Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s an election coming up on May 3rd.
And, of course, one of the questions is: Just who is the Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton. I mean, we hardly know him and this could be a problem come election day… What, you’re not asking that question? But that’s what the media kept asking leading up to 2022 about Albanese. They kept telling us that, in spite of being in Parliament for decades, we hardly knew him and he almost never got to finish a news conference without the broadcast cutting away to something more urgent, such as the sheep dog trials in Tocumwal…
This election is going to be fought on cost of living apparently, and Mr Dutton has already told us that it was all because of the high energy prices that grocery prices are up. A few weeks ago, I’m sure that people were telling us that it was because of the unscrupulous behaviour of the big two grocery chains and that a divestment policy was necessary. And by “people” I mean the Opposition Leader and colleagues, but now it’s all because of the high energy prices that have caused all this inflation.
Mr Dutton is also promising to fix this inflation… which is a pretty strange call now that it’s down to the RBA target range. (Ok, it’s only the headline figure and the ACRONYM one is still a touch above it, but the expectation is that it’ll be down with the next set of figures unless something changes… and by something, I mean, Donald Trump raising tariffs which might cause prices to rise, or it might cause a recession and they all fall… Or they might go up and down at the same time like house prices were going to do, if Bill Shorten’s policy on negative gearing had been adopted after the 2019 election.)
Mr Dutton was also most concerned about the number of small businesses failing. A record number, I believe. Contrary to what you may think, these were not small businesses where a couple of people decide that because one of them is a great cook and the other is good with people that they can open a restaurant and they’ll have a Michelin Star before the year is out, completely understanding difficulties involved because they’d watched “The Bear”. These were not people who didn’t have a business plan. These were not people the same people that make up the one in three small businesses that fail in their first year of operation.
No, these were, Mr Dutton told us, “mums and dads” who were trying to do something. I’m pleased that now they get to spend more time with their children, instead of working the long hours that a small business people have to work. Ok, there may be a few financial issues but surely they can get jobs.
Although not in the public service where the Coalition plans to sack 40,000 workers who clearly can’t be parents or we’d hear about how shocking it’ll be for these mums and dads who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. No, public servants are either incels, vampires or Sir Humphrey…
Whatever, the main thrust of bringing down the cost of living is the plan to bring down the cost of energy by having a gas reservation program for the East Coast states. We don’t have much detail because apparently the envelope on which the plans had been worked out, had an address and stamp on the front of it which meant that it was posted before they could write down what was on the back of it, but the details will be released in due course, closer to the election, possibly before but certainly after.
Labor, on the other hand, has given up on fiscal responsibility. The country’s debt will be returning to the figure it was before they came to power, so this is a major catastrophe. You may wonder why it’s a major catastrophe now when it wasn’t before, but that was because the Liberals were in charge and, as the responsible economic managers, they would have certainly brought it under control by not wasting all this money on things like… well, the things that are a waste of money, but not the things we need, such as submarine deals that produce no submarines, by which I mean the AUKUS deal, not the French one because we didn’t need the French one, it was just a waste of money and lucky Scott Morrison stopped it.
Labor is also spending money building infrastructure so that the energy generated by renewables can actually get onto the grid. This will only cause people more problems because it’s likely to lead to a demand for more renewable energy which will be a problem if the sun ever runs out. Besides there’s no way to store the energy generated by solar and wind. Apart from batteries… but they only last until they run out and then you have to hope that it’s no longer night time or that the wind is blowing.
But at least Labor isn’t wasting money by giving more money to the unemployed because that would mean that people had no incentive to keep working if you had enough to survive when you were unemployed. I mean, why would anyone work if they could happily afford three meals a week and a roof over their head, even if the roof lacks walls.
Anyway, the election will be all over in five weeks and then we’ll know the winner… unless it’s very close. Or a hung parliament in which case we may have to wait for negotiations with the cross bench which may take some time. If you remember 2010, the negotiations took nearly as long as Rob Oakeschott’s speech where he told us that he was backing Julia Gillard.
In the end, however, there can only be one winner. And that’s Gina Rinehart.
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Regarding dogfood and his “gas policy” and his refusal to release any details.
Dogfood had a thought bubble, he then went off to make his “big announcement” (we all know how big they are for these announcements, it is what they do best), before chucking his thought bubble off to a minion somewhere to sort out all the details. Dogfood is not worried about giving his minion the impossible task because, as we well know, they never actually follow up on their big announcements.
This same framework applies to all big announcements, just like the biggest of them all – nuclear.
Thanks Rossleigh,highly entertaining, and accurate as always.As expected, by some of us anyway, 10 minutes into the so-called ‘campaign’, the wheels are already falling off Boofhead’s wagon.He has nothing,he never did, and it was always bound to show up.Without the boosterism of the Murdoch trash, he was always a fool with delusions of grandeur.
In the meantime,I’ll be redoubling my efforts to shun all media until May 3RD.Minority Labor government …bring it on.
Ha ha ha haaar, indeed!
The effluvium of der Spud … seems to be migrating underground, but he’ll keep the economic numbness down by exploring other bubbles. He’s already really humble about it, so can’t release further reservation plans coz he’s so busy looking for his cap … on exports and immigration and emigration of 40,000 public servants as a stop-gap, and naughty dual citizens stealing Oz air.
And coz his long-term reactor effluvium stinks, it has for the time-being been canned. Maybe when all the numbness and numbers of his effluvia can be worked up, he’ll release it all. WARNING – Just stay well clear as he attempts to hold a candle to Albo and the cross-bench.