The Prime Minister won by lying that all was fine, and promising massive handouts

Anthony Albanese’s election landslide is not a bright new dawn, but more like waking up with a hangover.

Lies fade, but facts last. Even Anthony Albanese will know he’s won this election at a terrible cost, and now we must pay.

His election landslide is not a bright new dawn, but more like waking up with a hangover.

Frightened by polls last December suggesting he’d lose, the Prime Minister bought Saturday’s win at a price Australia cannot afford.

Albanese had given Australians lower living standards, higher debt, worse electricity and more division.

Even Anthony Albanese will know he’s won this election at a terrible cost, and now we must pay. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Yet he won by lying that all was fine, and promising massive handouts – handouts to compensate for high power bills, handouts to non-working parents to dump their children into childcare, and even a bribe to privileged university students to wipe 20 per cent from their student debt.

By last week, ratings agency Standard and Poor’s said government spending was so out of control that Australia risked losing its AAA credit rating.

Now comes the reckoning. How will Albanese fix what he lied wasn’t broken?

How will he pay for it all, when he had a plan to spend, but not to earn?

The Prime Minister bought Saturday’s win at a price Australia cannot afford. Picture: Getty

No, this is not sour grapes.

This is the crisis the Prime Minister must confront to save himself from massive buyer’s remorse from the Australians who voted for his money tree.

In fact, it’s unlikely Albanese will now lurch left, made arrogant by success.

He will, if anything, tack a tiny bit to the right, and not just because he now seems to want to become Labor’s John Howard – more fatherly than firebrand.

He will because he must, given the facts.

First, government spending is out of control, and debt too high.

Albanese himself admits his government will spend more than it earns for the next 10 years, and gross debt next year will smash past $1 trillion.

That’s dangerous, when our economy is supposedly growing and has full employment, but Albanese in this campaign savaged the Opposition for even thinking of cutting spending and our bloated public service.

At the same time, he announced zero plans that would make our economy richer.

Albanese was all spend, no save.

He has no mandate for cuts.

So now what?

Second problem now facing Albanese: a green energy plan that’s already failing.

Labor won this election with a big double-lie: that the Coalition’s plan for seven nuclear reactors would cost $600bn, and to pay for them the Coalition had secret plans to cut Medicare.

But without nuclear power, how can Labor give us affordable and reliable electricity?

Labor lied that the Coalition’s plan for seven nuclear reactors would cost $600bn.

The total blackouts last week in Spain and Portugal showed what power experts warn is our future: a grid made unstable by too much fickle wind and solar power, and crashing when disrupted.

Other bits of Albanese’s green plans will also look even more disastrous in the next three years.

Already huge parts of his green revolution have collapsed: green hydrogen schemes have been scrapped, offshore wind farms cancelled, gas supplies choked, transmission lines blocked or delayed.

The penny is dropping.

Even long-serving British Labour prime minister Tony Blair warned last week that such net-zero policies were “bound to fail”, but said government leaders were too scared of being called “climate deniers” to admit it.

That includes Albanese – so what next?

What, when Albanese has just campaigned hysterically against the nuclear plants Australia must have to cut emissions and keep on the lights without going broke?

There are other nasty facts Albanese ignored in this campaign which demand action now.

But what action?

Albanese seems to want to become Labor’s John Howard – more fatherly than firebrand. Picture: Jason Edwards

He ridiculed the Opposition for promising another $21bn in five years for our defence force that’s now so weak our navy didn’t even have ships of its own to shadow three Chinese warships which circled our continent in February, firing weapons and forcing passenger jets to divert.

Yet Albanese’s next three years bring us past 2027, the year by which Chinese dictator Xi Jinping said his military had to be ready for war.

Will Albanese really leave us nearly defenceless?

Again: what now?

I’ve given just three of the urgent challenges – facts – that Albanese dismissed in the campaign, but can’t now dodge.

Add also the appalling rates of productivity now making our industries uncompetitive, and the mass immigration that’s making homes unaffordable for the young.

Albanese won’t be able to keep blaming the smashed Liberals for Australians getting poorer. Voters will be harder to fool if the next three years look like the last.

But how he’ll end our decline is something he’s yet to say, or even imagine.

Originally published as The Prime Minister won by lying that all was fine, and promising massive handouts