Albo's Red Herrings

A record 7,747 companies hit the wall in the first nine months of this financial year, according to last weekend’s Australian paper.

Some 35 years ago, around the same time of the financial year, my wife and I were desperately scrambling to prevent our company from collapsing.

Three hundred staff, an asset base of $14m, a full order book of small ship design and builds worth $12m, all approved by the Government’s Export Finance department and an interest rate at the time of 22% for an overdraft, what could possibly go wrong? 

However, the letter from the NAB was clear: The overdraft of $2m was unacceptable, and we were now on 24 hours' notice to repay, as per the last line in the overdraft document.

I had helped Minister for Trade John Button a year earlier in preventing the closure of a Tasmanian shipyard, so I rang him to help unblock the slow export finance payments and to hold back the bank.  

He responded that very afternoon, apologising, that despite appealing to NAB’s boss, Nobby Clark, the NAB and other banks were into “wholesale slaughter of medium and small business”.  

The next day the undertakers of the banking and finance industry, Receivers, took the keys, the bank books, the cars, the house and our office buildings.  So, our 13 years of efforts came crashing down.

Quite a humbling experience and entirely unnecessary, if the nation had the US Title 11 Bankruptcy re-organisation instead of the archaic UK Liquidation /receivership system.

Three weeks later, we were in a small rental in the suburb of Eagleby, south of Brisbane, with a borrowed ute, four sons at Christian schools and a giant golden retriever that ate more than the boys.

Bundling the boys into the back of the ute, my wife reminded me this was illegal.

“What more can they take from us? They already have the house, the car, the company and all the assets. “

Then, ALP Prime Minister Keating informed us that this was the recession we had to have. As his ratings were crashing, he was distracting the media and the public with, “Let's change the system, get rid of the Australian Flag and the monarchy, let’s have the recession we have to have and a banana republic!”

“Record Business Collapses” blared the newspaper headlines at the time.

I knew that well, as many business friends were also swept up.  As I stood in the dole queue in Beenleigh every fortnight, they would inform me there were no vacancies for ship designers in the Beenleigh area and approve my dole payment.

Many of my friends abandoned their business dreams and took secure government jobs, but as an obstinate Scot, I got back on the horse. It took us six years to fully recover, but this time, we stayed away from banks, not even an overdraft, which caught us out last time.

What about the cost of living crisis?  

If you want a full immersion povvo, penniless and painful experience like the now over 8,000 business families that are going through receivership/liquidation this year, just keep endorsing Labor and Greens and the insane policies that these fickle fools focus on.

Take heed of my words: Keating, Rudd, and Gillard all spiked the rise in business collapses. If you don’t believe me, check it out!  

However, this Team Albanese with the embedded DNA of ALP stupidity is something else.  Between Albo, Bowen, Burke and Wong, if they had a brain in their head, it would definitely be a stowaway!

We sang “Our Land Abounds in Nature's Gifts” last week at the Anzac Day services. Most small businesses are not gifted with anything and require long hours and dedication to create something from nothing.

I take my hat off to anyone trying to build their own vision.

Imagine being gifted the Leadership of Australia!  A vast island nation with unimaginable mineral and agricultural wealth and an all-year-round climate for working and living.  

What an absolute gift to any vision-oriented leader!

It’s a pretty easy job to implement policies that benefit the majority of Australians, using natural gifts to mine our minerals efficiently, create cheap energy, manufacture goods that are required to operate and defend the nation, export products and create wealth and harmony for our citizens.

The alternative job is to implement policies that benefit the minority of Australians: those who don’t like the flag, our history, our wealth, or having to work for wealth, our harmony or anything at all, but won’t sod off to the unhealthy, overcrowded swamp they came from.

This same minority is trying to appease unelected bureaucrats in the UN and their unproven policies of climate change, gender bewilderment and disharmony of the nation through mass immigration of people openly hostile to our values.

These are the same minority who want to abolish Australia Day and Anzac Day!  Wake up!!! 

This IS Australia, and we have a superb and colourful history that we should be embracing and perpetuating, not trying to pretend our history hasn’t happened to appease the few malcontents. 

If you don’t like our Australian way, go back to where you came from and stop trying to change us!

So the policies of Team Albanese, elected by a minority of 32%, have been, and still are, totally focused on the minority, the unhappy and the lazy.

Policies of Division, new EPA laws disallowing activities with Nature's Gifts, particularly coal and uranium, and Union control of running companies with obstructive IR rules have been avalanching businesses.  No wonder they’re falling like flies, especially in regional Australia.

Now that Albanese’s popularity is plummeting, like Keating, he grabs the ALP playbook to distract the media.  

Last week it was Elon Musk refusing to obey Julie Inman Grant, someone many consider an evil shrew focused on revenge and certainly not what’s good for the majority of Australians.

What will Albo’s red herring be for this week? His continued embarrassment by Pauline Hanson?

So my message to the 8,000 business families on the recent coal face ALP-inflicted cost of living crisis: don’t give up!  

I know the weak politicians always say, “We’re all in this together,” but small businesses always carry the burden of pain, as happened in the COVID lockdowns.

We have a wealthy nation; we need a strong leader focused on what is required and necessary for the majority.

Don’t abandon your dream!

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
Peter F. Drucker