Jim Chalmers will be among millions of Australians who hope 2025 is a better year than 2024
Jim Chalmers has called time on the obvious. Economically speaking, most Australians will be glad to see the back of 2024.
And, doubtless, the Treasurer will be among them.
It has been a painful year for households and it has been a particularly ugly one for the Albanese government.
And most of this ugliness has been left to Chalmers to wear considering the demands on the budget from his colleagues and the ideological premise upon which Labor’s economic theory is based.
While many will be grateful for other reasons, they won’t be gracious in their assessment of the unprecedented erosion of their living standards.
It’s now a toss-up over whether they blame Labor or the central bank. Both are complicit in this disaster.
But Chalmers’ new year’s promise of better times ahead is now the Albanese government’s singular premise.
It is a political necessity based on deep economic uncertainty.
It’s worse than a plan for the worst and a hope for the best. It is a hope for the best alone.
But it is now the buttress of Labor’s economic promise. The worst is behind us and better times are ahead.
In Chalmers’ defence, this is partially true. Which is an equitable standing position for a politician. But it is a feeble truth that requires significant qualification.
Rather than degrees of optimism, Chalmers’ assessment is in fact one of lesser degrees of misery. Chalmers is careful not to suggest that there will be some miraculous snap back over the course of the next year.
And what treasurer would inject more despondence into an already miserable electorate.
The message he is now trying to craft is one that is Labor’s only salvation. This year may have been bad, and arguably 2023 may have been worse, but 2025 won’t be quite so bad. This is not a message of good times ahead. It’s a message that it won’t get worse.
Paul Keating was infamous for making the point that good policy was good politics. Infamous because this was only partially true in itself. What Labor thinks is good policy is subjective and the assessment of the politics is so often objective when it comes to elections.
As economist Chris Richardson astutely observes, Chalmers may be technically right. Things in 2025 may start to appear better. But only by degrees that will be barely noticeable. And beyond that remains the bigger picture – both sides of politics gripped by an inertia to tackle the productivity elephant in the room that suggests that even if 2025 is better, the years beyond may not be.
Time to say bye-bye to the wokerati’s bullying tactics
Voters have had enough of being told how to think and how to behave and want to reassert more traditional values and attitudes that served them perfectly well.
Our values give us cause for optimism amid the terror, fear
Despite all the violence and hatred, I am still optimistic about Australia.