‘Moronic’ Daniel Andrews reign blasted by Peter Costello

Peter Costello has launched a scathing attack on the ‘moronic’ Victorian Andrews government and made an impassioned plea for a return to good economic management and hands-off ‘limited government’.

Former treasurer Peter Costello, Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory and former PM Tony Abbott at the ARC Conference. Picture: Jane Dempster

Peter Costello has launched a scathing attack on the “moronic” Victorian Andrews government and made an impassioned plea for a return to good economic management and hands-off “limited government”.

In his first major address since stepping down as chair of Nine Entertainment, the former treasurer, speaking at Tuesday’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in Sydney, criticised rising levels of public debt and taxation, and the Albanese government’s penchant for spending.

The Andrews Labor administration, he said, was the “most incompetent” he’d ever seen.

“I can’t understand why governments that fail their core responsibilities should be allowed to expand (its) privilege (remit),” Mr Costello told a 700-person crowd at the ICC Convention Centre.

“The most incompetent government in Australia … after failing every test of prudent budget management, the (Daniel Andrews) Victorian government decided it would embark on treaty negotiations and joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. These are federal issues … (it was) nothing more than rank posturing.”

His comments come as some of the West’s most influential conservative voices converged at the Australian ARC conference – a forum co-founded by former deputy prime minister John Anderson and which follows its successful London launch in 2023.

They included high-profile author and psychologist Jordan Peterson, who appeared on an audiovisual link from Toronto, telling the audience there was “no desert we can’t make blue” amid a society under siege from extremism, anti-Semitism, “wokeism” and division.

Urging a reclamation of society’s current direction, Dr Peterson said: “(We need) to have faith in working collectively, making sacrifices, adopting responsibility to make the future a place of promise, fortified with the notion that if we conduct ourselves according to the highest ethical principles, there’s no desert we can’t make blue.”

Former prime minister Tony Abbott told a crowd featuring fellow former leaders John Howard and Scott Morrison, federal and state MPs, and high-profile Assyrian orthodox bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel that he believed Australia had passed the point of “peak woke”.

Co-founder Mr Anderson urged Anthony Albanese to start leading instead of following opinion polls, while Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price believed the rejection of a voice to parliament had “reignited” Australia’s spirit, lamenting that welcome to country had become a “throwaway line”.

But it was Mr Costello, making a rare appearance since leaving embattled Nine, who – no longer bound to his old role’s impartiality constraints – took aim at the approach of the federal government, and called the Andrews administration “moronic” and “incompetent”.

The former treasurer resigned in June amid widespread bullying and sexual harassment allegations across Nine’s broadcast divisions, which were aired formally this month at the publication of a company-wide workplace review.

Jordan Peterson addressed the audience from Toronto. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Mr Costello said Mr Andrews’s government should have “stuck” to its remit and “not find new areas to fail”, calling its Covid pandemic response – which saw the most severe restrictions in Australia – “moronic”.

“In Melbourne, (they) closed playgrounds, swings and slides were chained to stop children,” he said. “Children weren’t dying from Covid, and they wouldn’t die by using swings or slides. This moronic government even decided to institute a (curfew) … you’re not going to catch Covid driving in your car after 9pm.”

He criticised the enlargement of government across Australia’s three levels and pointed to rising debt and taxes, comparing his final budget as treasurer in 2007-08 with the most recent budgetary figures, saying that a low debt policy was actually a “youth policy”.

“As a society we are moving to a palace where the first port of call to solve a problem is the government,” he said. “The worst part of all of this is the belief it is not costing anybody.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Anderson said Australians needed to “recognise” there was a “dividing line” between good and bad cultures while Mr Abbott praised the Hawke and Howard governments for “challenging” people to be “bigger citizens” instead of relying on “bigger government”.

Senator Nampijinpa Price criticised the government’s lack of detail when advocating last year’s voice to parliament, believing that welcome to country had become a “throwaway line”. “It’s become nonsensical now and people want practical ways forward,” she said.

The direction of Australia’s energy mix under the Albanese government – and the impact on taxpayers’ wallets – was labelled “disturbing”, with Centre for Independent Studies senior policy analyst Zoe Hilton saying the cost of the push to rooftop solar would have a disproportionate impact.

“It’s people living in rentals, apartments, who are going to be bearing most of the brunt of this transition,” she said.

“It’s ‘reverse Robin Hood’ – it’s stealing from the poor and giving to the rich … shifting the bunt of the energy transition to people in their 20s or 30s …”