Credlin: Government pushing fiscal accelerator while RBA is trying to stamp brake on inflation

The Albanese government is in a lot of trouble – and the biggest albatross around Labor’s neck is a Prime Minister not up to the job of leading when we face serious challenges, writes Peta Credlin.

Anthony Albanese is weak and his government is going from bad to worse. Rarely, if ever, has a first-term government so quickly squandered public good will or so consistently demonstrated that it’s not up to the task of effectively running the country.

The latest evidence that this could be our worst government ever is the PM’s denial that the government’s economic policy is making the Reserve Bank’s job harder. It shows yet again that Albanese is a dunce when it comes to economics 101, as was made clear in the last election campaign when he didn’t know the official cash rate and other key numbers, like the unemployment rate. The basic problem is that the government can’t help pushing the fiscal accelerator in a bid to buy votes while the bank is trying to stamp on the brake to bring inflation down.

The Prime Minister’s insistence that his government’s policies, far from exacerbating inflation, were actually driving it down, is tantamount to bullying RBA governor Michelle Bullock out of further raising interest rates. Especially as the governor admitted the bank was within a whisker of again raising rates last week, saying: “The board explicitly considered whether another interest rate rise was required to ensure inflation continues to decline in a reasonable time frame.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

Any further rate increase, for families that have seen average mortgage costs rise by at least $10,000 a year since the election, could be politically fatal for a government that promised to boost wages, cut power bills and reduce housing costs.

The government cites two consecutive surpluses as evidence of its inflation-fighting credentials. But these are not the product of policy but of sky-high prices for our commodity exports, especially the coal and gas exports that the government claims are putting the planet at risk and must soon be stopped.

Almost nothing better illustrates the government’s economic ineptitude than Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ ready support for the Queensland government’s goofy idea to keep fuel prices down via government-owned service stations, as if it’s retailers’ greed rather than the laws of supply and demand that’s causing the pain in motorists’ pockets.

Wherever you look, this is a seriously bad government with fake action only against the thuggish CFMEU, inertia and backsliding on national security, and the slow-motion trainwreck of energy policy.

Meanwhile, the examples of wasteful government spending continue to mount, with the latest being the $2bn-a-year ongoing wage subsidy to boost childcare workers’ pay by 15 per cent, even though these workers are all employed by private companies, many making a profit. Since when do taxpayers pay the wages of private employees?

At its heart, this government has failed to grasp the fundamental reality that it’s individual people and businesses that create wealth, not governments; and that government can’t spend a dollar that it doesn’t ultimately take out of people’s pockets, either in taxes today, or in taxes tomorrow to repay today’s debt.

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest has abandoned his plans to commercialise “green” hydrogen. Picture: Supplied

Andrew Forrest’s abandonment of his plans to commercialise “green” hydrogen should have been a warning to the Albanese government, especially to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, that the so-called “green transition” is just not happening. Likewise, this week’s abandonment of previous plans to build solar panels on the site of the old Liddell coal-fired power station. Similarly, the continued delays and cost blowouts in Snowy 2.0, which will end up taking 12 years and costing at least $20bn – or as much as a large nuclear power plant.

But Bowen persists in declaring that we will still keep the lights on, even as he’s legislated for most coal-fired power stations to close over the next six years.

And while our energy security is jeopardised by the government’s near hysterical insistence that we rely almost exclusively on renewable power, our national security is diminished by the running down of our armed forces, especially the navy. It’s good that more US forces will be rotated through Darwin but that reduces us to a staging post for other people’s military assets, rather than a power in our own right.

Even Indigenous policy, the one area where the PM seemed engaged and energised, is falling in a heap since the failure of his divisive Voice last year. Last week, the PM insisted that the “treaty” and “truth” that he’d earlier committed to as part of implementing the Uluru Statement “in full” were now just measures for the states to get on with; while his new Minister for Indigenous Australians tried to walk back the PM’s surrender by telling dismayed Indigenous leaders that Makarrata (the so-called Truth Telling Commission) was still the government’s aim.

With at least two polls putting the Coalition ahead on two-party-preferred terms, and dozens before then pointing to a minority Labor government with the Greens or the Teals, the Albanese government is in a lot of trouble. And the biggest albatross around Labor’s neck is a Prime Minister who is not up to the job of leading at a time when we face serious challenges, here and overseas.

FAULT LIES WITH AN IOC MORE CONCERNED ABOUT BEING PC THAN FAIR

It would be churlish not to congratulate Algerian boxer Imane Khelif on achieving a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.

Khelif, we are told, has always lived as a female and been treated as a female. Unlike others in this debate about fairness in women’s sport, Khelif is not a biological male who’s become a trans woman through drugs and surgery. Nevertheless, as revealed by an International Boxing Association test last year, after which Khelif was banned from female competition, this athlete is a very rare case of someone born with female organs but male (XY) chromosomes. That’s not Khelif’s fault but it is a problem for fair competition against women born with XX chromosomes.

As the IBA’s doctor (a 30-year gynaecologist) has made clear, you can’t beat biology. Someone with XY chromosomes has close to double the natural strength and punching power of a person with XX.

Gold medallist Imane Khelif of Algeria. Picture: Richard Pelham/Getty Images

It’s tough on Khelif, who has every right to a full life, including participation in sport, but it’s still not fair to put this athlete up against people who weren’t born with the natural advantage of male biology. For the same reason that boxing has weight divisions, because a heavier person is simply more powerful at that sport, it can’t fairly match someone with XY chromosomes against someone with XX.

The fault here lies with the International Olympic Federation, which is more concerned about being politically correct than fair to female competitors. On the basis of Khelif’s passport rather than biological sex, they have included the Algerian in the women’s competition and that’s resulted in a series of one-sided bouts with at least one of Khelif’s opponents sustaining significant injury. If the IOC doesn’t immediately require a simple test to determine male or female status for all athletes, we will end up with male categories and mixed categories; women’s sport will cease to exist.

As tough as it might seem on Khelif, sport is only sport when it is fair. And a biological male fighting a biological female is not fair, and nor is it sport.

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Originally published as Credlin: Government pushing fiscal accelerator while RBA is trying to stamp brake on inflation