As one would expect following a resounding election win, Anthony Albanese has shown us in his victory speech what will define his leadership this term.
When Australians are faced with crippling power prices, or surging mortgage foreclosures, or Chinese naval ships conducting live-fire exercises off Port Jackson, make no mistake. Albanese will front up to remind us he has a Medicare card. What is more he will produce it at every opportunity, just in case we were fretting as to its safekeeping.
As I write this, protocol officers in Canberra’s embassies are revising briefing sheets for visiting heads of state and other international dignitaries. “Immediately after greeting guests, the Prime Minister will draw their attention to a green, plastic government-issued card bearing his name,” they will say. “You should feign astonishment and praise him for this 40-year-old innovation that had absolutely nothing to do with him.”
Speaking of astonishment, there is no feigning surprise at this election result. Just seven months ago, Newspoll had the Coalition leading Labor 51-49 on a two-party-preferred basis. Somehow Labor managed not only to retain its majority but also give the Liberal Party an almighty shellacking.
Credit to Labor strategists, for they did what everyone thought could not be done. Somehow they forced Energy Minister Chris Bowen to shut his mouth and stay away from the camera for the entire campaign. Save for surgically removing the ministerial larynx, I would not have believed this possible.
Already, pundits predict that Labor will stay in government for at least three terms. But if NSW Liberal senator Maria Kovacic is an indication of where her party’s policies are headed, then it may as well write-off the next decade as well. Yesterday she said the party must “immediately scrap the nuclear energy plan,” and “back the private market’s investment in renewable energy.”
With thought bubbles like that, Kovacic might as well be Bowen’s sidekick. The private market’s investment in renewable energy is based on the principle that it is immoral to allow a sucker to keep his money, that sucker being the taxpayer who is forced to shell out billions to subsidise an energy system that is intermittent, unreliable and will ultimately wreak economic catastrophe on this country if left unchecked. Is this the Liberal or the Lemmings’ Party?
I am not going to rehash the reasons for the Coalition’s trouncing. But for those interested I recommend David Pearl’s excellent analysis, particularly his highlighting the need for the Liberals to stop doing a remix of Labor policies and return to the tempered economic rationalism that characterised the reformists of old in both parties. For my part, all I will say is political simpery – not the centre-right – represents the existential threat to the party.
And on the subject of policies which inhibit rather than nurture political growth, Greens leader Adam Bandt is a flower much wilted. For many months he believed he would be the green eminence in a hung parliament.
As this masthead reported, last month Bandt wrote to Glyn Davis, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary, asking that agency to prepare a “green book” to supplement the traditional red /blue books used to brief incoming Labor/Liberal governments. The public service needed to “get cracking” in producing his version, he later told The Australian.
This great moment was to be the culmination of his five years as leader. Only a month before he assumed that role, he posted on social media an image of Coalition parliamentarians celebrating the repeal of the carbon tax.
“This will be Exhibit A in the upcoming climate trials,” he pronounced.
Unfortunately for Bandt, it was he who last weekend was judged and found wanting. Under his leadership, the party has lost at least three of its four lower house seats, including his own.
Sadly, this means Bandt will no longer receive a taxpayer funded salary of $338,782. And not only that: he does not get the little green book he coveted. That being so, I am happy to write one for him one at no cost.
Once upon a time there were environmentalists. They were good people and concerned that industry by-products were having a detrimental effect on forests, rivers, oceans, and animals. Among their number were farmers, rangers, fishermen, and botanists. People who had a genuine love of the land and its surrounds.
These people decided to form a political party to pursue the environmental outcomes they sought. They named their party the Greens. This arrangement worked out well at first, but gradually the party came to be dominated by Marxists, anti-Semitists, and rabid anti-Western ideologues who used an eco-friendly platform to denounce capitalism and demand punitive taxes for business, while at the same time pocketing generous parliamentary entitlements in order to expand their private investment portfolios.
Eventually voters saw these faux-verdant parasites for what they were. And what a great day it was for Australia when Adam the Greens leader got the arse. The end.
Bandt need not despair too much. You might recall three years ago when he made a point of not being seen with the Australian flag at press conferences, saying it “represents lingering pain” for some Australians.
Imagine how distressing it must have been for Bandt to be based at Parliament House. Every day he would have been forced to look up at the massive Australian flag which flies over the building.
The good news – not just for Adam, but for all – is he no longer has to suffer that lingering pain.
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