I know what you’re thinking. MB wanted Albo so why does it have buyers regret just one year on?
This is false. MB never wanted Albo and was very concerned about what he would bring. We simply recognised that ScoMo had to go because he was transparently a corrupt religious nutbag.
But now we have some other form of corrupt religious nutbag running the country. A woke, right-wing, China-groveling, policy coward that does not give two hoots about the Australian national interest.
Let us examine the past year and extrapolate where it will take the nation.
Strategic policy
Albo has returned Australia to the road diverging in the woods policy of John Howard. We are refusing to prepare the economy for Cold War 2.0, let alone any actual kinetic conflict with China.
On the contrary, Albo is furiously aiming to undo all trade diversification away from China. This, as all other G7 nations shift supply chains away as fast as they can.
AUKUS is not a hedge against this. It intensifies the economic risk because it sells strategic decision-making to Washington. That Albo cannot see this is disturbing.
If it comes to blows, the Australian economy will have not been prepared at all with an ever-shrinking industrial base and ever-larger commodity dependence as Washington orders our own defence forces to blockade our own trade routes!
How is this strategic or rational?
Economic policy
This boils down to two words: mass immigration. There is no reform plan to boost productivity. On the contrary. Mass immigration destroys it via the capital shallowing that dominates macro outcomes.
There is no plan to revive manufacturing, either. A few billion thrown at strategic industries is nothing but backfilling the little that’s left. There is no plan to boost competitiveness for a broader revival. All of the Dutch diseases of the past two decades: land prices, resources curse, and monopsony are still getting worse, not better.
Energy policy is a particular area of disaster for manufacturing as rising costs blast what’s left of making stuff into the sea.
Energy policy
This is apocalyptic. Albo has been late on every needed reform as he measured political caution not against the national interest but against the threat of vested interest backlash.
The gas cartel is doing whatever it likes despite no fewer than five senior ministers being humiliated. This week Australia’s gas-rich east coast recorded the highest gas prices on Earth. This is calamitous for Australian inflation and competitiveness, as well as wealth before very long.
Decarbonisation policy is, by definition, almost as bad. While Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro2.0 disappears into the far distant future, energy storage investment is stalled. This makes the east coast more dependent upon the gas cartel for even longer.
Energy storage is the key to making renewables work. Yet Albo is not investing in it.
Those campaigning against climate change can wish for fewer fossil fuels all they like but until energy storage is fixed we are stuck with them.
Tax and budget policy
The Stage 3 tax cuts are appalling. $250bn that could be spent on any and all of the above. Instead of given to the rich for no reason. ‘Nuff said.
There is no agenda for tax reform. Nothing for the world-beating tax concessions in property, super, mining, or anywhere else. It is all in the burning Bill Shorten dumpster.
There is lots of chest beating over the surplus. A John Howard rubrik. However, B=budgets are OK for now thanks to lingering Ukraine War impacts on commodity prices but deficits loom large as global growth weakens and China goes ex-growth.
The forthcoming income shock will make all budget choices much harder.
Housing policy
Inflate, inflate, inflate via mass immigration into a building bust. Both prices and rents are being pump-primed. The public housing proposal is infinitesimal. Policy straight out of the Howard era.
Social policy
The pay rise for aged care workers is good but, again. it is Howard-era politics of caring mostly for older generations.
Particularly so when the paltry JobSeeker lift continues Howard’s War on Youth, leaving the unemployed far below the poverty line. Notions of incremental change don’t cut it. A larger rise could and should have been neutralised with fiscal tightening elsewhere to avoid inflationary impacts.
Feel-good undertakings such as Voice, gender-targeted spending, gambling ads and, soon enough, the Republic are worthwhile measures and debates but marginal on the utilitarian national interest spectrum.
They are much more impactful as political distractions. Another John Howard favourite.
Conclusion
Albo’s government is overly cautious because it is focused upon survival through focus groups instead of address of national interest priorities. I have never seen Albo utter the words “national interest” even though every other country is increasingly focussed on little else.
But the historical backdrop is one of accelerating history demanding bold decision-making clearly articulated to protect the nation.
Albo is John Howard out of time. He has the same policy fundamentals and is adept at hiding what needs doing with symbolic politics.
The problem is, we are now in a new and different century and John Howard’s policies do not fit.
