Motley crew divert Coalition imperative to stop Labor upheaval

The voice is a distraction – the real danger is Labor’s ruinous suite of policies and voices of warning and dissent need to be heard loud, and now.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House this week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Sending reparations to China, roping smallish businesses into ­industry-wide industrial action, offering permanent residency and family reunion rights to 30,000 people who arrived here illegally by boat, and even lowering the voting age to 16 – these are not policies that Anthony Albanese promised. Yet they are either being implemented or considered as part of the new Labor, Greens and teal dynamic in Canberra.

These will change the country for the worse. They map out a road to economic ruin, sovereign enfeeblement, and democratic dystopia. They also present a clear opportunity for the right-of-­centre parties.

The repercussions will pave the way for the Coalition to return to government if they can summon the fortitude to reflect their conservative values and override their woke wing of moderates.

There are other worrying issues and opportunities. The acceleration of our energy self-harm, insidious rewriting of history through our education system, the gender, sexuality, and transgender agenda pushed in workplaces and sporting competitions – all this needs to be forensically ­exposed.

Six months after Labor won office, Albanese and his team have surprised us on the upside with their resolute continuity in national security and foreign policy (aside from their climate posturing). They are now consumed with their industrial relations payola for the unions.

On this, and the suite of other policy shifts, Albanese could deliver the most dramatic smorgasbord of change since Gough Whitlam, with dire consequences. Some of Whitlam’s changes actually were beneficial.

Not to put too fine a point on it, by 2025 Albanese might have plunged us into workplace sclerosis, a deepening energy crisis, border chaos, social division, economic ruin, and democratic decline. Voices of warning and dissent need to be heard loud, and now.

Yet instead of calling this out, many so-called moderate Liberals are intent on matching Labor’s climate gestures, and mimicking the gender, sexuality and transgender identity ploys. It is instructive that when Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen went to the COP27 in Egypt and signed up Australia to an uncosted, unclear and unreasonable “damage and loss” or reparations idea, there had been a senior Liberal in town, the equally evangelical NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean.

Peas in a pod. Both bowed to the climate gestures requested by this UN summit (in a country where more than 90 per cent of energy comes from fossil fuels), promising to double down on the renewables push in Australia that has seen power prices rise to unprecedented levels while cutting reliability towards third world standards.

We all know the superficial political attraction of renewable energy evangelism – just listen to Daniel Andrews and his “renewable energy for people, not profits” campaign mantra. But the reality is that it does not work, has not worked anywhere, and cannot work on current technology according to the International Energy Agency.

The only responsible path for the Coalition is to call out this folly, expose the lack of clothing on the renewables-plus-storage emperor, provide an alternative model (nuclear-plus-renewables-plus-storage) and then reap the political rewards as our shambles unfolds.

Instead, Kean and his mates, such as opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham, chase the ABC/Guardian zeitgeist by trying to match the Labor, Greens, and teal virtue­signalling.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s main hurdle in setting the right course is the clutch of jellybacks to his left in the partyroom who think the path to political success is to chase plaudits on Radio National and The Project. If ever there was a time we needed a grown-up talking frankly to grown-ups, this is it.

These are the same political sharksuckers who turned on their fellow candidate, Catherine Deves, rather than support her during the federal campaign. They ran with the misinformation and Leftist bile rather than stand up for the common sense positions she was espousing - in a choice between mainstream values and ABC adulation, the so-called moderates chase the love.

The trouble is that many Coalition conservatives are wasting their energy and political capital generating a fear campaign about the Indigenous voice – something that can do no real harm to the ­nation but could provide considerable benefits. When they should be tackling the green left and their own woke wing on other issues, the conservatives are distracted by the voice.

The reason the voice can do no significant harm is because if it is dominated by radicals, straying beyond its remit, it will be ignored by parliament and the public. ­Public and political accountability will force it to be realistic or irrelevant; remembering it can always be reshaped by parliament.

The raw politics of the voice are tough for the Coalition and Dutton. They could be derailed by the voice at a time the country desperately needs them to be the voice of reason on all those other issues.

If the Coalition chooses to oppose the voice and the referendum succeeds, they will have cast themselves as a political anachronism, a flint-hearted curio to be ignored for years to come. Yet if they oppose the voice and the referendum narrowly fails to pass, the Coalition will be seen to have triumphed over Aboriginal aspiration, entrenching the worst characterisations of the conservative movement – and possibly further splitting the Liberal Party along the way. (Of course, if the voice is trounced at a referendum they might be vindicated, but this seems unlikely, even given Labor’s half-hearted advocacy.)

I support the voice because of the way it delivers constitutional recognition in a practical way, promotes fairness, and fosters accountability, therefore advancing reconciliation and, hopefully, helping to overcome disadvantage. But those scenarios about how Coalition opposition could play out provide the political rationale for why they should endorse the concept of a constitutionally enshrined voice, and commit to amending the proposal as required to ensure it is constitutionally safe and practically useful.

Besides, back to my main point, there is so much more to tackle at the moment – proposals and actions that could do serious damage to this nation.

Albanese and Bowen have boasted about how bowing to global warming gestures in Egypt has won them acceptance from other nations and the UN virtue-signallers. Well, I’ll be damned.

They have now committed Australia to a climate reparations fund at the same time they announced a bid to host the COP in 2026. Come in, sucker – Australia will be on tap to this crowd as it chases this bid. Never forget that the moment our foreign policy lost sight of the Pacific was when Kevin Rudd decided to go chasing a seat on the UN Security Council. Suddenly, our diplomats and dollars were going to sub-Saharan Africa instead of the South Pacific.

Alarmingly, Bowen sought to deflect claims this week that Australia could pay climate reparations to China by countering that all the detail about which countries will be donors, and which will be recipients, is yet to be negotiated. We are already on board regardless; so yes, we could pay reparations to China.

Bowen is starting to look like Alan Bond to Antonio Gutteres’ Kerry Packer.

Forcing fossil fuel generation out of the market with massive investment and subsidies for intermittent renewables has delivered scarcity and cost increases. So, to fix it, Labor will do more of the same; lots more, and quicker. Watch where this ends up. The Coalition should be in the media slamming this every day. Instead, we see Kean and Birmingham applauding, or promising to outdo this stuff.

We also learned this week that Labor is looking to give permanent residency to more than 30,000 non-refugees who arrived in this country illegally by boat before Operation Sovereign Borders and are on temporary protection visas. Labor is also looking at reunion rights so the asylum-seekers can fly their families in from source countries to settle here.

This comes after the Albanese government caved in to public pressure over the Biloela family, and then repatriated Islamic State brides. Yet Labor insists it is not putting sugar on the table for ­people-smugglers.

Having triggered border trauma and tragedy from 2007, it is ­almost unthinkable that Labor would risk starting it all over again. You have to remind yourself this comes after a couple of years when Australian citizens were blocked from coming home,

The Industrial Relations changes – under a bill with the ­Orwellian spin of “secure jobs, better pay” woven into the title – can only hurt workers and the economy. By allowing industry-wide industrial action and roping in small and medium-sized businesses, these changes are designed to increase union power and recruit more members.

This will increase costs, add to the slide in real wages, and cost jobs. Economically, it could not be happening at a worse time, with inflation running amok, interest rates rising and the threat of recession looming here and abroad.

In this climate of undeclared radicalism, do not be surprised if we see a concerted push to lower the voting age to 16. New Zealand is seriously considering the move after a Supreme Court decision, it is official Greens policy, and at least one of the teals is advocating for it. Whitlam legislated the voting age from 21 down to 18 in 1973. And with the student climate strike mob and other angsty teens fully franchised, Labor and the Greens would be in power forever.

On industrial relations, and climate and energy alone, Labor could gift government back to the Coalition. More importantly, they could do lasting damage to the nation; which is why it is incumbent upon the Coalition to override its virtue-signallers, point out Labor’s mistakes and map out an alter­native approach, pronto.

You have to feel for Dutton, ­because most of the policy directions would be clear to him, even on the voice, I suspect.

The trouble is that he has a woke wing reluctant to face reality on climate and social issues, and a conservative wing distracted by an ideologically rigid but practically obscure antipathy to the voice. The only core issue the Coalition will unite on for now is the campaign against increasing union power.