Major parties must step up to head off minority rule

Greens leader Adam Bandt and teal MPs have made clear the perils that await the nation in the event of a hung parliament after the federal election. The Greens’ recipe for envy taxes to raise an extra $514bn from companies deemed to be making excessive profits is an invitation to follow the well-trodden path to economic ruin taken by a procession of socialist utopias. Global investors in energy and manufacturing already are starting to question whether Australia is still the politically stable, investment-friendly country it has been across decades of domestic growth and prosperity. This is particularly true for oil and gas producers and coal and mining companies that are prime targets in Mr Bandt’s regressive grand design.

Big retailers and telcos also are in the sights of the Greens, and Mr Bandt told the National Press Club on Wednesday he would soon have more to say about the banks. It is a pitch to populist sentiment with no regard for the long-term negative consequences that such anti-business policies would entail. When taken together with a pledge by teal MPs to join the Greens in demanding an end to new gas projects, the extent of the challenge to good economic management is plain to see. As APA Group chief executive Adam Watson warned on Wednesday, the existing onerous approval timelines for new gas projects and potential regulatory ­impositions on gas infrastructure will keep coal in the energy mix only longer and ­increase prices for Australian consumers and industry. He said regulatory and policy impositions were running the real risk that our governments would achieve an energy market outcome that was the exact opposite of their ­ambition – one that was less reliable, less affordable and with higher emissions.

These are exactly the sort of unintended consequences that flowed from the Greens’ refusal to compromise with the Rudd government on its carbon pollution reduction scheme, which would have set a market price for carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, the Greens’ refusal led to a decade of policy uncertainty and the perilously unstable situation we have in energy markets today. This is why both major parties must work hard to present detailed policies for voters that make clear the difference between the serious business of government and the economy-wrecking wish lists of protest parties with a focus on a single issue. Business leaders are right to warn that the Greens’ agenda would slash investment and cost jobs.

Anthony Albanese and his team must be clear that they will resist being dragged further to the left by a party that is all demand and no responsibility. The cynical support shown this week by the Greens for the criminal and thuggish ways of the CFMEU is testament to their political opportunism. So is the calculated way in which the Greens have been willing to attend and encourage anti-Semitic protests on Gaza and make demands for Palestinian recognition that fall outside Australia’s bigger international interest or the interests of Palestinians and efforts for peace in the Middle East. The Albanese government has allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred by not acting quickly or decisively enough to rein in trade union abuses or deal head-on with the anti-Israel forces unleashed by the October 7 atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Rather than continue with its low-rent politics of personality directed at Peter Dutton, Labor must do more to show it has a plan to deal with the pressing issues of inflation, energy security, national security and defence. It must make it clear there will be no repeat of the disastrous Gillard flirtation with the Greens in government. It must start by refusing to bow to the demands of the Greens in its current balance of power position in the Senate.

Mr Dutton has an opportunity to show that only he can deliver the stability of majority government. But he must do the work to convince voters he has the answers to getting energy policy right, growing productivity and dealing with cost-of-living pressures in a way that is not simply a giveaway of taxpayer dollars that will push the day of economic reckoning only further down the road.