Piers Akerman: Danger in sleepwalking to polling day is a leader who can’t handle the truth

A nation sleepwalking to the ballot box risks waking up with a government it didn’t really choose, writes Piers Akerman.

There seems to be as much, if not more, interest in the election of a new pope as there is in selecting the next Australian prime minister.

Around the globe, 1.3 billion Catholics are glued to events in Rome, as 135 cardinals gather in conclave surrounded by the ceremonial pageantry of 19 centuries of sacred tradition.

Here, of the 18 million or so eligible voters, a growing number are tuning out, avoiding political coverage like a bad smell and heading early to the polls or applying for a postal vote – not out of civic duty, but sheer fatigue.

This has been, by any measure, one of the most lacklustre, uninspiring election campaigns in living memory.

A weary, cynical electorate is being asked to choose between a Coalition offering serious, practical policies and a Labor Party helmed by Anthony Albanese, a career political operator whose relationship with truth is, at best, casual and, at worst, contemptuous.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a career political operator whose relationship with truth is, at best, casual and, at worst, contemptuous. Picture: Mark Stewart/NewsWire

Australians are switching but apathy has consequences. A nation sleepwalking to the ballot box risks waking up with a government it didn’t really choose, cobbled together from the detritus of the political fringe: Greens, Teals and assorted inner-city virtue-signallers who wouldn’t know a practical policy solution if it landed in their organic soy latte.

Albanese’s Labor is not the party of Curtin or Chifley. It’s an outfit captured by hard-Left ideologues, university-campus radicals and union fixers. Albanese, himself, is a product of that world: forged in student politics, honed in factional trench warfare and guided by Labor’s eternal rule – “whatever it takes”.

Anthony Albanese (left) leading a student protest atop the University of Sydney clock tower. Picture: Supplied

Albanese rattles off bogus claims faster than they can be fact-checked.

He has accused the Coalition of having “ripped into” the health budget. Nonsense. Under the Coalition, hospital funding almost doubled – from $13.3bn in 2012-13 to $24.7bn in 2021-22. When Opposition Leader Peter Dutton held the health portfolio, funding jumped 16 per cent in just two years.

Albanese claims he inherited a $78bn deficit. Lie. Veteran political journalist Phil Coorey fact-checked him live during the leaders’ debate, confirming the true figure was $31bn. That’s deliberate political dishonesty.

On Medicare, Albanese trots out the tired claim that the Coalition froze rebate indexation. The truth? Labor started the freeze. The Coalition ended it.

Labor’s biggest falsehood: the claim that “renewables are the cheapest form of power”, quoting the Australian Energy Market Operator. Yet AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman has refused to guarantee increased renewable generation will lower prices – because it won’t.

Albanese boasts of falling unemployment but joblessness is higher than when Labor took office, with over 107,000 more Australians now on income support.

He tries to deny Labor commissioned negative gearing modelling yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted he did.

Albanese claims not to have fallen off a stage at an event, despite clear video evidence. He has even claimed he “got the pandas back” for Adelaide. In truth, the Coalition secured the pandas in 2007. They never left.

This isn’t harmless politicking. It’s a dangerous pattern of deception from a man seeking the nation’s highest office.

Peter Dutton, by contrast, has run a serious, measured campaign built on real-world achievement and credible policy. He represents the Australia that works, builds and defends itself – not the Australia of taxpayer-funded think tanks, Twitter mobs, and performative outrage.

The Coalition’s plan offers a clear path to prosperity and security. Labor’s offering is the same reheated policy sludge, heavy on ideology and light on outcomes.

This nation cannot afford to sleepwalk into the embrace of Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.