Andrew Bolt: Tough times to get much harder under Labor

Our economy hangs by a thread so why does Labor’s Budget spend even more borrowed money like it was Christmas?

There was at least one line in Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ dangerously delusional Budget speech you can believe: “There are hard days to come”.

Sure are, Jim, but why will this Labor government make them so much harder?

I knew Chalmers was in la-la land when the very first promise in his speech was for “a Voice for First Nations people” – an Aboriginal-only parliament on which Chalmers will spend $75m to get approved in a referendum.

Dear God, the priorities! Think: our economy hangs by a thread, Australians are getting poorer, electricity prices are about to jump 50 per cent, our national debt is rocketing and the world economy is tanking.

Doesn’t Chalmers admit in the Budget papers that in 2024 our economy will grow at just half the rate of our major trading partners, and there are “significant risks” things could get a lot worse, from “a more severe global downturn” to a “sharper slowdown in domestic activity”?

So why does this Budget spend even more borrowed money like it was Christmas, and on pet projects of Labor’s madder Left?

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ first promise in his speech was for ‘a Voice for First Nations people’. Picture: Gary Ramage

But the most bizarre thing about this Budget is that all the things Chalmers said the Liberals did wrong is what Labor now promises to do, too – but worse.

Remember Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese complaining that Australians’ real wages fell under the Liberals?

Well, Chalmers now admits they’ll keep falling under Labor until 2024 – if they’re lucky.

Remember Chalmers and Albanese whingeing they’d inherited “a trillion dollars of Liberal debt” (two thirds of which was actually baked in by past Labor governments)?

Chalmers now admits he’ll push that gross debt way over $1 trillion, by spending $181bn more than he’ll collect over the next four years, with no hint of any surplus after that.

Remember Chalmers and Albanese protesting that electricity prices had soared, but promising they’d come down by $275 per household under Labor’s global warming policies?

Chalmers now admits your bill will in fact go up 20 per cent in the last months of this year, plus another 30 per cent next financial year. Wise up: green power costs a bomb.

And remember Chalmers and Albanese accusing the Liberals of leaving all that debt with “nothing to show for it”?

But just look at the trash that Chalmers is splashing out on instead.

During the election campagin, Anthony Albanese promised power prices would come down by $275 per household, but the Budget paints a different picture.

Where do I start? There’s $2.5bn to primarily put more nurses in nursing homes, in the midnight hours when everyone’s asleep.

There’s $25bn – at least – on global warming schemes, including cuts in sales taxes so the rich can buy more expensive electric cars, plus new hydrogen refuelling stops for the hydrogen cars and trucks experts say almost nobody on earth will ever drive.

Where do I stop? There’s $30m for a get-square royal commission to persecute Coalition MPs behind the failed Robodebt scheme, and $2bn for the latest white elephant of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews – a suburban rail loop.

What a waste. Victoria’s auditor-general warned last month Andrews’ loopy project would give back just 51 cents for every dollar it cost – a cost that’s exploded from $50bn to an insane $125bn.

But some of Chalmers’ most indulgent spending is on what he boasts is Labor’s “cost of living relief”.

Again: delusional. There will be cheaper medicines, OK, but also “cheap and cleaner energy”– you know, like the electricity and gas Chalmers actually admits will cost lots more.

There’s “more affordable housing”, by which he means the 1 million homes he’ll get superannuation funds to help build with your retirement savings “for the national interest” – homes for the poor which won’t start to be built for at least two years.

And here’s the biggie: “cheaper child care, and more paid parental leave”.

Ha! That child care is to get 37,000 more mothers to work and fill the government coffers, rather than look after their own babies. One-income couples who raise their own babies get nothing.

Plus there’s now six months (!) of parental leave that doesn’t help the cost of living of anyone else.

How could Chalmers have delivered so little? Don’t fall for his sackcloth and ashes routine: this government has more money than ever. Receipts will soar over the next four years from $607bn this financial year to $679bn in part by Labor juicing the books by letting in so many migrants that our net immigration will be an astonishing 235,000 people a year.

The problem is this Labor government will keep spending even more: from $644bn this financial year to $729bn four years later.

But what will we have to show for it? More debt, higher prices, a dodgy electricity system, crowded cities, underparented children and a bigger government.

As Chalmers said: “hard days to come”.