Andrew Bolt:

This past week confirms the Albanese Government is worse than even Whitlam’s – not just incompetent but shameful and dangerous.

It’s already made Australians poorer, with real disposable income falling per household over the last 18 months.

It’s also made housing almost unaffordable for the young and poor by foolishly importing a million immigrants

But the last few days have brought four more extraordinary examples of how it’s destroying our wealth, threatening our freedoms, insulting our allies and dividing our people.

The latest example is Energy Minister Chris Bowen damaging us at the latest United Nations climate conference.

Bowen on the weekend helped negotiate a deal to make richer countries like ours give poorer countries $460 billion every year to supposedly cope with global warming.

That’s about $460 from every man, woman and child in countries like ours to be handed every year to countries including China, Iran, Taliban-run Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria.

Bowen tweeted excitedly that “getting climate finance right is vital for our nearest neighbours in the Pacific”, but what a dupe he is.

What are we compensating these countries for, when we’re getting fewer cyclones and bigger crops, and atoll islands are on average not drowning but growing – by 61 sq km in total this century, according to a 2021 survey of 221 atolls?

It gets worse. This government is now short of cash for its plan to make our economy run on wind and solar power instead of coal and gas, so Treasurer Jim Chalmers last week announced he’d raid the $230 billion Future Fund.

He’ll force this fund, meant to cover the unfunded pension payments of public servants, to invest more in green projects.

The fund’s two previous chairmen, former Treasurer Peter Costello and former Commonwealth Bank boss David Murray, are appalled, warning this supposedly independent fund will become a “political slush fund” and lose money.

The government’s climate crusade is already driving up power prices, costing jobs and destroying a reliable electricity system. Now it’s gambling our savings?

It’s disqualifying enough that it’s too economically and scientifically illiterate to run our economy. Appallingly, it’s also making our Jews scared for their safety.

Just days ago it banned former Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked from visiting, claiming she’d “incite discord”.

Discord from whom? From the pro-Palestine extremists who forced Myer to cancel the opening of its Christmas windows? The vandals who last week tagged cars and homes in Woollahra with “F … Israel” slogans?

These ferals now dictate which Jews may come?

Now add Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Jews who can’t visit Australia, after the International Criminal Court ordered his arrest on sight – here, too – for supposed war crimes.

This arrest warrant is a sick abuse of process. The ICC must intervene only if a country doesn’t have its own justice system to investigate allegations. It also relied on spurious claims that Israel used mass starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and it broke its promise to first visit Israel to hear its response.

Yet Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she “respects the independence of the ICC and its important role in upholding international law”, and wouldn’t join the United States in denouncing its arrest warrant as “outrageous”.

How our Jew haters will celebrate as Labor panders again to Muslim voters.

True, the government did on Sunday at least scrap its “misinformation” bill, meant to muzzle free speech on the internet.

But that’s just because it couldn’t get it passed by the Senate. It’s still a threat to our free speech, and will this week move to ban children from using Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.

All this in just the past week.

Then add all the government’s past failures, like trying to divide us by race under our constitution; or banning a $1 billion gold mine on the say-so of unrepresentative Aboriginal activists.

At least Gough Whitlam could boast that, for all his incompetence, he brought in big reforms such as Medibank.

In contrast, only 24 per cent of Australians surveyed in a Redbridge poll could think of anything the Albanese Government had done to make their lives better.

Last week Treasurer Chalmers tried to remind them he’d at least produced “the first back to back surpluses in almost two decades”, forgetting to add they were built on windfall prices for our minerals and will now be followed by 10 years of deficits.

Yes, Whitlam spending, but without Whitlam vision. What exactly is the point of the Albanese Government?

I was born after the Whitlam government so cannot comment on their record.
But this one here is a sorry record of ineptitude that is truly eye watering. Neither of the Cabinet members can truly say that they have left their portfolio in better shape since assuming power. None.

I was born after the Whitlam government so cannot comment on their record.

But this one here is a sorry record of ineptitude that is truly eye watering. Neither of the Cabinet members can truly say that they have left their portfolio in better shape since assuming power. None.

Black Ball, I was just old enough to vote in the election that was instigated by “the dismissal”. I took great pleasure in casting my first vote for Liberals.

The events that led to “the dismissal” and the subsequent election were galloping inflation, industrial chaos with strikes all over the place, ambitious social changes against the people’s wishes and numerous political scandals of financial and sexual nature.

Albo and his merry men and women have managed to equal Whitlam in all of the above while surpassing the old communist by instigating an anti-Semitic war on our streets, university campuses and even in parliament. Let’s vote in great numbers to oust Labor/Greens and make Australia great and free again.

A case study of misinformation.

@DisrespectedThe

If you watch anything today, WATCH THIS!!!

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Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume has slammed Treasurer Jim Chalmers over his latest plan to provide tax incentives to organisations producing hydrogen and critical minerals.

I thought Twiggy Forrest gave up on the idea and if even he thinks it’s not a goer why would anybody else take it up?

There’s not a moment to waste to stop the slide in living standard12 hours ago

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton lead the major political parties, which are rapidly losing market share. Photo: Supplied
Australia is in a rut: becoming older, flabbier and less nimble to play to the conditions.
The nation is getting more expensive to run, invest in and house, revealed by a bulging and indebted state, an overly regulated private sector, threats of capital flight and the punitive cost of homes.
Corporate Australia – which employs five in six workers, commits to investment over decades, competes globally and provides returns for retirement savings – can see the coming peril.
This is not about talking the country down, but waking it up.
Voters increasingly believe the living cost squeeze reflects a failure of the political class to pay attention to their core concerns and everyday hopes and needs.
You can draw a direct, hard line from government complacency about our forlorn productivity – basically, how much we produce with the toil and capital we put in – to today’s malaise in material living standards.
Yet we’re in a form of post-pandemic suspended animation on economic policy in Canberra.
The incumbents suffer an “optimism delusion” about the primal power of government to harness animal spirits; its opponents are tripling down on the force multiplier of grievance.
Migration and public spending, on benefits, public servants and capital works, have kept us out of recession, while contributing to a homegrown housing crisis.
We’re kidding ourselves to think housing will sort itself out if we just stop the visas, hobble demand and root out a few criminals on building sites. It’s a chronic condition.
The average cost to build a new home increased by $100,000 over the past four years; the time from commencement to completion of a new house has ­ballooned from about six months to nine months.
We have gradually become a high-cost producer, high-calorie consumer, running out of luck.
On the cusp of the reform era that began in the 1980s, politico-economic journalist non pareil Max Walsh described Australia as a “poor little rich country”.
Yet over two decades, leadership, vision, courage and community sacrifice fashioned a policy consensus that raised living standards by changing the way our economy operated.
There was disruption, especially for low-skilled and older workers, yet everyone stepped up: the place was more dynamic and we prospered.
The China booms simply added icing to a bigger cake, and cleared the debt, but we slowly drifted from our game plan of constant improvement to fighting over the spoils.
We’ve regressed.
There’s a big policy agenda for change: tax, energy, workplace laws, mergers, migration, red tape, zoning, education, infrastructure and government services.
It hasn’t changed much over recent years and we’ve managed these transitions before.
Some productivity fixes are staring us in the face, such as not restraining workers from switching to better jobs.
Wesfarmers chief Rob Scott says the mobility killer of stamp duty means people are stuck in homes that no longer suit them and workers are less able to chase opportunities that would benefit them, businesses and the nation.
Labor’s revival of national competition policy, where the states are duly compensated for a loss in revenue by Canberra for removing barriers to overall efficiency, is a promising move.
Instead of putting a mere $900m on the table to get things moving, the Feds should multiply that by 10, and ditch the Future Made in Australia folly.
Worse, in the post-pandemic period, government has got bigger, the economy has lost dynamism, workplaces are less flexible and there’s a worldwide retreat from free trade that is very bad news for us.
Even as the evidence of poor performance keeps mounting, voter fury is rising about how politicians go about their work.
New results from the True Issues survey by JWS Research, provided to The Australian, show a staggering two-thirds of voters agree with the statement “politicians treat politics as a game, not as something that directly affects people like me”.
No wonder the major parties are losing market share.
As we move close to a federal election, JWS’s Tom Cameron says voters will be grilling the political class: “Are you paying attention?”
There will be blood.
Many of today’s leading figures have studied the reform era, which was imbued with big personalities and grand policy moves.
But Labor and the Coalition have come away no wiser; where there’s passion, there’s no purpose; where there are ways, there’s no will.
Getting out of this rut will take small steps and constant motion.
Yet faced with this blindingly obvious task, both sides are guilty: dumbstruck and obsessed with the wrong game.

Blaming both parties is a cop-out when it is obvious that Labor bears the major blame for our current circumstances. 

The decline in productivity was already evident under Coalition governments from 2013 onwards.

The Libs also set us up for the housing crisis with high immigration but no supply side reforms.

They were asleep at the wheel while driving us towards a cliff.

The we’re screwed piece was screwed up, I meant it to be this one.

‘We can easily turn into the unlucky country’: Rob Scott and CEOs’ stark productivity warning

Rising regulation and a stifling climate to invest and do business risk putting Australia on the road to becoming the “unlucky country”, marked by lower living standards, poorer job prospects and less opportunity.

Three business leaders have issued a stark warning of the damage being done to Australia as successive governments have all-but-abandoned the landmark reform agenda of the 1980s, through to the early 2000s.

Unchecked growth of the public sector and ever-increasing red tape on businesses of all sizes are starting to have a serious impact on the nation’s economic prospects, they warned at a roundtable hosted by The Australian and Business Council of Australia examining productivity and competition in the economy.

Rising crime and poor health outcomes have also been triggered by sagging productivity and the tough economic environment, the business leaders said.

Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott, BP Australia president Lucy Nation and the boss of listed global medi-tech player Cochlear, Dig Howitt, called for bold productivity-boosting reforms to be put back on the national agenda, to help rebuild a more dynamic and competitive economy.

Mr Scott, whose company is one of Australia’s biggest employers with retail brands including Bunnings, Kmart, Officeworks and Priceline, said the millions of people who came through his stores each week were feeling the pinch from cost-of-living pressures and affordability of housing.

Sagging productivity represents a direct hit on living standards and adds to sticky inflation, Mr Scott warned, and as living standards eroded, this threatened to fundamentally test the social cohesion of the nation.

“The difference between 2 per cent productivity growth, which is what we were experiencing decades ago, back when we were referred to as the lucky country, can very quickly turn us into the unlucky country when we’re at 0.5 per cent productivity growth (today),” he told the roundtable. “It’s not surprising that when people are doing it tough financially and feel like they’re falling behind, we do see impacts to health and crime, which ultimately do go to the fabric of our society”.

The more governments allowed Australia to slip behind on many global economic and social measures, it would become harder to break out of a low-growth cycle, the chief executives said.

The Australian policy editor Tom Dusevic and Cochlear CEO Dig Howitt at the BCA Competitiveness and Productivity Roundtable. Picture: John Feder

Australia has recorded one of the worst productivity performances among developed world economies since the Covid pandemic, and has ­underperformed the long-term average over the past decade. Compounding this, foreign ­investment – an important source of wealth – has largely flatlined in the past five years.

The re-election of Donald Trump, who has promised to slash government regulation and cut taxes across the board from next year, is expected to trigger a wave of investment in the US. The corporate tax rate is currently at 21 per cent compared with 30 per cent in Australia.

Mr Scott said tax reform needed to be comprehensive and include the states, by tackling stamp duty and payroll taxes.

BP Australia president Lucy Nation, who is overseeing a multibillion-dollar rollout of renewable projects here from the UK-listed energy giant, called for a “Team Australia” moment to change the trajectory of Australia’s current path. “It’s also understanding that we’re in a global race at the moment,” Ms Nation told the roundtable.

She said the 2020s were going to be a “pivotal decade” with the rest of the world staking out ground on energy transition and security, artificial intelligence, education and demographics.

“I think we’ve got a really important window over the next three to five years of how Australia positions ourselves for the next 40 to 50 years,” she said. “We need to not be complacent, and we need to understand as Team Australia, how do we derisk and give certainty to really attract the capital flows. We are resource rich for energy transition, but capital poor, and it’s going to take a huge amount of foreign direct investment, and other countries are competing for that too.”

A BCA position paper on productivity found Australia was becoming a more difficult, complex and expensive place to do business, which had seen the economy slip down rankings of global competitiveness. This had contributed to our living standards – measured by real household disposable income per person – falling to 2014 levels. Countries such as the US, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden and Ireland had overtaken Australia in recent years. HSBC Australia chief economist Paul Bloxham said: “Lifting productivity … is the only way that living standards can be lifted in the medium term.”

Big reforms of past decades – from the floating of the dollar, adding more flexibility into labour markets, national energy and competition policy, inflation targeting and the GST – have all contributed to Australia’s current wealth. But the roundtable was told more needed to be done in reforming the patchwork of state-based and increasing business taxes such as payroll, freeing up planning and approvals while restoring the link of wage rises to productivity gains.

At the same time, new regulations – state and commonwealth – needed to be considered in terms of cost to the economy and how they worked with existing rules.

BCA chief executive Bran Black said: “We need to look to genuine plans to reverse that trajectory and start putting us on a different track I hope that because there is a broader receptiveness for the need for longer term change and recognition that there is something of a burning platform that we are on.”

Mr Howitt, whose bionic ear implant company generates the bulk of its sales offshore, said Australia had an important choice ahead of it. “We see in Europe, regulation has been consistently rising over the years and stifling productivity,” he said. “At the same time, the US has been going up as a much easier place to invest in and to go to market and to employ people. We’re seeing those two significant parts of the world are going in quite different directions. We’ve been following more of the Europe path, more recently, of adding regulation, both in on labour but more broadly, don’t think there’s been any serious review of the impact of regulation. Australia has a real choice, and that choice is perhaps even more stark now with Trump having this department of government efficiency.”

Canada

BREAKING: Ezra Levant has been arrested!

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Richard Marles’ chief of staff is launching legal action amid an ongoing workplace dispute.

“Three weeks ago I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to intervene and to hold the Deputy Prime Minister to account for the way that I had been treated,” Ms Tarnawsky said. “The Prime Minister has not responded.”

I’m not sure the PM can afford to take time out from ruining the country to deal with office disputes.

But, taking a leaf from the book of the wise kings of Ye Olde England when petitioned by a subject to right a wrong, he might direct an underling to make haste & see to it. If he were wise…

Look at these Canadian Pigs with their faces covered up. Absolute bullsh*t!

That should not be allowed.

Rebel News HQ:

BREAKING: Ezra Levant ARRESTED while reporting on pro-Hamas protesters

What happens when lazy politicians let the economy run on exporting minerals and importing people rather than adopting policies that encourage value adding innovation and manufacturing:

Australia’s economic complexity ranking has slipped to 102 out of 145 countries ranked.

Bangladesh and Senegal are ahead of us.

In the year 2000 we were ranked in the middle of the pack at 63rd.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
November 25, 2024 11:31 am

I can’t find my snowboots.
They’ve gotta be somewhere, somewhere …

—–

Where are you going?

“The UKR have essentially become a marionette of the US and the use of these new weapons manifests this because they can’t be operated without their owner’s involvement. That’s why their use constitutes a major escalation.”

The permanent bureaucracy of the majority of the west has been poking the bear with a stick for decades. So far, it’s not really awake yet, just swatting at the stick and grumbling.
We don’t want to wake this critter up completely, it will kill us.
It’s stirring in a rather menacing way, and they keep poking it harder and harder.
Just farking stop you morons!

It is kinda fun seeing the Aussies getting flogged…

I don’t want to wade into your months’ long “lovers’ tiff” DB and JC but my five cents:

Putin = bad guy
Zelensky = bad guy.

Aussies now 5 for 79, playing like a bunch of 11yo netballers*

(*no offence to 11yo netballers)

I’m not sure who the US should support in UKR Vs RUS.

Do you support the “less bad guy?” Zelensky is a murderous, corrupt, autocrat. But so is Putin.

Ya know, do you support ISIS or Assad…

Perhaps, and I’m only talking out loud here (not much thinking), the US/West shouldn’t get involved in baddies Vs baddies wars. I used to be on Russia’s side but am leaning more toward: Let the baddies eat each other up, save our own resources for a much larger looming war.