Peta Credlin: This is the election that will make or break our Australia

Anthony Albanese is weak, so in any alliance with the Greens, he would be PM in name only – Adam Bandt would be the de facto leader, writes Peta Credlin.

Finally, it’s on – the race to decide the kind of country we will be in the decades to come. And, as voters, I don’t think we have had a more serious decision to make in years because these are unstable and challenging times, as even the Treasurer was forced to admit in his Budget speech last Tuesday. This is the election that will make or break our Australia because the choice is arrest our decline over the past three years under Labor or lock it in and accelerate it.

Peter Dutton is right: This election is a sliding doors moment. Re-elect Anthony Albanese and his green-left government and we will be poorer, weaker, and more divided: de-industrialised, thanks to an uncertain and expensive energy supply; increasingly estranged from our traditional allies; socially fractured thanks to the uncontrolled migration of people who aren’t expected to share our values; and saddled with deficits and a trillion dollars of debt.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail in Queensland on Saturday. Picture: Jason Edwards/NewsWire

Change the government and we still have serious challenges: How does a small economy like ours maintain resilience in a much less globalised world; how does a multiethnic society maintain social cohesion; and how do we defend ourselves as America retreats? But at least the Liberal-National Coalition has largely avoided falling under the spell of the climate cult, identity politics and the strange notion that communist China is our friend.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton on the campaign trail in Brisbane on Saturday. Picture Thomas Lisson/NewsWire

Most of all, Dutton is fighting to win a majority in his own right whereas his opponent can only hang on to power, at best, in a Frankenstein alliance with the Greens.

Budget week has sharpened the political contest. Labor thought it had snookered the opposition with a budget of electoral giveaways, topped off with a tax cut costing a whopping $17 billion, even though it only delivered long-suffering taxpayers 70 cents a day, from the middle of next year.

To Dutton’s credit, the Opposition withstood media pressure to match to this insulting offer to instead deliver real relief by halving the fuel excise. This move is smart because the more you drive, the more you will save and, for a household with two cars, this represents a $1500-a-year saving.

The Coalition’s target seats are in outer-metro areas and regional Australia. These voters feel left behind and forgotten, and given how far they drive compared to those who live in the inner-city (and EVs don’t win here do they?). Add in the tradies who spend their day in their utes, and the transport companies who pass on the high cost of fuel to everything in our supply chain, this announcement shows that Dutton wants to win.

I would love to see more tax policy but it’s almost impossible to do this work in opposition without the resources of treasury experts. But, still, there’s plenty of policy thinking already out there to help us understand why a Coalition government would be a better way forward: Nuclear, not renewables; one flag, not three; education, not indoctrination; much lower immigration; 40,000 fewer bureaucrats; superannuation for homes; a defence of biological sex to protect women and girls; cracking down on foreign criminals; and more real support for defence. As Dutton made clear in his budget reply, countries can’t tax their way to prosperity or subsidise their way to success.

Under Dutton, Australians could expect something like Howard 2.0: Steady, predictable, incremental government; without the climate indoctrination and the energy madness that refuses to use here the coal and gas we still export to others (but won’t if Labor is re-elected with Greens support).

Under Dutton, Australians could expect something like Howard 2.0. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Unlike Anthony Albanese, who only seems to fire up when he’s attacking “Tories” in the parliament; who was the first PM in 70 years to refuse an American request for military assistance when he declined to send a frigate to the Red Sea; and who has overturned 70 years of bipartisan support for Israel at the UN, we could expect the former Queensland cop to be strong and sensible in a crisis.

On the current polls, and this has been trend for over 18 months to date, my expectation is that the Coalition vote will strengthen during the campaign. For one thing, as more people tune in to politics, anger about the 8 per cent drop in average living standards, two successive years of declining GDP per person and Labor’s glaring broken promise to cut power bills by $275 per household per year will only intensify. The Coalition will surely leap on the budget papers’ admission that, but for federal and state handouts, power prices would be 45 per cent higher (Budget Paper 1, page 48).

For another, the tendency for the Coalition’s vote to improve during recent campaigns should be reinforced by the PM’s proven inability to master detail and the fact that he’s a drag on Labor’s brand.

The biggest challenge for the Coalition is not to win more seats than Labor, it’s to win in their own right because there’s no way they will ever be able to negotiate with the Greens or the Teals because that would mean abandoning their values, and that’s a price no leader should ever pay. So over the next few weeks, Australians must come to understand that the choice they are being given is between a Dutton majority or an Albanese-Bandt alliance in a hung parliament.

That’s the choice.

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt would be the de facto prime minister in an alliance. Picture: NewsWire/Nadir Kinani

Make no mistake, this will be an ugly campaign. As is already obvious, Labor’s main tactic is personal attacks on the opposition leader, and the ALP (and ACTU) dirt unit has more to come. There will be the usual scare campaign too on Medicare (as evidenced by Albanese using the stunt of his green card to kick off the election) but never forget the fact that, under his watch, bulk-billing rates fell from 88 to 78 per cent.

What every voter must understand over the next five weeks is that as bad as things are now, if Labor clings on to power they will get worse, much worse. Labor can’t stop wasting money, it’s in their DNA, and you will pay for it. Labor can’t help dividing society because the modern left builds its powerbase on hard-left activism designed to split us into tribes, not a nation of people who pull together.

And the price that Labor will pay the Greens to keep Albanese in the Lodge will rip the heart out of industry, agriculture and resources as they shut down the live sheep trade, logging, salmon farming in Tasmania, new gas fields and the North West Shelf. As well as an end to coal and gas exports, should a re-elected Labor government be dependent on the Greens, there’ll inevitably be a push for wealth taxes, death duties and taxes on the family home.

Albanese is weak, we know that. In any alliance with the Greens, Albanese would be PM in name only – Adam Bandt would be the de facto leader. See why I say that this is the most important election in generations.

THUMBS UP

World Athletics Council: For announcing a new mandatory gender test for every athlete wanting to compete in events for women. About time!

THUMBS DOWN

Apple Maps: For making Indigenous place names compulsory in its maps. It’s not even something we can choose to turn off. From now on, it’s Google Maps only for me.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Peta Credlin: This is the election that will make or break our Australia