by DAVID FLINT – EVERYTHING the Albanese Government does now is affected by one consideration: the election must be held before it is exposed as Australia’s worst government in history.
While a standard House and half-Senate election could be held as early as August 3 and as late as May 17 next year, as I suggested in a recent column, there will be a temptation to hold the election this year, especially if there is a Royal Visit in October.
- Yet all this and more is treated gently by so many in the media. So far.
- This cannot go on forever. Someone or something will change this.
- At some stage, the media will be obliged to reveal that this is the worst government in our history.
This is the first and weakest of three reasons for an early election.
The second reason is the polling.
While the LNP primary vote has for some time surpassed Labor’s, what is more important is the 2PP (two-Party preferred), in favour of Labor. This is holding, except for one or perhaps two pollsters.
RELIABLE
Involving preferences, this is not as reliable as polling on primary votes.
Either the sample is too small and the margin of error has increased, or the pollsters are relying on what happened in the last election.
Subject to the next reason for going early, on present polling it seems likely that Labor would lose its majority but still be able to form a minority government.
This will be a nuisance. But Labor will probably have few problems in the House and none in the Senate until mid-2025, when any new State senators take their seats. While territory senators take theirs immediately, I expect no Party change there and with Senator Pocock probably returned by the Left-wing ACT.
The third reason for an early election is that there is no guarantee that most (but not all) of the mainstream media will remain if not next-to-comatose, like blancmange when it comes to Albanese’s depredations.
This cannot go on forever. Someone or something will change this.
This recalls the abdication of Edward VIII when the media formed a united front to keep even the existence of the crisis from the British people, that is until the Bishop of Bradford inadvertently revealed it.
At some stage, the media will become similarly obliged to reveal that this is the worst government in our history.
INCOMPETENT
Not only is it incompetent, but its behaviour is also seen as unacceptable in our ancient democracy and worse, its activities are seriously damaging the Australian nation.
This goes against the expectations of the people as to what government is about.
On this, it would be difficult to improve on Bolingbroke’s 18th-century definition of “constitution”.
In modern English, this is exquisitely simple: the constitution is that assembly of laws, customs and institutions by which the people have agreed to be governed.
For most people, it is a set of ground rules under which the government operates.
This is not necessarily what a minuscule group of black-robed lawyers think.
Rather, the people’s expectation of the principles of good government resembles more the governance of great sporting matches.
When I was young, the elites would condescendingly compare sports-obsessed Australians with Europeans who were seen as inherently too sophisticated for something so mundane as Australians’ fascination with sport.
Years later, it became clear that Australians were actually in advance of Europeans who today seem even more obsessed with sport.
Knowing ancient Greece, should we be surprised?
The governance of cricket is especially seen as being all about sportsmanship and fair play. Hence the phrase, “It’s not cricket”.
This expression is used frequently to describe things seen as unfair, or even dishonest.
This explains much of what guides Australians, including when they vote.
For an incumbent government it is not only on their competence and what they have done but also whether they behave as Australians expect politicians to behave.
And not only in relation to travel.
That Australian character explains the overwhelming feeling in the Voice referendum against the Albanese Government’s proposal to lock racism into the constitution.
The problem, as in so many other areas, is the people cannot be fully informed on everything which touches the nation, including cases where the mainstream media try to inform us rather than keep us in the dark.
Australians are, overwhelmingly, including those who rejected the Voice, genuinely sympathetic to the Aboriginal people. This is despite the fact that most are uninformed about the fact that remote segregation was imposed by white ideologues and that this is the root cause of today’s problems, not yesterday’s essentially benign colonialism.
INFORMED
In a fully informed debate on the increasing wave of officially condoned antisemitism, I have no doubt that Australians would see this as unacceptable.
The key to understanding complex issues, as our referendums fortunately require, is detail and time to consider.
That is why rushed opinion polls cannot be trusted, nor campaigns with minimal information and considerable disinformation.
And although little reported in much of the mainstream media, most Australians would be appalled by the secrecy forced on anyone about proposed legislation, the failure to give reasonable notice to parliament of proposed “emergency” legislation, abandoning the defence of the realm, gagging Parliament on online identity legislation and recourse to vast off-budget funding.
Not to mention damage to religious schools, the seizure of a far better performing Catholic hospital to ensure abortion is offered there, an educational system producing increasing illiteracy and innumeracy, the deliberate destruction of women’s sports, the abuse of children confused by fashionable dogma on gender fluidity, replacing cheap and reliable electricity with expensive and increasingly unreliable energy and with out-of-control immigration.
All this to ensure the dream of home ownership is beyond an increasing number of Australians.
Such governmental arrogance, such incompetence and such serious damage are what is expected in a banana republic, not in one of the world’s oldest continuing democracies.
Yet all this and more is treated so gently by so many in the media. So far.PC
Whitlam provided the stimulus for me – and many others – to get involved in politics – to oust the greatest economic moron we’ve seen since federation!
But at least he had class – which certainly can’t be said for the Rudd/Gillard/Albanese mob!!
They have provided this country with nothing but failed policies and wasted resources and opportunities.
I am neither a Liberal nor Labor voter. However, if the Albanese mis-government is to be defeated, the Libs and their fellow-travellers must wake up to, and counter-act the influence of…the Greens. It is the Greens who deliver a good 10%+ preferences to Labor in tightly-contested seats. Yet we hear little or no refutation of the nutty Green policies. Similarly, as Tony Abbott found out in the 2013 election, even a muscular Liberal Government with a solid Lower House majority is disempowered by an adverse majority of forces in the Senate. (Remember the failed Budget that promised an end to the age of entitlement?). Yet we hear nothing from the non-Labor side of politics to the tune of “Give us government and also give us the Senate”. The Liberals have no hope of effective government nor the chance to repeal bad legislation brought in by previous Labor (and Liberal!) governments if they don’t wake up to and convincingly argue the Centre-right position against these two threats.
‘Worse than Whitlam’ didn’t enter the lexicon until we had Rudd/Gillard/Rudd. And I sincerely believe that was the key factor in Gough’s long life: he didn’t want to die until some other Labor PM had proven themselves more dangerous than he.
Well said. I had a bit to do with Gough. A terrible man who disdained the punters who voted for him. He always thought he was doing what the voters couldn’t do for themselves. He was a very condescending man.
His progeny standing next to him in the photo also is arrogant but even less competent, if that is possible, and more disdainful of the punters.
The main difference today is that even more of the media supports the left. The media is the problem, especially the abc.
I knew a man through a mutual acquaintance who had dealings with both Menzies and Whitlam. He said Menzies would give him a few minutes over morning tea, thank him for his work, and that would be that. Whitlam, on the other hand, would take a considerable amount of time telling him how to do his job.
Condescending indeed!
Rudd, Gillard & Rudd Labor governments often described by media as “chaotic, dysfunctional and incompetent”, and many of the Labor MPs including Anthony Albanese were members of the 2007-2013 period governments.
One very important factor today is that the far-left factions again dominate Labor. Some might recall the 1950s split away by centre-left Labor MPs from the far-left including Communist factions and formed the Democratic Labor Party.
It is very interesting to watch and listen to former Labor centre-left MPs who are not at all impressed with the Anthony “Trotskyite” leadership and general performance of the Cabinet.
The history books will not treat those woke fools kindly.
And the sooner the disastrous “Transition” to unreliable, very expensive, wind solar hybrid system replacing the reliable and affordable electricity base load and peak demand coal fired power stations is stopped the better.
As for PM Albanese and revival of manufacturing industry, what a fool he and the comrades are to try that on.
Since Whitlam Labor signed the UN Lima Agreement (Google) in 1975 manufacturing with notable exceptions has been closing down and exiting Australia. Union favouring industrial relations laws, red and green tape legislation and regulation compliance costs, company tax rate and payroll tax and others not competitive with other nations, superannuation guarantee levy paid by employers for employees, high cost of energy supply, and unreliable supply, and in short Australia cannot compete with developing nations, notably China.
Even South Korea where employee remuneration is comparable to Australia imported iron ore and coal from Australia is used to produce high quality steel, for ship building, vehicle manufacturing and many other industries. Obviously governments with a far more astute and forward thinking make up than we have here.
Every day just about there is another disaster from Labor and PM Albo lacks the leadership authority, obviously, to take control of Cabinet.
On Sky a few days ago it was revealed that gross debt after one year and ten months of Albanese Labor and even bragging about creatively accounted for budget surplus they borrowed $500 billion.
From zero debt November 2007 to September 2013 Labor racked up debt of over $400 billion over six years including exceeding the debt ceiling limit, producing not one budget surplus and in their final Budget, 2013/14 financial year, Labor failed to make provision to fund high cost budgeted items such as NDIS and Gonski Education Fund. And had the hide to try and blame the Abbott Government for borrowing when Treasurer Hockey announced the new debt and debt ceiling and why it was necessary.
In May 2022 the debt was just under $900 billion, the Coalition directly responsible for $500 billion over nine years in government. Albanese Labor had the hide to claim that the Forward Estimate of one billion was the real debt.
But it only took Albanese Labor less than two years to increase the debt of $900 billion by another $500 billion.
Consider the every year interest liability to budgets and the future generations that will be handicapped by that Federal Government debt plus State Government debts and interest liabilities.