Andrew Bolt: Smell of failure around Albanese government getting stronger

After a week of incompetence, in which it lurched from disaster to disaster, the smell of failure around the Albanese government is growing stronger.

Let me repeat. Anthony Albanese’s government is worse than even Gough Whitlam’s, and this disastrous week of incompetence, arrogance, lies and billion-dollar gambles just proves it.

In fact, something in this government snapped this week.

The disasters started at the top, when Prime Minister Albanese pulled rank and got huffy at a Canberra rally of women on Sunday protesting against domestic violence.

He told the crowd the rally organiser, Sarah Williams, hadn’t wanted him to speak, only for her to shout he was lying and burst into tears.

Albanese later accused her of being emotional and implied she was wrong to accuse him of having bullied her by saying “I’m the prime minister”.

In fact, TV footage showed Albanese saying just that. Even ABC commentator Annabel Crabb, firm friend of the Left, was appalled, penning a column of rage.

But Albanese on Wednesday twice refused journalists’ invitations to say he regretted behaving as he did and making Williams cry.

This will hurt him because this haughtiness would make even supporters question whether the matey Albo they’re sold is the real deal. No voter likes feeling fooled.

Anthony Albanese with No More! event organiser Sarah Williams Picture: Martin Ollman

But if that was the frying pan, Albanese’s government immediately jumped into the fire.

One of the 149 foreigners it had released last year from immigration detention, a Kuwaiti, was last weekend arrested and accused of bashing a 73-year-old woman, cancer sufferer Ninette Simons, to a pulp in a home invasion. The photograph of her injuries was shocking.

What made this a government scandal was that there was a direct link – allegedly – between the appalling incompetence of two ministers and the blood and bruises all over Simons’ face, and the terror felt by her husband, too.

First, there were the blunders that led the government to last year free the Kuwaiti and 148 other foreigners, including seven murderers and 37 rapists and other sex offenders.

It had failed to stop a test case involving a Burmese pedophile from getting to the High Court, which then ruled the government had to free a detainee it couldn’t send home.

The government also assumed this ruling should apply to the Kuwaiti, who was freed, too.

Next mistake, the government was caught unprepared, and released those 149 detainees without proper monitoring or new laws to keep the most dangerous behind bars.

Immigration Minister Giles had even skipped preparatory meetings in his office to campaign instead for the Voice, including in London.

Another bungle: Giles then promised us the freed detainees would have ankle bracelets, curfews and other monitoring, yet the Kuwaiti wore no ankle bracelet and couldn’t be found until two weeks after Simons was bashed and robbed.

Ninette Simons, the victim of an assault and burglary in the Perth suburb of Girrawheen

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has the backing of the prime minister, despite the blunders of the week.

More incompetence: this Kuwaiti appeared in court three times before the alleged bashing and not once did the Commonwealth oppose bail or apply to have him put in preventive detention under new laws rushed through parliament last year.

And one more blunder: charges against the Kuwaiti of breaking curfew had to be dropped, anyway, because Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil had issued faulty visas with those curfew restrictions.

That long litany of incompetence demands Giles and probably O’Neil be sacked.

But, no. Albanese insisted both would stay, as Giles and O’Neil hid from the media for a day and a half.

Meanwhile, the government repeatedly told journalists a falsehood: that it had opposed bail for the Kuwaiti. Only on Wednesday did it admit it hadn’t. Another stuff-up.

Yet as with Albanese at the women’s rally, there were no apologies and no accountability.

Of course, you’re right. The government must also have done something good this week, and on Tuesday it announced it was building our future.

But even this stank of Whitlam’s worst.

Albanese said he’d gone 50-50 with Queensland’s Labor government in giving $1bn to a new US-based company, PsiQuantum, to come to Brisbane to invent the world’s first commercial quantum computer.

If it works, it could be huge. Big if.

This is just the government’s latest big-money gamble on what it reckons are business winners under its new Future Made in Australia scheme.

It’s already promised $1bn to build our own solar panels, when there’s a world glut of them, thanks to massive overproduction by cut-price China. No wonder the Productivity Commission boss warns this scheme is a great way to lose money.

How much of it will this government gamble away? And as the economy keeps slowing, will it bet everything in desperation on a last-race winner to take it home?

There’s a smell now about this government. Beware.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Smell of failure around Albanese government getting stronger