JohnDe
La dolce vita
- Joined
- 11 March 2020
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What a nice looking family.
As Paul Keating once observed, when you change the government, you change the country. And when it’s this bad, you’ve got to be thankful we will all get our say in a matter of months.
Apart from ‘the vibe’, what has this government actually achieved?
Next year, it’s 50 years since the defeat of the Whitlam government and voters will have their chance to mark the anniversary by dispatching a first-term government that’s worse than Whitlam’s.
It’s a big call to do it given it’s not since 1931 that a first-term government has failed to win a second term but on every measure, the Albanese government is failing Australians. Our national security, economic strength and social cohesion are all in decline and are all being undermined by the policies and attitudes of what’s clearly the worst government we’ve ever had.
As I said, it’s a big claim given the chaos of the Whitlam years, and the border security disaster and mammoth governmental waste of the Rudd-Gillard era. Plus, the cognitive dissonance of the Turnbull aberration when an instinctively centre-right government was led from the centre-left.
Still, ask yourself this question: is there anything at all that the Albanese government has actually achieved, other than winning office in 2022?
Gough Whitlam addresses the crowd near Parliament House, Canberra.
We’ve now had six quarters of negative growth per person, a household recession unmatched in 30 years, that’s masked by record numbers of foreign students and low-skill immigrants artificially boosting the overall economic statistics but without contributing to our long-term economic strength. With the world more dangerous than in seven decades, the government has deliberately weakened our armed forces while making theatrical announcements about defence acquisitions far into the future.
Based on little more than the vibe, the government embarked on an unsuccessful referendum campaign to divide Australians permanently by race. Most recently, panicked by the Greens’ threat to its inner-city seats, the government has even pledged to forgive 20 per cent of students’ HECS debts, in a perverse act of reverse redistribution from low to middle income workers who’ve never seen the inside of a university but who will ultimately pick up the tab, to the better-off graduates who are its beneficiaries.
On top of large, government-funded wage rises for privately employed care workers, unlinked to productivity gains, and subsidies for power bills that the government’s own policies are driving up, the government has even considered new taxes on landlords, supposedly to boost housing supply, as if higher taxes on anything could ever make it more available and affordable. More spending, more taxing, and more regulating are the Albanese government’s habitual response to every problem that it excuses by pointing to two accidental surpluses on the back of high commodity prices, not government fiscal restraint (the very same commodities that it would ban if it could).
In the case of the current government, economic decline, military weakness and social division aren’t the regrettable results of factors beyond its control or even of sensible policies poorly executed. Arguably, these are the Albanese government’s actual objectives because a government-dependent country will be more likely to vote Labor, a weaker country will be less capable of standing for freedom, and a divided country will be more prone to the identity politics which is the speciality of the modern left.
To justify itself, the government claims that it has boosted the wages of childcare workers and aged care workers, and – in fairness to people doing necessary and often physically and emotionally draining work – it’s hard to deny them the extra money. Likewise, it’s hard to begrudge the families of children with severe disabilities NDIS support, but a scheme that was meant to focus on those with the most acute need is now routinely rorted by users and providers, with annual costs already exceeding our nation’s defence budget and set to explode to over $100bn within a decade.
Too often, Labor claims strong employment numbers as proof of their economic stewardship, yet two-thirds of the growth is in public sector or in publicly funded roles, not the private sector workforce that builds our prosperity.
Former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard greet the crowd during the Labor campaign launch in 2019.
Much of the government’s economic ineptitude is left-wing prejudice against “greedy capitalists” and obliviousness to the need for wealth to be created before it can be redistributed. And much is the product of fearmongering about a “climate emergency” which is supposed to mean that reducing emissions is more important than maintaining coal and gas exports, keeping power prices down, and even the protection of prime agricultural land and pristine national parks from being carpeted with wind turbines and solar panels.
Trump’s election should prompt a rethink of the climate alarmism and rent-seeking, best exemplified by the 70,000 turning up for the latest COP meeting in Azerbaijan (including the Taliban). Plainly, maintaining energy independence is essential to sovereignty. With the US, China and India (collectively responsible for around half of global emissions) all refusing to put reducing emissions ahead of economic growth and national security, what difference can Australia make? Especially given the ongoing importance of fossil fuels in vital industrial processes such as steelmaking and fertiliser production, quite apart from the generation of power.
Impoverishing ourselves without making any meaningful difference to climate is worse than virtue signalling; it’s deliberate self-harm yet it’s by far the most messianic feature of the current government.
This was on graphic display this week with the government’s disavowal of the British Labour government’s “expectation” – published then swiftly withdrawn – that Australia would join its AUKUS allies in a civil nuclear partnership as the best way to keep industries strong and still de-carbonise. It was always bizarre to insist nuclear power was essential at sea but unthinkable on land. Especially as Australia has safely run a medical nuclear reactor in a Sydney suburb for seven decades. But being so obviously out of step with its social democratic allies makes our government seem not just ideologically blinkered but technologically stupid. Then there’s the government’s sudden reticence about announcing its 2035 emissions targets (due in February 2025), because it plans to withhold even worse news on energy prices until after the election. And these targets won’t just hit power bills but cut deep into sectors like transport and agriculture.
Everything this government does is about structural change for the worse: more house renters and fewer homeowners; a much bigger government and public sector workforce and a much smaller productive one; woke big businesses even more under the sway of industry fund shareholders; ever bigger bureaucracies, especially activist ones promoting diversity in everything except opinion; and, of course, the coming laws against misinformation and disinformation that will be used to stifle free speech that offends against the canons of political correctness.
This is a government that thinks hugely expensive pumped hydro schemes make more sense than proven nuclear power; that preferences the rights of asylum seekers to the right of the community to be safe from foreign criminals; that’s quicker to compensate people in Afghanistan for alleged war crimes than to stand behind soldiers who have risked their lives for our country; that prefers the personal choice of confused adolescents to best (and prudent) medical practice; and that gives trans rights precedence over women’s rights to their own safe spaces and sports.
As Paul Keating once observed, when you change the government, you change the country. And when it’s this bad, you’ve got to be thankful we will all get our say in a matter of months.
