Piers Akerman: Bill Shorten fails the pub test, lowers the bar with Budget-in-reply

LABOR leader Bill Shorten’s Budget-in-Reply speech flunked the pub test and the ­reality test. Too much never-never, too little credibility and the bloke who delivered it has too much shifty baggage, writes Piers Akerman.

LABOR leader Bill Shorten’s Budget-in-Reply speech flunked the pub test and the ­reality test. Too much never-never, too little credibility and the bloke who delivered it has too much shifty baggage.

Scott Morrison, on the other hand, delivered a Budget (which should it get passed in its entirety) did present a plan that could see the nation move back toward financial stability and future prosperity — if the dodgy Senate and untrustworthy Opposition put the country  first  and just give it a chance.

Again, union puppet Shorten has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

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Piers Akerman pictured. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

His speech was dripping with abundant promises of unfunded handouts and savage envy-driven tax hikes for aspirational workers, but it could only appeal to unfortunate amnesiacs who may have mercifully forgotten Labor’s disastrous record of financial mismanagement.

Shorten’s delivery of any economic message certainly isn’t helped by the presence of former Rudd and Gillard government treasurer Wayne Swan on the backbench. The man who always promised to deliver a Budget surplus but never delivered is a constant reminder of how utterly ­incompetent Labor can be.

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Swan now sees himself as the next federal president of the ALP, a position in which he would be as useful to the party as the dead albatross was hanging from the neck of the Ancient Mariner.

A hopeful looking Bill Shorten this week. Picture: AAP

The Opposition Leader hands down his Budget reply speech. Picture: Getty Images

Shorten’s view is short-term and populistic, Morrison’s takes the longer, more professional view though it is too reliant on optimistic forecasting of economic growth.

As Treasury’s forward estimates are notoriously shonky when they go much beyond the next fortnight, a better measure of the effect of Budget proposals can be the measure of criticism they receive.

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In this, the ABC’s Melbourne morning presenter Jon Faine didn’t disappoint.

Bearing in mind that this humbug owes his salary to the long-suffering taxpayers, it might be imagined that he would give a government spokesman a fair run, but that won’t happen while the ABC is in the hands of the Ultimo People’s Collective. The Left-leaning commentator managed to interrupt Finance Minister Mathias Cormann a dozen times during a post-Budget interview on Wed­nesday morning, but the indefatigable Cormann showed dogged perseverance, twice telling Faine: “I totally disagree with you” and you “are quite wrong” before firmly stating “that is actually wrong. That is objectively wrong”.

ABC Melbourne radio host Jon Faine.

Senator Mathias Cormann. Picture: Gary Ramage

Faine was nailed when he attempted to claim that the government had cut funding from ASIC and the ATO with Cormann politely offering to provide him with evidence given by Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan in Senate Estimates where Labor was trying to prosecute precisely the same argument — one the Tax Commissioner “very clearly” spelled out was wrong.

If Faine thought his rude and belligerent cross-examination was in the public interest, it was not. His audience learnt nothing but had reinforced for it the view that the ABC is staffed with Leftists happy to run Labor’s lines even when they are nonsense.

ABC managing director ­Michelle Guthrie showed she’s learnt nothing on the job when she later attacked the government for freezing the bloated organisation’s funding indexation from July next year, leaving it with an $83.7 million hole in its $3.16 billion funding over the next three years, less than a flyspeck on the bottom line for an organisation that routinely fails its charter conditions.

Surely the time has come for a government to bow to the obvious and put the whole show on the block for some ­entrepreneur to lick into commercial shape.

Fortunately for Labor, any in-depth examination of its shadow Budget was wiped by the High Court’s unanimous finding that it had yet another cuckoo in its nest, ending Katy Gallagher’s illegal occupation of a Senate seat.

Unfortunately Shorten had been crowing about the certainty of Labor’s legal advice about the legitimacy of its MPs and senators since the Opposition dealt with its dual citizens and the advice it had been receiving proved as reliable as that provided to AMP in its self-examination — hopeless.

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There have now been 15 parliamentarians tossed since the Greens lost Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters last October for falling foul of the constitutional ban on dual citizenship. Fairfax says the fact that they’ve all been of Anglo-Celtic or Anglo-Saxon stock means we have to come to grips with the multicultural nature of our society and amend our view of Australianness, as if this were an issue.

While there have been some self-interested parties suggesting a referendum is needed to change the Constitution to permit dual citizens to hold federal parliamentary office, this would be an ­extremely wrongheaded move.

Gone... Former Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

Gone... Former Greens Senator Larissa Waters. Picture: Annette Dew

It just cannot make sense to have people who claim ­allegiance to two nations representing Australians in the national parliament.

The chances of conflict of interest are too many to permit such a fraught proposal to go forward — even if there were the remotest possibility dual citizenship would be approved by referendum.

The national interest must take priority whether it’s a matter of parliamentary representation or the economy.

After some fits and starts the Turnbull government has indicated it wants to start building for a sound future.

Labor, however, can only see the promotion of class warfare, the resurrection of thuggish trade union domination, higher taxes, growing unemployment and a dead hand on economic growth.

The options were starkly contrasted by the Budget and the dual citizenship fiasco.

The juxtaposition made the choice clear — it was a week in which the conservatives showed they have the national interest at heart.