Either the media in NSW have gone to sleep, or I am inhabiting another planet.

I worked for a Liberal Prime Minister.

I was his Speechwriter and Senior Adviser.

With almost boring repetition, he would say to me, ‘Make sure you always write into the speeches, Alan, that government has no money of its own other than what it takes from the taxpayer.’

It is clear that the once Liberal NSW Premier has never heard of such an edict.

Here we have, on the eve of an election in NSW, a so-called Liberal Premier throwing money around, the like of which I have never seen, not even in the Whitlam era.

Let me be blunt.

The management of the NSW economy utterly disqualifies the Coalition from any claim to being returned on March 25.

The Premier might be able to dance with elderly people and launch a campaign with 36 children sitting behind him, but the reality is, Premier Perrottet is in utter betrayal of the future of those same children.

The spending figures in NSW are staggering, yet the spending continues.

The Premier, on Sunday, pitched his re-election hopes on a promise to parents that his government would provide financial security for their children.

This is either inexcusable stupidity or an inexcusable untruth.

All he has done in this campaign is to saddle today’s children, the adults of the future, with unmanageable levels of debt.

Every promise is made with borrowed money.

Even before this election campaign began, the Perrottet government brought down a Budget last year with a $27 billion spending spree, borrowed money.

As I have said many times, the growth in expenditure, growth, was 26.5 per cent, this financial year.

Yet this government is saying it will look after our children?

What?

By tying debt around their necks.

At Budget time last year, the net debt, for financial year 2025/26, was projected to be $115 billion.

Since then, we have had a half-yearly Budget review, for this financial year, indicating the government’s deficit – that is, spending, yearly, more than it has – will go from $2.8 billion to $6.5 billion.

And a Liberal Premier, Perrottet, is saying ‘think of your kids’. Mr Premier, I wish you would!

The NSW government has had coal royalties of $11 billion yet the Premier and his Treasurer hate coal; the Premier nodded in agreement the other day when that dopey Environment Minister, James Griffin in Manly, signed his political death warrant by saying that ‘everybody’, I don’t know who everybody is, can’t wait to get rid of coal and gas.

The Premier, standing beside him, nodded his head in agreement.

Last year’s Budget, a $27 billion spending spree. I repeat. Growth of 26.5 per cent. This was last year.

Everything loaded up with language and promises the Greens would be proud of.

The Perrottet government says electric vehicles will be 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030, so they are going to tell us what to drive.

And we will build 30,000 new charging stations.

Where do these figures come from?

Yet a Liberal Premier is saying he is thinking of our kids by spending billions of dollars of money that we haven’t got.

As of last Thursday, March 9, to existing debt the Perrottet government had promised $38.2 billion to effectively try to buy an election victory.

Indeed, this Liberal government says, shamelessly, that borrowing cash and privatising assets is the key to funding the state’s $110 billion infrastructure pipeline.

There can’t be many assets left to sell.

And he calls this a ‘long-term economic strategy’ and ‘a balanced approach to financial management’. Words have lost their meaning.

I suppose what Standard and Poor’s, the global ratings agency, says, doesn’t matter. Their analyst, Martin Foo, last month said that Budget repair discipline had waned. I would say disappeared.

He highlighted the fact that NSW, then, was forecast to record a deficit of $6.5 billion, $3.7 billion worse than forecast seven months ago.

This, I regard, is a scandal; and, to me, it disqualifies Perrottet from being taken seriously.

He gives me the impression he knows absolutely nothing about financial management. State revenues, including mining royalties, are vital and yet the government hates fossil fuels. How the hell those royalties are going to be replaced? Perrottet has never explained.

To mining royalties, add GST, land tax, payroll tax, and motor vehicle tax, all forecast to increase by $11.1 billion over the four years to 2025-26.

So, there should be $11.1 billion to retire some debt.

No!

The Budget outcomes, over the same four-year period, are all forecast to be worse than they were in June last year.

Why wouldn’t they be?

There was Perrottet, last Sunday, expecting to get brownie points.

An $850 million plan handing every child a trust account with $400 of government money.

Did he tell the children, sitting behind him, it was borrowed money?

He wasn’t handing them money; he was handing them debt.

Yet this, allegedly, is thinking of your kids.

The man is irresponsible.

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$1.2 billion for new schools.

Why, if the government was doing its job, would we need new schools? This government has been in power for 12 years.

What is the Premier saying to the teachers at Gilgandra High School? They told the Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, who has done nothing to address the crisis in education, fill the vacancies or the staff will take matters into their own hands and walk out in protest.

This is all over NSW.

Gilgandra High has 21 teaching positions, 10 are vacant. But, remember, the government is supposedly thinking of our kids.

It is shameless.

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Perrottet talks about delivering hope to future generations, thinking of our kids.

Are these the same kids who are not being educated in our schools, but indoctrinated?

Are these the same kids who now face the fact that our 15-year-old students are four years behind China in maths; three and a half behind China in science; a year and a half behind NSW school children of 20 years ago?

Are these the same kids sitting in a classroom where between 36 and 40 per cent of teachers are teaching subjects in which they have no special skill?

Are these the same kids sitting in a classroom where nearly half of the nation’s maths and foreign language teachers are not qualified to teach the subject?

Are these the same kids sitting in a classroom where a quarter of the maths teachers have no training in maths?

Yet the Premier stands on a podium on Sunday and says he is thinking of our kids.

There is no attempt to end the indoctrination in the classroom.

There is no attempt to end bullying in the classroom, including the bullying of teachers.

But now there is an election on, we are suddenly told that every NSW public school will have access to a trained anti-racism contact officer and best-practice teaching of the Holocaust under an ‘historic’ new agreement aimed at fighting antisemitic and faith-based bullying.

It is pie in the sky.

Empty promises.

Bullying of teachers is endemic.

Without discipline, you can’t have education.

Three-quarters of teachers in a recent survey felt unsafe because of abusive and demanding students and parents.

One teacher complained of ‘hitting, punching, shouting, screaming and tantrums’.

And the NSW Premier says he is thinking of our kids.

You wouldn’t need any of this if education had been run, for the last 12 years, as Mark Latham and I have said it should be run, emphasising discipline and content.

Our TAFE colleges, incidentally, look like industrial archaeology of the 1970s.

The problem is that economic management, in NSW, is no more than an open embrace of the Greens. $3 billion, do you mind, in subsidies for so-called green hydrogen, a gift to billionaires who talk this nonsense.

Thinking of our children.

But no money for Gilgandra High School.

Yet the government gives $1.5 billion of more borrowed money to subsidise electric vehicles, when most NSW voters can’t afford them.

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Think of our kids as the government piles up debt.

You can’t get teachers at Gilgandra High, but $56,000 for Treasury staff to go to a Woke inclusion course, described by Mark Latham as ‘basically propaganda teaching them how to hate Australia’.

Presumably the Premier thinks that giving $28,000 to our kids, by the time they reach 18, taxpayers’ money, will bribe our children into thinking the government is on their side.

Well, the Premier chose Western Sydney for the launch on Sunday.

Is this the same Western Sydney where children were not allowed to go to school because of a flawed response to Coronavirus?

Is this the same Western Sydney where the parents of these children weren’t allowed to go to work?

Is this the same Western Sydney which is in desperate need of more police; where the Police Association says staffing levels are a recipe for disaster.

Is this thinking of our kids in a world which is increasingly unsafe?

But, then, the Premier says his government will boost the number of nurses and doctors.

Well, where has he been for the last 12 years?

The number of people walking out of NSW emergency departments, without being treated, has doubled in 12 months.

But the Premier is more concerned about cashless gaming cards which won’t come into being anyway until 2028.

The voters are saying deal with the here and now.

Thinking of our children, are we?

A city the size of Sydney does not offer heart transplant surgery to children.

Patients and their families have to travel to Melbourne where such a journey poses health risks and increases the trauma of an already frightening situation for these children and their families.

Doctors at Westmead have the skill and experience but no money.

It is spent on green projects.

Yet a government that wants you to believe it is thinking of our children, ignores the reality that more than 4,000 children, at the end of last year, were awaiting surgery in NSW; more than 1,000 had been waiting longer than clinically recommended.

There is a staffing crisis in NSW Health, which the Perrottet government has ignored, and more and more workers in the health services industry are talking about quitting.

Is this thinking of our children?

Senior nurses in public hospitals are resigning in droves.

They are suffering trauma and burnout from overwhelming workloads, leaving younger, less-experienced nurses, at greater risk of abuse from frustrated patients.

Frustrated?

Between July and September last year, according to the Bureau of Health Information, 60,000 NSW patients left emergency departments before receiving treatment.

I have mentioned this before.

The state’s newest public hospital in Maitland, with a price tag of $470 million, opened in January last year.

Proper management in this State is nothing more than rhetoric.

People will say, ‘Well, what about the other mob?’ I am saying with absolute disgust it couldn’t be worse.

Doctors at Maitland Hospital are saying they have no choice but to deliver sub-optimal care due to a lack of funding; the hospital is in crisis.

All we get is another ‘plan’, another $7 million, telling us that our patients will be able to connect with a specialist for follow-up care at a multi-purpose service centre.

Where does this stuff come from; yet there will supposedly be devoted spaces in all 63 of the government’s brand new, not built, multi-purpose service centres, so our patients can connect with their specialists.

This is the boy and the wolf stuff. People don’t believe them even when they are telling the truth.

But the money keeps coming, funded by debt, piled on debt.

A Perrottet government will subsidise tradies and truck drivers to use the M5 East and the M8.

That is $184 million.

Thinking of our kids, more debt.

After last year’s Budget, a reputable economics editor said, simply, NSW’s cash splash Budget was reckless at a time of surging government borrowing costs and soaring inflation.

But the money keeps being thrown around.

We are told we will have a deregulation tzar.

This is Kevin Rudd stuff.

Remember, he had Grocery Watch and Fuel Watch and every other watch, except a Rolex; and now we are going to have a deregulation tzar and a two-year deregulation blitz.

May I ask why we haven’t been blitzing deregulation already?

Thinking of our kids.

Tell them, Premier, that the way we are going they will never be able to afford a home.

The reason we have a housing crisis is there is green tape and red tape everywhere.

I spoke to a developer on Friday. He was working on renovating a home. He went to the council – this is inner Sydney – and the council officer sympathetically asked where is your Aboriginal Impact Statement? This is for a home that is already built, but being renovated.

For $7,000, he met with somebody and such a statement was provided, affirming that what he was doing had no Aboriginal impact. But he was then asked where his Arborist Statement was, to which he said, ‘Arborist? There is not a tree within 100 yards.’

No, but the Council official said, you will need an arborist to say that. So, he has to shell out more money.

When I checked this with another developer, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said that happens with every development.

Presumably, the Perrottet government has woken up and it is talking about deregulation.

The Premier now says if he is re-elected, he will give small businesses up to $1,000 in rebates over two years to cut the cost of government fees and charges.

Are we being run by dopes?

Wouldn’t the simple solution be, save your money and cut out the fees and charges?

These people know nothing about financial management.

What have they ever run?

They have never been in business, neither Dominic Perrottet nor Matt Kean.

They have never filled out a payroll tax slip, yet, they are now saying, well, we know there are a lot of fees and charges out there that cripple business, so we will give you $1,000 over two years.

A $40 million program; but only if you employ fewer than 20 people.

Do they understand that the fees and charges apply to every business which limits their profit and their ability to employ people?

What do they say in the musical, Evita? The money keeps rolling in; or rolling out.

Western Sydney is going to get its own Centennial Park and Hyde Park with $300 million to upgrade green spaces. That would be fine if we could afford it.

But no money for teachers at Gilgandra High.

I repeat.

I haven’t finished adding up, but, as at last Thursday, the election promises by the Premier totalled $38.2 billion. The figures are eye-watering.

But not a word on Sunday about the interest rate crisis with mental health experts saying that the finance industry must take the human cost of the mortgage crisis seriously.

How does this help our kids with Mums and Dads deeply stressed with the reality that the wage that comes in doesn’t equal the increase in mortgage repayments or the increase in energy prices?

In fact, we are told that energy prices will increase by more than 20 per cent from July 1, following the 18 per cent increase July last year.

Not a word about this except that the Matt Kean energy policy will worsen, not improve, the crisis.

Suicide Prevention Australia revealed, last week, that 46 per cent of people are reporting high levels of cost-of-living distress.

Children are exposed in that environment, yet the Premier says he is thinking of our children, but doing nothing about the environment in which they live.

I repeat.

This lot want to close down coal mines when the forecast royalties for this year, for NSW, are $6 billion. That is more than it is costing to build Sydney’s second airport. $6 billion in one year.

And, on top of this, you have the Treasurer, Matthew Kean, and the Premier, Dominic Perrottet, obsessed with renewables. They boast that a returned Coalition government will legislate to ban offshore coal, gas, mineral, and petroleum production in NSW waters.

We should be the energy powerhouse of the world, but 80 per cent of our coal is exported so that other countries can have cheap electricity; at a time when the world will consume more than eight billion tonnes of coal this year for one simple reason – coal is cheap and reliable.

But not available to us in NSW.

We ban it.

If this is thinking of our kids, running up unconscionable levels of debt, indoctrination instead of education, and plunging us into energy poverty, if this is the way we think of our kids, then I think we need to think again.

I cannot, as a responsible commentator, remotely endorse the Perrottet government.

The Liberal Party and the Liberal government in NSW are in disarray.

It is riddled with factions; it denies talent.

I have a saying that people only repair the house when it is burnt down. There is no Liberal Party in NSW, only in name. The current house needs to be burnt down with the hope that true Liberals will begin the task of rebuilding.

Those of you who have listened to this program know that the one person talking responsibly, and with common sense, on these critical issues of education and energy policy and financial management is Mark Latham.

I believe his One Nation Party has earnt the votes of disillusioned Liberal voters who find they have no political home.

You can watch Alan Jones LIVE and free over on ADH TV.