Andrew Bolt: Jim Chalmers’ stupidity is sinking our economy

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has for years blamed everyone but himself for the metastasising mess of the nation’s economy, but this crisis isn’t just caused by mere incompetence, it’s a symptom of our intellectual rot.

These shocking growth figures shouldn’t be a shock at all. Did you think we could be this dumb – under the dumbest government in our history – and not pay a price?

Here now comes the bill, or just the first instalment.

We posted on Wednesday the lowest annual growth in 33 years, outside the pandemic – just 1 per cent over the year, when our population last year grew by more than double that, thanks mostly to an insane immigration intake.

Or take just the past three months: only 0.2 per cent more growth, but 0.6 per cent more mouths to feed.

Do the maths: we’re getting poorer, and have done or at least the last year and a half of this government.

In fact, the fall in our disposable income – once the government has finished looting your wallet – is now the worst of all the 20 advanced economies in the OECD.

But I don’t need to pepper you with stats to convince you we’re going south. Just ask yourself: are you better off now than you were two years ago?

Judge the truth by the panic of Treasurer Jim Chalmers, now that he sees his economic plans in tatters. Picture: Martin Ollman

Or judge the truth by the panic of Treasurer Jim Chalmers, now that he sees his economic plans in tatters, even after trying to buy some growth with mass immigration and massive spending that his Budget papers admit will leave us with deficits for a decade.

This bloke has for years now blamed everyone but himself for this metastasising mess – it’s the war in Ukraine! Global uncertainty! But this week he even monstered the Reserve Bank governor he personally appointed, Michele Bullock, blaming her bank for “smashing the economy”.

Former prime minister John Howard is right about the real problem.

“The Albanese government has lost control of expenditure,” he said. And that it was “unworthy” of Chalmers to blame Bullock for keeping interest rates high to curb the cancerous inflation Chalmers himself was making worse.

Other experts aren’t as polite. Steven Hamilton, assistant professor of economics at George Washington University, is scathing: “Chalmers is the worst treasurer since Jim Cairns. And this Labor government is the most economically incompetent in half a century.”

But this crisis isn’t just caused by mere incompetence. It’s a symptom of our intellectual rot, as posing now beats thinking, romance trumps facts.

The Albanese government is a perfect example, letting its irrational sentimentality cripple our future.

It loves to believe it’s in a great moral struggle against “climate crisis” and little Australia can fix it. Both things are untrue, yet the government is spending billions on dud green schemes in its quixotic quest to lower the world’s temperature.

The Albanese government is letting its irrational sentimentality cripple our future. Picture: Nikki Short

Many of its schemes are already failing – “green hydrogen” plans have collapsed, electric car sales faltered, the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro scheme blown out to 10 times its original price – but the worst of this delusion, exacerbated by state governments, is that we’re left not just with massive debts but ruinously expensive electricity, and too little of it.

Then there’s the government’s other posturing cause – its worship of Aboriginal mysticism, at the cost of Aboriginal wealth.

Never mind that most Aborigines are now Christian and just 2 per cent claim to still follow old Aboriginal religions. The government is a sucker for tall tales of songlines and rainbow serpents, especially ones that will block the mines and gas wells that help pay for our schools, hospitals and welfare.

This government fritters away billions on unproven green technologies but bans nuclear power, which actually works already in most advanced economies.

And so the government banned a massive uranium mine in the Northern Territory, and has now effectively banned a $1bn gold mine in NSW after some people identifying as Aboriginal claimed there was secret Aboriginal business at the site, despite traditional owners saying there wasn’t.

On it goes. This government is so stupid and unscientific that not only does it fritter away billions on unproven green technologies, it meanwhile bans nuclear power, which actually works already in most advanced economies.

Why the ban? Again, stupidity. The government insists on believing nuclear is so mystically terrible, even though the only deadly radioactive accident at a nuclear reactor was in the Soviet Union 38 years ago, and that killed fewer than 100 known people.

What can you do with a government so irrational? What can you do with one that’s quicker to kill an industry than build one – ending the live sheep export from Western Australia, helping to wipe out the electricity-hungry nickel industry, and smashing businesses by giving unions lots more power without productivity trade-offs.

Ah, the union bruvvers. Another costly romance.

Solidarity forever, they gurgle, as we sink in the sea, tethered to this foolishness.