Andrew Bolt: $300 energy rebates only a distraction from rising national debt

This is a desperate last throw of the dice from Jim Chalmers who is betting billions on a miracle gas to save us from utter disaster.

This is the most bizarre and incompetent federal budget I’ve seen, even without including Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ laughable attempt to con the Reserve Bank into cutting interest rates.

Call this Budget the mad gambler’s last throw.

Chalmers, pockets filled with a record tax take, has still somehow produced deficits for the next four years – $122bn to add to our already dangerous debt.

How did he manage that miracle-in-reverse?

Let me explain that first, before getting to his desperate last throw of the dice – now betting billions on a miracle gas to save us from utter disaster.

One reason for the four years of deficits Chalmers announced on Tuesday is that Labor is now staring, aghast, at the failure of two big gambles already.

How did Jim Chalmers manage such a miracle-in-reverse? Picture: Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images

The first is the collapse of the global warming crusade of Labor governments, state and federal, that’s turned electricity into a luxury for the poor and left us critically short of power.

Nowhere in the Budget does Chalmers repeat Labor’s election promise to cut your power bill by $275 with its you-beaut clean energy schemes.

Instead, desperate to dull the pain of massive price rises, Chalmers now promises $3.5bn for “energy price relief” – a $300 rebate on your household power bill, and more for small businesses.

That’s relief to you, paid for by you, for just one year – the year of the next election – to stop you realising Labor’s plan to replace our reliable coal-fired power with fickle wind and solar is bleeding the country dry.

But Chalmers has also had to spend big to hide the consequences of Labor’s other terrible failure.

That’s immigration. The government has just imported nearly 550,000 immigrants – 2 per cent of our population – in one year, hoping to boost its tax take and the economy.

In the Budget, we see the failure. Chalmers admits Australia’s growth this financial year rose just 1.75 per cent. That means that after sharing that slightly bigger cake with 2 per cent more mouths, Australians per person actually got poorer.

But worse, Labor imported all those people without building enough homes, causing massive rises in house prices and rents.

Immigration is soaring but we’re not building enough homes to keep up with the population increase.

That explains another big Budget giveaway – a $1.9bn increase in the Commonwealth Rent Assistance, plus billions for a fantasy promise to build 1.2 million more homes in just five years.

These two big giveaways – the electricity rebate and rent assistance – is what Chalmers now uses to try to trick the Reserve Bank, and voters, into thinking he’s suddenly fixed the high inflation that’s keeping interest rates murderously high.

Just one week ago the Reserve Bank predicted inflation would still be at 3.8 per cent by December, too high to even think about cutting interest rates in time for the next election.

But wait, cries Chalmers. He claims his Budget handouts for rent and electricity alone will slash inflation half a per cent. In fact, he says inflation in December will be more than 1 per cent lower than the Reserve Bank said last week.

Even better, burbled Chalmers, his giveaways are “not expected to add to broader inflationary pressures” by flooding the economy with more money, when the Reserve Bank is trying to suck it out.

You’d have to be an idiot to believe him. Think: if you give Australians a handout for their power bills and rents, will they save that extra or spend it, when so many struggle to even pay for groceries?

You’d have to be an idiot to believe Chalmers’ claim that the rebates won’t add to inflation.

Like the assistance or not, it’s inflationary and the Reserve Bank won’t be fooled.

But I mentioned Chalmers’ crazy bet.

I’d be more charitable if his Budget showed Labor learning from its blunders on immigration and global warming.

Instead, it’s doubled down. True, the government promises to halve our immigration intake, but that still means taking in twice as many as our long-term average.

Worse, Chalmers is going in even harder on global warming, like a gambler chasing his debts. This Budget includes billions more on “net zero” spending, and $28bn to make us use more green energy.

Still madder, Chalmers has decided the government must itself now find the miracle green fuel that will supposedly rescue us from running out of energy and cash.

He’s announced it will bet $22.7bn to make Australia a “renewable energy superpower” through its “Future Made in Australia” boondoggle, which has the government itself picking winners like it’s never managed before.

That includes an astonishing $13.7bn in production tax incentives for green hydrogen especially, as well as processed critical minerals.

Oh, the new green hydrogen schemes! Count them, including a Hydrogen Headstart program, a National Hydrogen Strategy and even a First Nations Renewable Hydrogen Engagement Fund.

All this and more on a technology never yet proved at scale. All this on a frantic search to find a way to use massive amounts of wind and solar power to turn water into hydrogen without going broke or exploding stuff. No one’s managed it yet, but Chalmers will!

Either that, or a country already deep in debt will lose tens of billions more on Jim Chalmers’ mad last bet.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: $300 energy rebates only a distraction from rising national debt