Andrew Bolt: Disaster looms for Aussie battlers under Albanese government

Australia is about to get a brutal wake-up that there’s no problem supposedly caused by Scott Morrison that Labor can fix or won’t make worse. But will the Liberals now wake up?

What a sick joke. We’ve replaced a prime minister with no vision with a Socialist Left leader with no clue.

But worse, our new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, will now need the Greens’ help to get his crazier plans through Parliament — and that support will come at a nasty price.

Yes, this result will hurt Australia, and not just because Albanese showed himself to the world as so incompetent that he didn’t know even the most basic economic data.

Worse, he is a weak and emotional Left-wing populist who openly promises to spend much more than even the Morrison government, just when inflation is exploding.

But, more fatally for his new government and for the country, the new parliament we’ve just elected will be no brake and all accelerator as the Albanese government takes a hard turn Left and heads to the cliff.

Australia is going to get a brutal wake-up that there’s no problem supposedly caused by Morrison that Labor can fix. Picture: AFP

In the House of Representatives, Labor at least looks like winning by a very tiny majority to form government, meaning it won’t have to rely on any of the many new Leftist independents.

But in the new Senate, Albanese faces a far-Left stickup: he cannot get one of his policies through unless either the Liberals or the Greens agree to back it.

The Liberals, of course, will say no to Albanese’s more reckless policies, unless they stupidly ditch even more of their principles.

So that just leaves the Greens, who will push Albanese to be even more radical as a price of their support — especially in their manic and useless crusade against global warming.

It’s too early in the count to be sure, but the swing so far suggests Labor, the Greens, Jacquie Lambie’s party or a climate “independent” could win two or even three more Senate seats between them from the Liberals.

That means the most likely result is that Labor and the Greens will form a majority in the Senate, needing just ultra-populist Jacqui Lambie and either a second Lambie senator or one other independent.

It will be poorer Australians who’ll find out the hard way that Albanese can’t deliver on what he has carelessly promised. Picture: Getty Images

Does anyone seriously believe this Greens/Labor/Lambie/climate bloc will cut back our run-away spending or do anything serious to stop inflation or cut our monster debt?

Will these big-government big spenders say no to big wage rises for public servants? Will they trim our bloated hand-outs or try to reign in the runaway costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme?

That’s even less likely when this election result shows voters are in no mood to accept the slightest pain without savaging Canberra.

Morrison got blamed for bushfires he didn’t light, floods he didn’t cause, petrol price hikes from a war he didn’t start, inflation whipped up by countries he doesn’t lead.

Oh, and he was savaged for not doing more to stop a mild global warming that Australia is too small to affect, and which Morrison was too scared or smooth to point out was not a “crisis” anyway.

What a ludicrous election campaign.

Australia is going to get a brutal wakeup that there’s no problem supposedly caused by Morrison that Labor can fix or won’t make worse. Guys, you really think the floods will stop under Labor? That interest rates won’t rise?

But will the Liberals now wake up?

Their campaign was awful, even if Albanese’s was even world-beating worse, turning a near-certain runaway win into a cliffhanger, by not being able to remember even the most basic economic data.

Albanese was saved by the climate independents, who have won three Liberal seats, and maybe even a fourth – Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Getty Images

Albanese was saved by the climate independents, who have won at least three Liberal seats, and probably a fourth – Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Labor even lost seats to the Greens.

But the Liberals! I have never before see a major party spend a campaign telling voters to be grateful to the government for what it’s done, and not talk about what it will do next.

But the Liberals didn’t lose this election in this six-week campaign. They started the campaign already too far behind to win.

They lost this election two years ago, when they were slow to get the right vaccines.

They lost it a year ago, when Morrison went to Hawaii during the bushfires.

And they lost it every day of the past three years by not standing for much and not fighting the very scares – like global warming – that’s now helped to destroy them.

The climate independents have taken once blue-blood Liberals seats such as North Sydney, Wentworth and Goldstein, where people are rich enough to pose as climate savers.

The Liberals now face a critical choice.

They either go even more Left-wing to win back all those votes they lost to the climate “independents” in their richer seats, turning themselves into an even bigger bunch of fakers.

Or they forget the dinner set in Point Piper and Toorak and decide the Liberals – led by former Defence Minister Peter Dutton, if he saves his own seat - are now the party for the battlers in our suburbs and towns. With many of the most high-profile Left-wing Liberals beaten, that shift will be easier.

Because think ahead. Power prices will soar as more coal-fired power stations close under Labor and the Greens. Wages will keep falling under Labor. Interest rates will rise.

Who’ll scream loudest, at the next election?

It won’t be the rich, who can afford their global warming fantasies. It will be poorer Australians, in Labor’s marginal seats, who’ll find out the hard way that Albanese can’t deliver on what he carelessly promised.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Disaster looms for Aussie battlers under Albanese government