By Stephen Saunders
The sanctimonious left-elite is euphoric, confident that Labor is set to inflict six more years of population replacement, energy malfeasance, and housing distress.
When Labor unaccountably lost Election 2019, inhouse reviewers Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill summarised the problems in 500 words. The key message:
“Labor should position itself as a party of economic growth and job creation…policy formulation should be guided by the national interest, avoiding any perception of capture”.
Hasn’t the 2022-2025 Albanese Government been all this and more? Overcoming the at-times surly regard from unenlightened voters, Mr Albanese is giving them a scarcely deserved second chance.
Educated, impartial reviewers Greg Eminem and Jai Weathervane deliver the postmortem. On a sneak preview to MacroBusiness, here is their wrap.
PM Albanese’s win in summary
For months we’d feared for Labor. Because of the global economy, climate change, worldwide trends, Ukraine War, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, misinformation, Reserve Bank, Cyclone Alfred, and Mini-Trump Peter Dutton.
This perfect storm of exogenous factors disrupted the inclusive vision of the PM and his globetrotting Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers PhD on Keating. Yet we can’t ignore the central cause of election hard yards. Voters are insufficiently globalised – selfish, ignorant, and racist nativist.
The Voice:
Ill-informed electors misconstrued The Voice. Labor had offered them a simple enough choice. A – Alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. B – ABC Laura Tingle knows you’re racist.
Scorning tutelage and preferences of educated inner city folk, the bottom 60% of voters plumped for B. In his concession speech, the PM overlooked their miserable error.
Immigration and population:
Ex-Loreto-Toorak and ex-Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil [MPP Harvard] epitomises Modern Labor’s profound identification with ordinary citizens. A PM in waiting, no less.
As she stridently gaslit demurely, counselled voters, and dinkum Aussie values favour truckloads of immigration’s special sauce to win global talent wars. Simultaneously she’d halve immigration to fix stale-male Dutton’s broken system.
Her Immigration Minister, lawyer-statesman Andrew Giles, would clear the racialist visa backlog pinpointed by immigration whisperer savant Dr Abul Rizvi PhD PSM. “We’ll realise our potential as a reconciled nation,” intoned Andrew, “that harnesses its diversity”.
These nation-builders rush-landed a million migrants in 24 months, 70% higher than Mr Rudd’s astronomical numbers. Careful reform par excellence – steady, gradual reform.
Treasury megaphone Independent expert Dr Martin Parkinson PhD AC PSM had clarified the migration situation in his sublime 2023 review. Clearly, United Nations Australia isn’t allowed to deflate its own migration levels – because migration depends upon migration. Not to mention Home Affairs’ labyrinth of 70 visa categories.
Unfortunately, our nation-builders had to be reshuffled. It was bad luck, triggered by 150 detainees, as neutral ABC clarified.
Wise Ms Tingle reminded Labor that sensible conversation is required on immigration. This need not include voters – or mention Labor’s inadvertent immigration overshoot – catching up for COVID. That wouldn’t be inclusive.
As Dutton agreed, Diwali represents Aussie values, as much as Chinese New Year or Halloween. Voters seemed slow to embrace sectarian India’s exploding population as Australia’s special partner in its own population explosion.
With the PM reinstalled, the UN-accredited Greens-Treasury-Labor program of annual minimum 300,000 immigration can sail on through 2035.
Climate and energy:
Avoiding policy-capture, Labor’s laser scorched vested energy interests.
The gas cartel convention of Gillard Labor had been held for a decade, with manufacturers and consumers tied to support hard-earned profits of altruistic energy exporters.
The Ukraine War raised the spectre of super-profits; Labor moved as fast as scar tissue allowed.
We “capped” the gas price at $12Gj, giving consumers a welcome energy rebate, using free government money. If Saudi could import oil, we could import gas. As per inclusive UN policy, we strategically gave away our coal-gas bonanza for the welfare of China and India.
UN enforcers and practically-minded ANU and Greens urged the PM to go net-zero by 2035. Sensitive to UN priorities, he looked askance at senescent Europe.
Though EU emissions have fallen appreciably, their population growth is stunted. Australia was matching it with Nigeria.
We checked comparatively low-migration US, their noticeable drop in emissions driven by coal-to-gas switching. But gas sullies the UN energy-palette, as socially-just nations approach the net-zero rainbow.
Don’t mention that net-zero’s a fallacy, and Australia hasn’t really reduced its emissions. It just looks as if we have – factoring in specialised Australia Deductions regarding land uses.
But the Coalition noticed that our “integrated system” energy plan (ISP) was a hoax. Some imagine that cynical Labor operatives must have planted Dutton’s hilarious “nuclear-net-zero” camel response. No, he irradiated himself.
Jobs and growth:
Jobs, job, jobs. On sporadic visits from Washington DC to Canberra ACT, the Treasurer activated the crucial Emerson-Weatherill slogan.
He delivered a million new jobs inside three years. Plus gender equity, five quarters of real wages growth, cheaper services, cost-free government rebates.
This was where populist uncurated (non-ABC-ANU) misinformation tried to hurt us.
One racialist agitator told the unblinking Liberals that Australia was dismantling itself from within. That Liberal seats were being stacked with pro-Labor Indian immigrants. Some jibed that the million jobs were government-related jobs for the million migrants. Voters’ disposable incomes had crashed, insinuated others, real wages still in freefall.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The churn-and-change Treasurer had always had the right plan.
As embedded independent SMH journalist Peter Hartcher inferred, communication and messaging were letting us down.
Voters’ sluggish perceptions of everyday reality proved hard to budge. These deplorable denizens barely understood they’d never had it so good.
Over 2025-28, we won’t be able to create another million jobs for migrant residents quite so fast. What about jobs longer term?
Some decry the gutting of manufacturing jobs, failure to levy the resources bounty, jobs drifting into the so-called non-market sector. The PM rejects this constipated 20th century thinking.
On the contrary, the bedpan care sector is a productivity boon and our 5% manufacturing remnant will rise like a phoenix. Effortlessly, our wide-brown carbon sink will become a globally-envied energy superpower in the UN-accredited net-zero transformation stream. With Tesla knowhow signposting open-borders net-zero pathways to R&D supremacy.
Cost of living:
Are you better off than three years ago?
Voters were stumped by this Trumpian question. Having a low attention span, they barely appreciated our reforms (conscientious Guardian). How hard we worked to reduce immigration and build houses (comprehensive ABC). Indeed, the migration shortfall (ANU knowledge).
How often did the Treasurer repeat? Caring Labor stood for budget repair, inflation fighting, a million jobs, growing wages, cost-of-living relief, housing accord, and net-zero transformation.
The Opposition knew this was spin but declined to offer meaningful alternatives. It left voters focused on their weaknesses – not our depredations.
Amplifying the Treasurer was future-leader O’Neil, revitalising the Housing and Homelessness portfolio by pretend-housing her million-plus migrants.
This dynamo quickly intuited three measures. Build, build, build was her grand, gritty, grinding task. She’d accept nothing less than sustainably rising house prices.
Labor had tamed inflation in an election year – was anyone listening? Well yes, younger (Gen Z) voters were keen-as-UN-mustard to savour the shrivelling employment/housing prospects that must accompany massive in-migration. Who are we to disappoint them?
Why did other selfish voters regress to vulgar hip-pocket issues? Why would they imagine overpopulation, falling living standards, stagnant wages, world-level unaffordable housing?
Apart from the Murdoch Factor and that ungrateful tent-dweller petitioning the PM’s coastal retreat, we can never fully elucidate the answers. We just know we dodged a bullet.
With Dutton hiring a Liberal oaf as his chief political advisor, with the pair displaying all the tactical chops of a Barnaby Joyce or Ros Kelly, fresh outbreaks of Trump Derangement Syndrome soon made the election a rout.
Again, it wasn’t us prompting the Coalition to bucket working from home. They went 1950s all by themselves.
We doubt voting masses fully realise their luck. Despite misgivings, our small party of 60,000 progressives has held their noses buckled down bravely to give them another chance.
As Ms Tingle parses it, the complete purge of conservative MPs from inner city seats, the rental disaster, and the widespread homelessness, these are big wins for social cohesion.
Through her elite lens, it’s the Coalition not us prosecuting ideological “culture wars”. How good is a billion dollar propaganda ministry community broadcaster!
Nevertheless, we can’t leave it all to enlightened schools and universities to inculcate eternal Labor-Greens truths.
Democracy and equality can only flourish under the auspices of UN-OECD-EU climate-action and open-borders. Otherwise, you’d be a racist.
Our progressive hymn is sheeted home—but we must continue to battle voter ignorance.
Dr Craig Eminem PhD FAAS FPIA Dr Jai Weathervane PhD FESA FAICD May 2025>>
