Terry McCrann: Our future looks messy and very ugly

This is a time like never before when we need a strong government with a clear majority. Instead we’re getting an utterly ineffectual leader held hostage by the Greens.

Welcome to the first day in the rest of your life and an election outcome that will deliver a future that is messy and ugly.

And deliver it at a time when the global economic, financial and geopolitical outlooks are all turning complicated and nasty.

Anthony Albanese is going to become prime minister despite 70 per cent of the electorate – seven out of every ten voters – voting AGAINST the Labor Party.

Labor is going to win either a clear majority of seats – if so, thanks to Mark McGowan delivering a bounty of seats in WA – or at least enough seats to form minority government, on just 30 per cent of the first preference votes.

This is by far the lowest ever in any election, state or federal, in at least the near-80 years of post-war elections.

It was considered impossible, but it reflects the fragmentation with the two main parties getting at best two-thirds of the votes; with the rest split between the formal Dark Greens and the Green phony independents on the left, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Clive Palmer’s UAP on the right.

The government has lost but this was no “It’s Time Version 2.0”. Picture: AFP

Yes, the Morrison government clearly lost.

But this was no ‘It’s Time Version 2.0’ or ‘Kevin ‘07’, when voters emphatically embraced Gough Whitlam in 1972 and Kevin Rudd in 2007 and delivered clear-cut majority Labor governments.

There was no rush to embrace the new-look Albo and the new-look Labor Party, even if he does get a clear majority in the lower house.

Be afraid if Labor ends up needing the support of the so-called ‘Teals’ and assorted other independents to govern in the lower house.

Be really afraid, if Labor actually gets a majority in the Senate in combination with the Greens and perhaps two Jackie Lambie senators.

That would see a Labor agenda super-charged by the most extreme Dark Green lunacies pass straight through both houses and into law.

We’re facing a time like never before, not even after the GFC. Picture: Jason Edwards

We won’t know about the Senate for weeks; there might be some path to the Coalition and One Nation gaining the 38 seats necessary to produce a stalemate.

At the best of times this sort of messy uncertainty would be unwelcome. But right now it’s terrifying.

Interest rates are going up right around the world; but they might be going up into a world heading for recession, as all the chickens which have been building since the GFC are finally brought home to roost by the consequences of what happened through the Covid years.

China remains the single most important driver of our economy. Yet China is in diabolical trouble, as the export-focused and infrastructure-building dynamic founders on the maniacal zero-Covid insanity of its one-man leadership.

Yes, right now China is still buying our iron ore and our coal at record volumes and very high prices.

It’s great for WA, where the budget’s in balance and the jobless rate is heading for all-but zero.

But the Chinese students haven’t come back and nor have the tourists – both so crucial for the economies of the rest of Australia.

This is a time like never before, when we really need a strong government, with a clear majority, and with a clear-eyed policy program for making Australia work more effectively in the reality of the world.

Instead we are getting a government which has no idea about the way the economy actually functions, has built in big new spending programs and will be chasing economy destroying green fantasies.

Presided over by its utterly ineffectual leader – our down under Joe Biden – and hostage to the Greens.

Originally published as Terry McCrann: Our future looks messy and very ugly