I used to think that 1975 was the most consequential election in our history because Gough Whitlam’s was our worst-ever government and because voters had to ratify the governor-general’s decision to dismiss him.
But this election is actually far more consequential: because the Albanese government has a worse record of economic vandalism, not just massively expanding the size of government but also helping to create an unprecedented fall in living standards.
What’s more, Whitlam seemed like an aberration; whereas the Albanese government is making green-left politics the new normal; and is basically indifferent to the point of contemptuous of the Anglo-Celtic culture and Judaeo-Christian ethic that has made modern Australia great.
Of course, people are worse off, by and large, than three years ago, and that alone should disqualify the incumbent from getting a second chance.
The cost-of-living crisis that everyone’s focused on is not the result of the Ukraine war or supermarket rip-offs, but is the government’s fault for attacking our economic fundamentals.
At least in part, it’s the Albanese government’s spending addiction that’s keeping mortgage repayments higher for longer; it’s the Albanese government’s Big Australia agenda that’s putting home ownership out of reach; it’s the government’s union loyalty that’s making businesses harder to run; its green fixation that’s making new resources projects almost impossible, and; its emissions obsession that’s putting power prices through the roof.
Given that the essential responsibility of government is to make life better, not worse, a government that’s presided over an 8 per cent decline in disposable incomes, the worst in the developed world; two successive years of declining GDP per person and productivity declining to 2016 levels, should not be re-elected.
A PM who can’t even admit, let alone apologise for, his lie about lowering power prices by $275 per household per year, based on dodgy modelling that was out of date almost as soon as it was released, should have forfeited any claim on a second term.
And it will only get worse if the government is re-elected, especially if it depends on the Greens to stay in office and pass legislation.
To meet its coming, much higher 2035 emissions targets, a re-elected Albanese government is almost certain to: refuse to extend the North West Shelf gas project; stop all new fossil fuel projects; ban logging in native forests; ban live cattle exports (in addition to live sheep ones); cull the national herd; make air travel more expensive; impose a higher carbon tax on heavy industry, and; make most cars prohibitively expensive. As well, to pay for its subsidies and social programs, it’s bound to extend its unrealised capital gains tax on super into a full wealth tax on everyone considered “rich”.
With the housing crisis already driving up homelessness and begging, and with the green-left keen to align more with China and less with America, under a re-elected Labor government Australia could stop being a First World country and stop being part of the Western world. My fear, because Labor is good at finding scapegoats and smoke-screening its own failures, is that we could be somnambulating into long-term, perhaps irreversible, decline – to become the Argentina of the 21st century.
Then there’s Labor’s ambivalence over our entire national project: reflected in flying three flags, not just one; the constant acknowledgments that the country belongs to some of us, not all of us; and the reluctance to celebrate Australia Day, the advent of modernity to an ancient continent, including Christian faith, which the Torres Strait Islanders rightly call the “coming of the light”.
And its unwillingness to uphold the commitment to Australian values and to Australian rights and liberties – that all new citizens are supposed to sign up to – at least when it comes to Jew hatred, forgetting Bob Hawke’s legendary observation that “if the bell tolls for Israel … it tolls for all mankind”.
As PM, Anthony Albanese often seems to be in denial about life under his government: the $20,000-plus rise in annual mortgage repayments; the 30 per cent rise in grocery prices, and; the 30 per cent-plus rise in power prices; and the consequences of bringing in a million migrants in just two years.
Even the government’s own budget papers admitted that, but for multibillion-dollar federal and-state subsidies, power prices would be 45 per cent higher. He said that the voice referendum’s defeat was not his loss, but a loss for Aboriginal people, as if the whole shemozzle was someone else’s idea, yet it’s hard to credit that he’s really given up on so-called treaty and truth, the Uluru agenda “in full”, with reparations, that he was so personally committed to.
The best response to the rising anxiety about three more years of this is to work even harder for a better government.
The fundamental distinction between the government and the opposition’s housing policies is that Labor wants to create more renters, while the Coalition wants to create more owners.
The fundamental difference on immigration is that Labor’s okay with migrants living in Hotel Australia but the Coalition wants everyone to join Team Australia. The fundamental difference on the economy is that Labor thinks you can tax your way to prosperity and subsidise your way to success that no country ever has.
The fundamental difference on defence is that the Coalition thinks Australia should be strong now, not just in 10 years’ time, and that the armed forces are for deterring our potential enemies, not just disaster relief.
Labor thinks we can be a renewable energy superpower, as if the sun and wind are only found in Australia, and that carpeting the country with Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines will somehow make us rich.
Labor honestly believes there’s a climate emergency as if there’s never been floods, droughts, fires or storms before; and won’t ever be again, if only we export our industry to China, stop eating meat, all ride bikes, and close down the resources and agricultural sectors on the way to net zero because the only impact on climate is mankind’s emissions.
Re-electing this government would be collective folly on a par with hiding under the doona for two years in the face of a virus. Yes, I know that’s what we did, but surely smart people like Australians won’t make two epic, economy-wrecking, spirit-sapping mistakes in just five years. I hope the vote we’ll all cast, starting from Tuesday, will be deeply pondered, as if our whole lives depend on it, because they do.
Tony Abbott was prime minister from 2013-15. These were the notes for a speech to the Conservative Breakfast Club in Brisbane last Thursday.
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