Vikki Campion: Challenges that could blow up Albo’s year
Anthony Albanese has a lot of big challenges ahead, writes Vikki Campion, and he would do well to talk to real Australians about them, rather than listen to pampered suburbanites.
Opinion
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A forecast drought, an energy crisis, a political crisis — these are just some of the challenges Anthony Albanese will face during the coming year.
VICTIMHOOD VOTERS
Like Prince Harry’s memoir — “My life was so tough, people were giving me cocaine” — even the most privileged are finding reasons to be oppressed, summed up by those who received a $3000 electric bike from Santa complaining on Facebook that there was no special e-bike parking at major shopping centres.
As the ballooning NDIS is reviewed this year, with the blowout set to cost more than Medicare, it will be a challenge for Labor to ascertain which recipients need help and who is taking them for a ride on an e-bike.
THE NEW NACC
The soon-to-be assembled National Anti-Corruption Commission will look to justify its existence as soon as it is up and running — and will be keen to demonstrate impartiality, so expect them to target administrations past and present.
The reaction to the Brittany Higgins case before it has been dealt with in a court of law could see Albo appoint Lisa Wilkinson as the inaugural NACC commissioner now that she’s looking for work.
TIFFANY-TAINT
From building offshore wind farms over whale habitat to Climate 200 merch heading straight to the bin, 15c reusable bags clogging landfill, and the growing investment into remote carbon offsetting, greenwash has a Tiffany-teal taint going into 2023.
They are committed to net zero and happy to commit millions of taxpayers’ dollars to international miners and the coal industry to subsidise Albo’s coal price controls, with reported figures now at more than $1 billion depending on world prices and exchange rates.
Smarter heads of both Labor and the Coalition realise the “do as I say, not as I do” Climate 200 mob could be a threat for the next federal election but don’t stand a chance in the March NSW poll, where lab meat-gobbling, wind farm-adoring, wood heater-hating Energy Minister Matt Kean has out-Tiffanied them on every possible measure.
BLOW UP POWER STATIONS
What else would you do in a power crisis, with bills set to rise 56 per cent over two years, but blow up one of your biggest power stations?
The test for Labor will be to acquire Liddell before it becomes Muswellbrook’s NYE fireworks encore.
Energy stocks have outperformed the ASX by multitudes, yet institutional investors don’t invest in them because they are polluters.
People with retirement savings are losing out because North Sydney and Brunswick spivs think investing in energy is unethical.
SPECIEST DISSEMBLERS
Cue the tourist dripping in Louis Vuitton leather at a North Queensland crocodile farm last week, righteously hammering wildlife experts to define “humane” croc farming, as if the cow she hung over her arm donated its hide to overseas workshops to be stamped in designer vowels for her to fight for animal rights at — of all places — a Cairns conservation stronghold.
Farmed crocs get the same death as cattle for fashion and meat — and a much kinder death than any other animal in the wild, which starves, dies of disease or is eaten by other crocodiles. Visit the Northern Territory and try to spot a whole one.
Breeding in captivity and forcing international regulations on the crocodile trade may have stopped poaching, but not outrage from those who only seem to have a problem with killing a crocodile when they see one from a ticketed tourist boat with protective walls.
Both parties will have to deal with the voter who worries about animal rights only when it isn’t stamped with their favourite designer.
BLOWDRY VOICES
Suburbanites whose worst trial in life is having to queue in the rain to get into a busy cafe — ruining their salon blowdry — have been loudest in assuming to know more about what First Nations kids living in remote Australia need, even cancelling outback women on the Voice to do so.
Who best to speak for the barefoot kids roaming North Queensland communities at night because it is safer there then in their own homes, than manicured salon-dwellers who regularly pay someone else to wash their hair?
‘RECYCLING’
If you thought solar panels looked beautiful over a field, wait until they hang from your ears. As old, faulty or poorly performing panels get trucked to landfill, even the ABC says watch for the rise in keyrings, earrings, fridge magnets and modern art — a conglomeration of crap welded into a three-dimensional abomination and sold to your local council.
The one thing you won’t see made with solar panels is more solar panels.
BREAD AND WATER HOUSEHOLDS
If BOM predictions about a La Niña season are correct, rain clouds will clear at the same time as the Albanese government buys back enough irrigation water to fill Sydney Harbour, as solar and wind farms — and new transmission lines connecting them to the grid — stamp over prime agricultural land.
Cyclone devastation caused $12/kg bananas, floods gave us $12 iceberg lettuce, but government-restricted water and land could create a perfect storm for our food bowl.
With rising rents, mortgages and checkout costs, stretched household budgets will be slogged for fresh meat, fruit and vegetables as well — all of which require water.
Stripping water from drought-stricken farmers for river systems will buy votes until those on tight budgets forgo fresh nutritious meals.
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