Akerman: ‘Cowardly’ Chalmers can’t say the ‘c-word’ his budget is heavily indebted to

Labor may drag us all down to rock bottom before it realises the economic damage of its wicked ways, writes Piers Akerman.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers couldn’t restrain his crowing about the meagre surplus in his second Budget.

Hubris isn’t in his vocabulary.

One of my old mates, Billy Joe Shaver, now sitting in some heavenly honky-tonk with other heroes, wrote the song I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday) about his salvation experience in Tennessee.

Chalmers should learn the words because Australian coal (and gas, and iron ore) were the diamonds which underwrote his unicorn surplus.

But he didn’t have the balls to mention them in his pitiful self-congratulatory speech.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Instead, he used the weasel term “high prices for the things we sell overseas” because those “things” he was too cowardly to mention need trigger warnings when named in the presence of the Greens and Teals, upon whom this Left-leaning Labor government relies on to govern.

Gutless is too insipid a word to describe Chalmers.

How Labor mocked the last Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he held an old chunk of coal up on the floor of Parliament, how they slapped their thighs and roared.

Then prime minister Scott Morrison with a lump of coal in parliament.

Yet that chunk of old carbon was a major factor in pulling the Budget into surplus for the first time in 15 years.

This is not a contractionary budget by any means. When policies worsen the deficit, as the policies announced in this one have, then they contribute a potentially inflationary effect.

Energy remains a killer for Labor, largely because Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen doesn’t understand the simple mathematics of power supply and is wedded to the climate catastrophe narrative despite the serial failures of the prophesies of imminent doom.

What he can’t see is that as the proportion of renewables in the power mix increases, the cost to users increases exponentially. When the mix contains 10-20 per cent renewable, nuclear appears expensive but, as the renewable input increases to 40-50 per cent, nuclear becomes less expensive than the renewables.

This is where the ideological blinkers blind Labor to reality.

As the proportion of renewables in the power mix increases, the cost to users increases exponentially – and nuclear becomes less expensive than the renewables.

Labor can no more bring itself to utter the “c” word (that’s “c” for coal) than it can admit that nuclear is a clean, emission-free option for base load power.

Only a True Believer could possibly swallow the optimistic guff coming from Chalmers about the cost of the NDIS and the fantasy that this runaway wreck can become sustainable, any more than the Snowy 2.0 will meet the energy shortfall if it is ever completed at whatever cost, or the NBN ever made sense.

If you’re prepared to suspend disbelief, then anything can become whatever you want – and that’s why there was so much nodding by those mindless dummies seated in camera shot during Chalmers’ speech.

Like its coverage of the coronation, our ABC let its rusted-on Leftist commentators spin their propaganda, but while a change in the monarch doesn’t alter our system of government one iota, the ABC’s unbalanced budget coverage affects those seeking honest information.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton delivers his Budget reply in the House of Representatives. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

When the cost of electricity in the eastern states continues to rise, despite the handouts to low-income earners, small businesses will suffer and the average householder will have to make a difficult choice – heat or eat this winter.

The cost of medical care, transport, farm products, the housing crisis, increased migration, and the list goes on.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton offered support for many of Labor’s plans but wisely demanded the details before committing blanket approval.

He’s actually more in touch with people who are faced with soaring mortgage repayments, skyrocketing electricity prices and the weekly grocery bills than are those in the Canberra bubble who support the woke ACT government, the most deluded in the nation.

Most importantly, he has now shown again that he is willing to stand up to the vibe, to oppose the populist view that supports the radical change to the Constitution to favour one section of the population, and further, to support lifting the ban on the development of nuclear energy for domestic base load power.

Billy Joe reached rock bottom before he had his Jesus revelation in a cheap motel but he turned his life around (shooting a man in a bar carpark later was found to be an act of self-defence).

Labor may drag us all down to rock bottom before it realises the economic damage of its wicked ways.

The trick surplus which has received so much kudos will be gone in a blink but the power solution supported by Dutton is probably the best policy to be aired in Canberra throughout the long week.