21 April 2025
Published in the Australian
Speech notes for the address to the Conservative Breakfast Club in Brisbane
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I used to think that 1975 was the most consequential election in our history because Whitlam’s was our worst-ever government and because voters had to ratify the governor-general’s decision to dismiss him. But this election is actually far more consequential: because the Albanese government has a worse record of economic vandalism, not just massively expanding the size of government but also helping to create an unprecedented fall in living standards. What’s more, Whitlam seemed like an aberration; whereas the Albanese government is making green-left politics the new normal; and is basically indifferent to the point of contemptuous of the Anglo-Celtic culture and Judeo-Christian ethic that has made modern Australia great.
Of course, people are worse off, by and large, than three years ago and that alone should disqualify the incumbent from getting a second chance. The cost of living crisis, that everyone’s focused on, is not the result of the Ukraine war or supermarket rip-offs, but is the government’s fault for attacking our economic fundamentals. At least in part, it’s the Albanese government’s spending addiction that’s keeping mortgage repayments higher for longer; it’s the Albanese government’s Big Australia agenda that’s putting home ownership out of reach; it’s the government’s union loyalty that’s making businesses harder to run; its green fixation that’s making new resources projects almost impossible; and its emissions obsession that’s putting power prices through the roof.
Given that the essential responsibility of government is to make life better, not worse, a government that’s presided over an 8 per cent decline in disposable incomes, the worst in the developed world; two successive years of declining GDP per person; and productivity declining to 2016 levels, should not be re-elected. A PM who can’t even admit, let along apologise for, his lie about lowering power prices by $275 per household per year, based on dodgy modelling that was out-of-date almost as soon as it was released, should have forfeited any claim on a second term.
And it will only get worse if the government is re-elected, especially if it depends on the Greens to stay in office and pass legislation. To meet its coming, much higher 2035 emissions targets, a re-elected Albanese government is almost certain to: refuse to extend the North West Shelf gas project; stop all new fossil fuel projects; ban logging in native forests; ban live cattle exports (in addition to live sheep ones); cull the national herd; make air travel more expensive; impose a higher carbon tax on heavy industry; and make most cars prohibitively expensive. As well, to pay for its subsidies and social programmes, it’s bound to extend its unrealised capital gains tax on super into a full wealth tax on everyone considered “rich”.
With the housing crisis already driving up homelessness and begging, and with the green-left keen to align more with China and less with America, under a re-elected Labor government Australia could stop being a first world country and stop being part of the Western world. My fear, because Labor is good at finding scapegoats and smoke-screening its own failures, is that we could be somnambulating into long-term, perhaps irreversible decline – to become the Argentina of the 21st century.
Then there’s Labor’s ambivalence over our entire national project: reflected in flying three flags, not just one; the constant acknowledgements that the country belongs to some of us, not all of us; and the reluctance to celebrate Australia Day, the advent of modernity to an ancient continent, including Christian faith, which the Torres Strait Islanders rightly call the “coming of the light”. And its unwillingness to uphold the commitment to Australian values and to Australian rights and liberties – that all new citizens are supposed to sign up to – at least when it comes Jew hatred, forgetting Bob Hawke’s legendary observation that “if the bells tolls for Israel…it tolls for all mankind”.
As PM, Anthony Albanese often seems to be in denial about life under his government: the $20,000 plus rise in annual mortgage repayments; the 30 per cent rise in grocery prices; and the 30 per cent plus rise in power prices; and the consequences of bringing-in a million migrants in just two years. Even the government’s own budget papers admitted that, but-for-multi-billion-dollar-federal-and-state-subsidies, power prices would be 45 per cent higher. He said that the Voice referendum’s defeat was not his loss, but a loss for Aboriginal people, as if the whole schemozzle was someone else’s idea, yet it’s hard to credit that he’s really given up on so-called treaty and truth, the Uluru agenda “in full”, with reparations, that he was so personally committed to.
The best response to the rising anxiety about three more years of this is to work even harder for a better government.
The fundamental distinction between the government and the opposition’s housing policy is that Labor wants to create more renters, while the Coalition wants to create more owners. The fundamental difference on immigration is that Labor’s okay with migrants living in Hotel Australia but the Coalition wants everyone to join Team Australia. The fundamental difference on the economy is that Labor thinks you can tax your way to prosperity and subsidise your way to success that no country ever has. The fundamental difference on defence is that the Coalition thinks Australia should be strong now, not just in ten years time, and that the armed forces are for deterring our potential enemies, not just disaster relief.
Labor thinks that we can be a renewable energy superpower, as if the sun and the wind are only found in Australia, and that carpeting the country with Chinese made solar panels and wind turbines will somehow make us rich. Labor honestly believes there’s a climate emergency as if there’s never been floods, droughts, fires or storms before; and won’t ever be again, if only we export our industry to China, stop eating meat, all ride bikes, and close down the resources and agricultural sectors on the way to Net Zero because the only impact on climate is mankind’s emissions.
Re-electing this government would be collective folly on a par with hiding under the doona for two years in the face of a virus. Yes, I know that’s what we did, but surely smart people like Australians won’t make two epic, economy-wrecking, spirit-sapping mistakes in just five years. I hope the vote we’ll all cast, starting from tomorrow, will be deeply pondered, as if our whole lives depend on it, because they do.