Akerman: Follow a true leader to pull the plug on unions
Australia’s lacklustre representatives could learn from the manifesto of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance – the best hopes the West has for a restoration of leadership, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Australia’s economy-smashing politicians Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen must have watched US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s triumphal nomination acceptance with dismay.
Instead of promising the usual wishy-hopey, pie-in-the-sky lunatic policies that could never be delivered in a million years as the Labor-Green Aussies have done, Trump gave his audience realistic solutions to the multitude of problems he will likely inherit as the favoured successor to the hopeless Joe Biden.
There are big lessons for the Albanese government and its mini-mes in the states and territories.
The first is that policies based on emotions, not facts, fail.
The second, and this is as important, is that reliance on polling is no substitute for lived experience.
Biden’s policies on climate change, which bled into his embrace of so-called renewable energy essentially collapsed US manufacturing. Sound familiar? It should.
“Blackouts” Bowen’s deluded claims for wind and solar and green hydrogen are the stuff of fantasies.
Offshore wind farms featuring towering windmills connected to giant batteries with the capacity to store energy measured in minutes and hours, not days or weeks, are not reality. But such mythical solutions attract billions in subsidies.
Trump’s solution is simple and historically successful. The Donald, as he was known when I was living in New York, told his supporters that he would get the US to “dig, dig, dig” for the much-maligned fossil fuels that delivered the greatest advances in technology, medicines and materials since humans learnt to light fire.
He also promised to restore discipline to the runaway illegal migration encouraged by his Democrat opponents. It was telling that the movement of his head which saved his life last weekend was due to him tilting his head to look at a chart showing the explosion in illegal migration which has been occurring since he left office.
Trump also renewed his promise to drain the swamp, to rid Washington of the battalions of leech-like Left-leaning public servants who assiduously worked to thwart his administration’s goals.
Canberra needs the same Augean cleansing, better still would be to close the ACT with its toy town parliament and woke justice system, get rid of its Green-Left senators and absorb it into NSW. The public service should operate out of regional centres where the shiny-bottomed computer jockeys might meet Australians who have real jobs and face real pressures without the cradle-to-grave security the ACT offers.
In Australian terms, draining the swamp needs to go further and ensure that the power of the trade union movement and its control of the ALP is broken. The historically corrupt CFMEU’s activities, the threats it makes against employers and the stranglehold it has on Labor, is a monster in the Australian swamp.
CFMEU boss Christy Cain delivered $2m to Labor before the last election and this threat after: Labor in! Now they must deliver … We have to actively keep our collective foot on the throats of every politician until they put through our demands.”
In state after state, Labor looked the other way, accepted millions in donations from the union and let the union have their way.
The CFMEU has potentially cost Australians billions and has been supported by Albanese, although he maintains ignorance about their activities. No one’s doubting Albo’s ignorance of this and most other issues but the bigger issue here is integrity, and he has nowhere to hide.
Trump, and his vice-presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, are the best hope the West has for a restoration of leadership.
Our lacklustre representatives could learn from their manifesto.
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