Andrew Bolt: Anthony Albanese’s latest move remind us he’s a socialist

Anthony Albanese has reminded us he’s still a socialist after giving hundreds of millions of dollars to two green businesses - and there are more handouts on the way.

Anthony Albanese on Wednesday reminded us he’s still a socialist, and – worse – one who can’t remember past disasters. He threw hundreds of millions of dollars on two more green businesses he reckons are real goers.

And watch out. There’s billions more in handouts to come under the Future Made in Australia Act the Prime Minister promised last week.

Amazingly, Albanese thinks he can do business better than a businessman, even though his only business experience is working nine months for the Commonwealth Bank when he was 18.

So he’s announced he’ll pass this new act to invest in winners which real business bosses apparently won’t invest in themselves – or not without Albanese filling their pockets with our cash and guarantees.

Hurry, hurry, he shilled, or we’ll miss out: “In this time of transformative opportunity, our government will not be an observer … We will be a participant, a partner, an investor … We need to invest at scale.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced the Future Made in Australia Act. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Uh, oh. In what, pray, must this government “invest” our money? At scale?

Well, mostly green energy – wind, solar, yet-to-be-proven green hydrogen, and (as on Wednesday) batteries, which by sheer coincidence happen to be exactly the items Albanese badly needs to replace the coal-fired power he’s driving out of business in his global warming crusade, leaving us dangerously short of electricity.

By an even greater coincidence, they’re also the “winners” many investors have gone cold on. Investment in big renewable energy plummeted from $6.5 billion in 2022 to $1.5 billion last year.

Now, there are obvious problems with governments thinking they know best which businesses to back. As you see with Albanese, they can’t separate the business from the politics.

There are more grants to come for green businesses under the scheme.

No wonder current and past Productivity Commission bosses are screaming: “Watch out!”

Danielle Wood, the new Labor-appointed head, warns schemes like this tend to spray money on businesses unlikely to survive on their own: “It diverts resources – that’s workers and capital – away from other parts of the economy where they might generate high-value uses.”

Her predecessor, Michael Brennan, agrees: “Most times the investment fails.” Has Albanese not noticed?

I did even as a young reporter in 1989, when the Hawke Government gave the Kodak factory in Melbourne $36 million to stop it closing.

Kodak got that dosh not because it was a great business. No, it was because Kodak had no fewer than 18 unions, and there was no way a Labor government would brush off that many bruvvers.

Yet Kodak eventually collapsed anyway. Wages were too high, union rules too sclerotic and foreign competition too cheap – plus the digital camera had just been invented. If only the government had invested in that instead.

It was the same story with the hundreds of millions thrown at the union-dominated and rorted car industry. It, too, still died.

Kodak workers leave the Coburg factory in 2004 after being told Kodak will cease making photographic products.

Nothing has changed. It’s the same game now with renewable energy projects.

Governments will invest in almost anything that says “green” on the box. Again, it’s not about business. It’s about ideology and the votes of the young.

Just two weeks ago, Albanese announced he’d spend another $1 billion to help Australian businesses make our own solar panels. Yet we’ve just learned the world already makes twice as many solar panels than it can use, most as cheap as chips from China.

Good luck competing with that.

Or see the other government-backed green schemes that have already hit the wall.

Albanese recently announced he’d spend another $1 billion to help Australian businesses make solar panels.

Here’s a few: a tidal wave generator in Broome, promised $80 million; a geothermal power plant promoted by Tim Flannery in Innamincka, promised $90 million; geothermal plants in Thargomindah and Winton, promised $7.5 million; a wave generator that sank in South Australia, promised $4 million; another $5 million wave generator that got wrecked off Port Kembla; a Western Australian wave generation project that collapsed, despite $28 million in grants.

Then there’s the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro scheme which Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said would cost us just $2 billion, but may end 10 times that.

Of course, we must build more stuff here, but the fix is not for Albanese to do it himself. His job is to get out of the way.

He should cut taxes, cut power prices, cut red tape, cut green tape, cut union restrictions, and so make it easier for people with real business talent to make our future, risking their own money, which always concentrates the mind.

Get out of the way of an Australian Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, and trust the market, because socialism sucks. See how often it’s failed already.