Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese government unable to handle itself under pressure

On issues big and small, this government is either wrongheaded or confused and it’s decision-making seems to have more to do with political calculation than the long-term national interest, writes Peta Credlin.

Anthony Albanese has just had by far the worst week of his prime ministership. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to lose the next election. But it does mean that Peter Dutton and the Coalition are now in with a fighting chance.

With the PM yet again out of the country, on what is his 21st overseas trip in just a year and a half in office, last week the government was forced to accept a series of opposition amendments to pass legislation to address the mess of the 84 foreign criminals now loose on our streets, with perhaps 340 more to come.

No thanks to the government but thanks, instead, to the opposition, these hardened criminals – including murderers, rapists and pedophiles – will at least have to wear ankle bracelets now that they have been released into the community; even though the only place they should be is in continuing detention or preferably out of the country.

The fact they are free, even under tougher conditions than before, is an indictment of a government that’s been asleep at the wheel – probably because until last month, from the PM down, its members were focused on a race-based constitutional change that was never likely to pass.

Anthony Albanese has suffered the worst week during his 18 months in power, writes Peta Credlin. Picture: Kent Nishimura / Getty Images North America

The government was warned back in June that the High Court was likely to reverse its previous judgment and order the release of foreign criminals who had served their sentences but were, for whatever reason, unable to be deported to their country of origin.

But despite several months notice, and no doubt public service advice about a Plan B, it was caught completely flat-footed, thereby putting public safety at risk.

Sure, events can throw even the best of governments off-balance – but good ones try to anticipate problems to be ready for whatever comes.

In this case, though, the Albanese government was culpably clueless, and is now scrambling to deal with a contingency for which it should have been prepared.

Make no mistake, this government is now in a world of political pain, not because the High Court made an awkward decision, but due to its own ineptitude on a whole range of issues.

Almost six weeks after the October 7 atrocities in Israel – and the immediate eruption of “gas the Jews” hate speech on our streets – it still can’t decide whether the big problem is rampant anti-Semitism or an all-but-non-existent Islamophobia.

And you have to question how much ethnic branch-stacking inside Labor is behind this moral weakness in failing to call out anti-Semitism without qualification.

Then there’s the Chinese dictator’s insistence taking over independent Taiwan is “unstoppable”, meaning there’s trouble ahead for our region and the wider world.

PM Albanese says he’s committed to boosting Australia’s military strength, but is actually starving all the other parts of our armed forces to pay for nuclear submarines that won’t arrive for a decade at least.

Reliable energy alternatives are still years away from being reliable. Picture: Supplied

The government’s union-dictated workplace changes are sapping the productivity on which our prosperity rests and on which our national security ultimately depends. The government’s emissions obsession is closing down coal-fired power, when reliable 24/7 alternatives are years away, because Labor’s green-left zealots keep saying that a climate “emergency” is the world’s biggest challenge. As if.

Ask the Ukrainians or the Israelis or the Taiwanese what the biggest threat is, and none of them will mention the temperature in a few decades time.

Indeed, as the Energy Regulator reported recently, the only way we’ll avoid blackouts this summer is by telling large factories to shut down.

Meanwhile, despite Anthony Albanese promising to cut power bills by $275 per household per year, they’ve increased by at least 20 per cent in the past 12 months. And that cost of living pain on power is felt across the board on everything else as inflation remains an issue.

Finally there’s immigration, now at record levels of at least 500,000 a year, the equivalent of a city the size of Canberra. While the vast majority of migrants will turn out to be fine Australians, migration at these levels is putting downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs, and massive pressure on infrastructure. No one voted for this, there is no population policy we’re working to, and the government has no idea how to manage it. Maybe that’s because the minister in charge is the same bloke who was asleep on these now-released detainees.

On issues big and small, this government is either wrongheaded or confused and it’s decision-making seems to have more to do with political calculation than the long-term national interest.

An incompetent government can win an election, but only if the opposition seems even worse. Yet for the past few months, especially since deciding to oppose the Voice, Peter Dutton hasn’t put a foot wrong. Last week, especially in the PM’s absence, he has dominated the parliament.

For the Prime Minister, it looks like it’s going to be a torrid summer. And unless his government lifts its game, a torrid summer for all of us too.

GOOD SCIENCE CONTAMINATED BY BAD POLITICS

Everyone wants to do the right thing by troubled young people but does that mean agreeing to irreversible chemical and surgical changes to teenagers who might just be confused or unsure about who they are and how they best fit in?

Despite doctors in Britain and elsewhere calling time on “gender affirmation therapy”, new guidelines from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne have reportedly just affirmed the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by GPs, without the oversight of multidisciplinary specialist teams.

Two leading psychiatrists are now questioning the view that young people should routinely be “affirmed” in any decision that they might be trapped in the wrong body.

George Halasz is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and has written an academic paper challenging the evidence base of gender affirmative medicine. Picture: Alex Coppel

Professor George Halasz and Dr Andrew Amos, in an article for the medical journal Australasian Psychiatry, have called on their fellow medicos to remember their Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm”. They say there are “major risks associated with gender affirming care”; risks that the Melbourne treatment guidelines have ignored.

Both these expert doctors say that treatment guidelines have more to do with political activism than good science. Dr Amos says that it’s “trans advocacy” that’s currently driving the treatment guidelines. He’s attacked the “magical thinking” that “simply acknowledging there are alternative approaches to gender dysphoria actually threatens harm to the transgender community”.

Professor Halasz says that the trans lobby has created a climate where doctors are operating in a “culture of intimidation, silence and … threat” which is “so outside of my understanding of what medicine is about”. He says that it’s been hard to get a public discussion about radical gender treatments because doctors are afraid for their professional reputations. Indeed, in the Senate last week, Labor and the Greens blocked a bid to have a parliamentary inquiry into this issue.

Both Amos and Halasz are concerned about the treatment of a Queensland specialist child psychiatrist, Dr Jillian Spencer, who’s been stood down from her hospital position for questioning the current orthodoxy that gender-confused youngsters should be affirmed rather than encouraged to wait before beginning irreversible treatments they might subsequently regret.

This looks to be yet another field where good science has been contaminated by bad politics.

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