Andrew Bolt: Gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed

The Coalition fought to a shock lead in the polls, and then … stopped. So here we are, back with a Labor government that’s left Australia poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt.

No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed.

Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies.

That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

That’s just my opinion, of course, and not the real reason I say voters were wrong. You see, voters objectively did get it wrong – but the question for the Coalition is exactly when?

Were voters wrong four months ago, when they told the polls they wanted the incompetent Albanese Government gone? When the Coalition was ahead in the main polls, by an average of 52 per cent to Labor’s 48?

Or were voters wrong on election day, when they swung to Labor instead?

Something changed in the past four months, and tracking the fall in the Coalition’s support hints at the real problem.

Peter Dutton seemed to be spooked out of doing what had worked for him. Picture: Richard Dobson

The Coalition, never strong in telling us what it was for, suddenly lost its guts to fight for what few beliefs it still held.

I’m not just talking about its disastrous decision to promise to repeal Labor’s latest (tiny) tax cuts. How could any Liberal Party promise higher taxes?

The rot went far deeper, and dates from when Donald Trump took over as president and started to smash the furniture. The polls show the collapse of Coalition support started right there.

Labor jumped on it fast, running ads claiming Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was a mini-Trump, even lying that “Peter Dutton is going to back Trump over Australia”.

But as so often in this campaign, the Coalition looked totally flat-footed, and without an answer. It never attacked Trump personally to prove that Dutton was his own man, not even when Trump hit Australia with tariffs.

Worse, Dutton seemed to be spooked out of doing what had worked for him all along, as if terrified of seeming as tough as, well, Trump.

Unbelievable.

Dutton had actually got the Coalition into a winning lead by smashing Labor not just on the cost of living crisis but also on conservative issues – Labor disasters like importing a million immigrants in just two years, stripping our military of weaponry, failing to deport foreign criminals, kowtowing to China’s dictatorship, pandering to Muslim radicals, flying of three flags and – above all – trying to divide us by race with an Aboriginal-only Voice to Parliament.

The Liberals had even savaged Labor’s catastrophic green schemes and launched its plan for seven nuclear power stations, AND WAS WINNING.

Labor Party supporters react at their party headquarters in Sydney as the election is called for Anthony Albanese. Picture: AP

The Coalition had fought to a shock lead in the polls, and then … stopped.

Starting from January, the Coalition rolled itself in a ball. It refused to fight the “culture wars” that terrify many Liberals. It dodged mentioning China, hid its defence policy until the last minute, and barely criticised Labor’s catastrophic green energy policies, even last week when Spain and Portugal were totally blacked out by relying too much on fickle wind and solar power.

The Coalition even hid its most effective communicators – Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Barnaby Joyce and defence spokesman Andrew Hastie, as if frightened by what they may say.

Energy spokesmen Ted O’Brien was also sidelined, even though he was best equipped to fight Labor’s most devastating lie – that the Coalition’s promised nuclear reactors would cost a totally bogus $600 billion and the Coalition had “secret” plans to slash Medicare to pay for them.

Dutton instead presented an endless laundry list of promises, mostly handouts, and so un-ideological that voters would have lost track of which side was promising what.

Missing was the Coalition’s big story — the values that tied those promises together.

The Coalition’s slogan was “Back on track”. But which track? To where?

So here we are: back with a government that promises to spend more than we can afford, build a green electricity system that will not work, bind business with more green tape that will choke investment, and splash out handouts to punish the prudent.

How did the Coalition fail to stop it?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed