Telltale Signs of Failure

There are some telltale signs that the Albanese government is failing where it matters most.

Firstly, there's the tension evident in the behaviour of some of their most senior people.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus was the latest to 'snap' when he berated a Sky News reporter during a recent press conference.

Dreyfus tried to take the high moral ground over the government's failure to prepare for and appropriately respond to the High Court's verdict on stateless illegal arrivals of our country.

That failure led to 149 criminals being released into our community, where a number (five thus far) have been arrested on allegations of further crimes, including one man charged with two counts of indecent assault against a woman.

The usual political do-gooders, who claim to champion both the rights of women and unarmed invaders, are largely silent as they are hoisted on their own petard of hypocrisy.

Many of those hypocrites reside in the ranks of the government and the greens, with a sprinkling in the cross-bench and the coalition.

You shouldn't be surprised by that.

So many of your politicians don't have any firm policy anchor that they ebb and flow with the populist tide. In doing so, they demonstrate neither leadership nor strength, only the shallow vacuousness of their desire to keep their job.

Unsurprisingly, the Albanese government fits into the shallow and vacuous job-keepers framework.

There isn't a policy promise or ideological commitment they won't scrap for political survival.

Sometimes, that's good for the country, but it certainly isn't leadership.

Take, for example, their commitment to the largest migration program in Australia's history.

Over the past 12 months, more than 500,000 people have migrated to Australia while we are in the midst of a housing availability crisis, inflation shock, and scarcely being able to supply electricity to those already here.

It was an appalling policy decision that the government steadfastly defended until now.

Immigration will now be scaled back to 'sustainable levels' together with a crackdown on abuses of our intake of overseas students.

That's a tacit admission that what they were doing before was neither credible, sustainable or in the national interest.

Now, some may see this as a responsive move by the government. After all, they can (and will) claim they merely react to current circumstances and public sentiment.

That's true, but it doesn't excuse the fact that this was always an obvious problem.

I've discussed the problem with our immigration intake and the rort of student visas for years. We got a brief respite during COVID-19, but the Albanese government opened the floodgates again.

The result was that our quality of life went backwards. Now they are pretending their latest action is a virtue instead of a knee-jerk reaction trying to buy them some political capital back.

The full details of the immigration overhaul are scheduled to be released this week as the government seeks to recover from a terrible year.

Part of that annus horribilus was the emphatic failure of the Voice.

That failure was an excellent result for the country but a disaster for the Albanese government. It's as if all their ideas for the country were hidden under the bushel of constitutional change.

Had it passed, the next two years would have been non-stop chatter about how bad European settlement was for the country and the virtues of Aboriginal culture.

When it failed, the Albanese government were as lost for words (and ideas) as Minister Linda Burney during question time.

A failure to act in the national interest is becoming a hallmark of this government.

The passage of the latest Industrial Relations Bill this past week has taken the nation back 40 years and has real potential to damage employment and productivity.

Its passage was achieved with the same band of hard-left misfits in the Australian Senate that have previously enabled the worst excesses of this government.

But nowhere is the lack of national interest as demonstrable as in energy policy.

Under the stewardship of Minister Chris Bowen, Australia is set to become an energy backwater while paying mightily for the privilege. A trillion-dollar renewables electricity plan will deliver higher prices and more energy insecurity than ever.

For the record, it also won't make any difference to the climate.

If that's not bad enough, Bowen steadfastly refuses to countenance the potential of nuclear energy in this country.

Apparently, nuclear is okay for the climate change zealots at the recent COP 28 conference in Dubai.

Just last week, more than 20 countries pledged to triple atomic capacity in a push to cut fossil fuel usage.

According to Bowen, they must be stupid because he keeps telling us that nuclear is not economical or feasible and that the waste is environmentally unsound.

However, his government endorsed the use of floating nuclear power plants in the form of submarines. They've even committed to building a nuclear repository for the waste.

Somehow, floating nuclear plants are good, while those on terra-firma are verboten. It's forbidden except when it's located in the suburbs of Sydney, as our existing atomic research facility at Lucas Heights is.

We can even store waste there in outdoor sheds, but please, whatever you do, don't put it safely somewhere in the outback.

The lack of political vision and leadership is not exclusive to the current government, but they are the ones elected to run the country.

And right now, the Coalition is running policy rings around them.

Peter Dutton appears to have learned from the mistakes of his recent predecessors and is putting the interests of Australian citizens first.

That this approach resonates with people shouldn't surprise anyone, but it has caught the Albanese team unaware.

That's why there is so much tension evident in the government ranks.

They are demonstrating all the skills of an entitled, mid-level manager who got a promotion they don't know what to do with.

That's not good enough for the government in this country and not good enough for the rest of us either.