Credlin: Albanese government heading in wrong direction – even Labor stalwarts know it

On every score, the federal government is taking us in the wrong direction – and even old Labor stalwarts know it too, writes Peta Credlin.

When senior Labor figures start turning on the government, you know it’s in a lot of trouble. The most spectacular attack was Bill Kelty’s barb that the Albanese government was “mired in mediocrity”.

But more damning than the ex-ACTU secretary, was the clinical dismissal of the Prime Minister by his former NSW Labor colleague Michael Costa. The ex-state treasurer said of Anthony Albanese on Sky News last week that: “We’ve always known that he’s not strong on policy. He’s been a slogan peddler for all the time I’ve known him”.

The PM subsequently confirmed that he’s not across the detail by falsely telling the ABC in an interview just days later that US economic growth was lower than ours, when it’s not.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? With Australia’s GDP per person now declining for six successive quarters, meaning all of us are becoming individually poorer, we are saddled with a PM who’s simply not up to the job.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lost the confidence of even some Labor supporters. Picture: Brendan Radke

He only got there because voters were sick of his predecessor; and, since getting to the top, when he’s not travelling overseas or going to celebrity events, he’s had no credible plans for making our country safer, stronger or more cohesive. Indeed, everything this government does is making our problems worse, so for the first time in our history Australians are worried that things will be worse for our children than they’ve been for us.

As Costa said: “This government has failed and it’s not just Albanese … The federal treasurer … a bloke who did a PhD on Keating … he’s systematically overturning every single reform of the Hawke-Keating government. It’s a Frankenstein government here. A combination of Whitlam and the worst elements of Rudd”.

Boom.

Even business leaders, who are normally paranoid about criticising Labor governments from fear of victimisation, are starting to speak out. Almost a fortnight back, the mining chief Tania Constable said that the Albanese government had “brought conflict to every workplace”.

Last week, Bran Black, the new head of the Business Council of Australia, warned in the presence of the Prime Minister that Australia was drifting backwards and that the government’s policies were to blame.

At the BCA annual dinner last Tuesday night, attended by a who’s who of business and politics, Black said that many CEOs “feel that we are losing our way” as a nation and that the country is taking “incremental but noticeable steps backwards”.

Taking direct aim at the PM, he went on, “this should NOT be dismissed as ‘talking Australia down’”. He argued that government policy would leave future generations with a heavier burden of debt and deficit, and was driving productivity lower now than five years ago. And productivity, he said, is “the only thing that really matters when it comes to improving long term quality of life in this country”.

BCA chief executive Bran Black. Picture: NewsWire/Christian Gilles

Former BCA head Jennifer Westacott. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

These are the same business groups that previously cosied-up to the ACTU, in a vain effort to get consensus on productivity enhancing reforms; that, instead, helped to produce the Albanese government’s now legislated assault on enterprise bargaining, casual work, and managers’ right to run their businesses. Still, with productivity crashing, with new mines almost impossible to get approved, and with deliberate government policy making our industries uncompetitive, at last these business groups have decided it’s time to fight back.

Adding to the chorus of criticism, the former BCA head, Jennifer Westacott, who’s certainly not a knee jerk critic, warned at another event last week that we’re “sleepwalking into lower living standards” if we don’t boost our productivity and competitiveness. “We’ve just got into a malaise” she said, “of not doing the big hard things”.

Also last week, the Australian Resources and Energy Association, warned that 107 major projects, worth $131 billion in investment, are in jeopardy because of green law-fare, workplace changes and extra red tape. It’s worth remembering that, without the resources sector, Australia’s economy would look more like New Zealand’s – with a GDP per person of $USD48,400 per head, as opposed to our current level of well over $USD65,000 per person.

And NZ’s GDP went backwards last week, showing just what’s ahead of us if we keep demonising those industries that keep us prosperous … for now.

To the extent that the Albanese government does have an economic policy, it’s to keep spending your money to try and keep the country out of recession, even though this adds to the inflationary pressures that are making it hard for the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates. And yet it’s skyrocketing mortgage repayments that are the key element in the cost-of-living crisis. Then there’s the government’s “green transition”, which is set to double power prices and drive what’s left of our heavy industry offshore.

There’s no mystery to what’s needed to produce a stronger economy and a more prosperous society: It’s lower taxes, less regulation, government spending restraint, higher standards in education and immigration policies calculated to raise wealth per person, not lower it.

Yet, on every score, this government is taking us in the wrong direction – and even old Labor stalwarts know it too.

COURT HAS SHOWN HOW MOIRA DEEMING IS STANDING UP FOR WOMEN

For 70 minutes last week in the Federal Court in Melbourne, the treatment of newly arrived Liberal MP Moira Deeming, described by her barrister as a “campaign of destruction”, was laid bare.

Deputy Liberal leader David Southwick’s secretly taped recording, from a meeting in March 2023, put paid to any suggestion that the Liberal leadership treated their now former colleague fairly or with due process, as Liberal Leader John Pesutto and others harangued her for attending a pro-women’s rally and tried to make her responsible for the neo-Nazi gate-crashers that turned up.

To say it was a pile-on would be an understatement; it was a four-to-one factional hit and yet throughout their nasty and belittling attacks, Deeming, a former schoolteacher and mother of four, remained unfailingly polite and respectful.

Moira Deeming arrives at the Melbourne federal court as her defamation battle continues against Victoria Liberal leader John Pesutto. Picture: NewsWire/Aaron Francis

As you know, I have followed this whole sorry episode closely.

I fight hard in the media to support the right of women and girls to single sex spaces, like toilets and changerooms and sporting competitions. I don’t regard it as a controversial view, I know that’s what a big majority of Australians think. They have no truck with discrimination against anyone, least of all trans people, but they will not stay silent as the hard-won rights of women become collateral damage in this new era of identity madness.

And this is why, when Moira stood up on this issue, she was standing up for all of us, and when the Liberal Party, that I have been a part of most of my adult life, tried to do her over, I felt compelled to stick up for the underdog. There’s no point saying you believe something if you do not live out your convictions.

That’s been the problem with the Victorian Opposition for too long. They’ve been scared of their own shadow, too gutless to ever stand up to Daniel Andrews. They share a lot of blame for the mess that my home state of Victoria is in now.

The trial continues but, in the court of public opinion, Moira Deeming has already beaten John Pesutto.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm