Way back on May 21, 2022 when the Albenese government was elected, an energy shock erupted owing to Ukraine War profiteering by the East Coast gas cartel.
By May 30, I wrote a long piece noting that the government faced a choice.
It could tackle the East Coast gas cartel head-on and become a multi-term administration reminiscent of the Hawke years.
Or it could squib it and repeat the mistakes of the one-term Scullin government of 1929.
Unfortunately for the Albanese government, which chose the latter option, its leaders are a pair of policy buffoons who primarily exhibit reform cowardice.
Mostly thanks to then new treasurer Jim “chicken” Chalmers who lives in fear of reform even when the entire economy is at stake:
A Labor source said Dr Chalmers was still “scarred” from the failed “super profits” mining tax in 2010 when he was a senior adviser to then treasurer Wayne Swan, and that he did not want to revisit the idea.
The rest is history.
Chalmers led a Cabinet and Treasury with no idea what to do in a crisis.
As I expected, the fallout from that fateful decision has affected every policy choice since.
To the point that the Albanese government has hollowed out the market economy with rate hikes, taxed households to death, and was forced to pump up a massive welfare/immigration complex in its place.
This fearful tax-and-spend economy has no productivity, no real income gains, and delivers nothing but falling living standards for as far as the eye can see:
Jim Chalmers is the singular wrecker of the Albanese government and if the government isn’t thrown out next year, he most certainly should be.
