Australians really are getting poorer under Labor

Despite winning the election, everything is going wrong for the Albanese government and its disastrous policies are leaving all of us worse off.

Everything is still going wrong with the Albanese government, even if it won the election.

That win doesn’t change the facts.

We still have an unworthy government, and all its big disasters remain.

On Wednesday, we got a brutal reminder of the worst of them.

Yes, Australians really are getting poorer under Labor.

Everything is going wrong with the Albanese government. Picture: Martin Ollman

The growth figures for the first three months of this year are a disaster.

Our economy grew just 0.2 per cent, or half what the Reserve Bank had expected.

But the most important figure – which tells you how Australians are actually feeling this – was growth per person, and that was even worse.

Australians individually got poorer by 0.2 per cent because we’ve got many more mouths to feed, thanks to the government’s disastrous policy to import hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year.

Australia’s economy grew just 0.2 per cent in the first three months of this year. Picture: John Appleyard

That now makes eight quarters out of the past nine where we’ve been in a per capita recession.

Yes, Australia really is in decline.

Blame in part our shockingly low productivity growth, made worse by this government’s pro-union changes, green restrictions and red tape.

Blame also huge rises in power prices, caused by our futile crusade to cut our emissions to net zero by 2050, even though there’s no “climate crisis”.

And there’s been more terrible news this week about that.

It’s the second reminder of the Albanese government’s disasters.

A report of the Institute of Public Affairs calculated we’re now paying $9bn a year on the government’s climate change and net zero programs

That doesn’t even include $6.8bn of handouts to subsidise electricity bills, let alone the cost of all the state government schemes.

The Albanese government is on a futile crusade to cut our emissions to net zero by 2050. Picture: Philip Gostelow

And remember: none of these schemes will change the temperature.

We’re just too small to make any measurable difference.

This sick joke gets sicker: despite spending all these billions, Australia’s greenhouse emissions in the December quarter actually went up.

No wonder, when the government meanwhile imports hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year who need electricity, gas and cars.

This week came more bad news for the government’s green power revolution.

Norwegian energy giant Equinor needed a second 90-day delay to decide whether it really did want to invest in the government’s troubled offshore wind development off the Hunter Region.

What’s more, since the election, the Queensland government has cancelled a wind farm in Moonlight Range, and billionaire Andrew Forrest dumped another 70 people working on the green hydrogen schemes that the government once claimed would help turn us into a green energy “superpower”.

And the hits this week kept coming.

Andrew Forrest dumped 70 people working on the green hydrogen schemes. Picture: AFP

Last Friday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth privately told Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Singapore that the US needed its allies to step up, with China now threatening war.

Australia had to lift its defence spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent.

This isn’t what the government wanted voters to hear.

We might realise how scandalously weak and underfunded our military is.

So when Marles was asked on the ABC how much more spending Hegseth had asked from us, he refused to say: “I wouldn’t put a figure on it.”

Hegseth wasn’t putting up with that nonsense. He published the exact figure in his unusually blunt “readout” of their private meeting: “Secretary Hegseth conveyed that Australia should increase its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of its GDP as soon as possible.”

All hell then broke loose here.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Singapore. Picture: X

Top military officials, such as former army chief Peter Leahy, pointed out this government had stripped our military of weapons systems and munitions at the very time Marles was admitting the world hadn’t been this dangerous since World War II, thanks to China.

As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warned last week, we were critically short of integrated air and missile defence systems, long-range strike munitions, drones, anti-drone defences and a local industry to supply all this and ammunition, too.

In response, Albanese threatened the government-funded ASPI – “they need to have a look at themselves” – and played the patriotism card against the US: “We determine our defence policy here. We’re a sovereign nation that needs to have pride in our sovereignty.”

Never mind that those demanding more spending included a former head of the Australian Defence Force, former head of army, former head of the navy, former head of the Defence Department, and former Labor leader Kim Beazley. All Australians.

To repeat: the Albanese government was re-elected, but its disasters remain.

Australia is poorer and weaker, and Albanese has no response but insults and spin.