and Russia kept building new coal-fired power stations, it wasn’t a great idea to be banishing our miners to the dole queues – not to mention the skyrocketing cost of electricity.

According to senior Coalition sources, younger Aussies took the advice of their parents and grandparents and voted for the steady hand of the Coalition.

It proved a wise choice, because the Morrison Government’s $270 billion stimulus measures saved many of their fiscal bacons during the pandemic.

Austerity went out the window. Now Labor is trying to scold the Coalition for racking up a trillion dollar debt that effectively saved millions of Australians from going broke. Only Labor would have the gumption to try that one on.

So, three years on, we have another Mother’s Day, just a few weeks before a federal election.

Mother's Day proved a turning point in the 2019 election, LNP insiders say.

Again, we have the Labor Party drawing up the curtains for Albo and his team at The Lodge and Kirribilli House.

However, this time the stakes are even higher. Unlike 2019, Australia – and the world for that matter – is about to go into some pretty rough economic turbulence.

The war in Europe and the threat of inflationary-fuelled rising interest rates will test even the best Treasury minds.

Labor keeps talking about the only thing that hasn’t gone up is people’s wages. OK, so here’s a question for their fiscal brains trust.

How is it that Australians have salted away over the past few years the greatest savings nest egg in recorded history? If wages are so flat, why has savings never been higher?

According to the major banks, about 70 per cent of Aussie homeowners are between 20 and 44 weeks ahead on their mortgages, which will help them enormously as higher interest rates inevitably hit hard.

Clearly, people have been smart enough to put money away, via their mortgage, for a rainy day. These are the people who be hurt most by Labor’s economic recklessness.

And please, please think about your vote if you’re contemplating switching from a major party to one of these so-called “teal’’ Independents.

The last thing Australia needs right now is a hung Parliament, a dysfunctional rabble where climate zealotry independents send us woke and broke.

Just think of Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor. Better still, best we forget about them and their contribution to Australian politics.

As Labor guru Graham Richardson is fond of saying, the mob always get it right. We live in a great country. Happy Mother’s Day.