Increasingly, and not surprisingly, political pundits across the mainstream media are beginning to say what this magazine has been saying for the last year: that the Coalition can and will win the next federal election. That confidence can be seen on two fronts. Firstly, the complete collapse of credibility that Anthony Albanese’s lamentable government is struggling through, combined with the increasingly successful leadership of opposition leader Peter Dutton. Although these two factors are not unrelated – and indeed self-evidently reinforce each other – they stem from the subtle difference between ‘conviction’ and ‘ideology’.

Anthony Albanese’s entire leadership is beholden to left-wing dogma. This insists that climate change is real and that only massive, all-or-nothing state intervention in the means of generating electricity and control of the citizenry to stem ‘emissions’ can ‘solve’ the problem. Like Soviet communists of old, many of whom he apparently admired during his pointless ‘economics’ education at Sydney University in the early 1980s, Mr Albanese treats the capitalist economy as his plaything for Labor to manipulate to whatever collectivist ends, including, of course, enriching those who pay subservience to ‘the Party’ via the union movement.

Thus, in modern Australia, everyday Australians struggle to pay ever-increasing energy bills whilst Labor embarks on a massive nationwide restructuring of the means of energy production, trashing farmland and pristine oceans alike, that would make Karl Marx blush. All for the greater good, of course! Meanwhile, overseas and local investors find that should they be foolish enough to consider putting  their hard-earned money into, for example, digging for gold, tapping for gas, or opening up a lucrative uranium mine, they run afoul of some spurious Aboriginal mythical creature or other in whose name the project is scuppered. At the same time, perfectly good industries such as our own live sheep export industry are banned at the stroke of an apparatchik’s pen. So  marinated in putrid socialist ideology are Albanese’s team of poorly educated undergraduate lefties that the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, boasted recently that the increase in the number of public servants is keeping our economy afloat, or words to that effect.

All of this has proved too much even for the normally supine business and minerals resources lobby groups. As Michael Baume details in his excellent column this week, ‘Albanese’s soft-soap won’t wash with the miners, as was demonstrated in Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable’s confrontational after-dinner speech to an audience that included the Prime Minister along with all the leading federal political players (and feather-dusters, like your correspondent). ‘We don’t want conflict,’ said Constable. But under the Albanese government ‘conflict has been brought upon us’. With no shortage of war-like language, Mr Baume goes on to explain how Labor has now ‘crossed the Rubicon’. ‘Certainly, [Labor Resource Minister] King’s comments cut no ice with the MCA’s Tania Constable who effectively dismissed Labor’s offer of tax production credits and its pro-mining rhetoric by asserting that, “All the incentives in the world and choruses of support wouldn’t matter” if basic policy settings were not right. And they’re not.’

Increasingly hardcore left-wing industrial relations policies combined with fanatical left-wing climate extremist ideology are driving business and investment from these shores, and every Australian will be the poorer for it. And as if red and green tape aren’t crippling enough, businesses and investors now have to face ever-increasing ‘black tape’ all of which is exacerbated by intense activist lawfare. The Albanese government, despite the humiliating defeat of its precious Voice project, is simply incapable of abandoning its socialist ideologies. And the Australian public is increasingly waking from its torpor and appreciating that, unlike what it says on the pack, the Albanese Labor party has literally nothing in common with their beloved Hawke Labor party.

As Labor sinks in the ideological mire of its own making, Peter Dutton’s Liberal party, and the Coalition, continue to rise in the polls. Many attribute this success, and the increasingly likely return of the Coalition to government within the next eight months, to Mr Dutton maintaining unity within the party, in keeping with Mr Howard’s ‘broad church’ doctrine. But is this true? Or is it, rather, that every time Mr Dutton heads in a more conservative and less ‘woke’ direction he is successful? The success of the Coalition in winning the Voice referendum against all perceived wisdom (other, of course, than this magazine) was because Mr Dutton wholeheartedly embraced the conservative position and rejected those ‘bedwetters’ within the Liberal part who supported the Yes campaign. In other words, it was the ‘narrow church’ that led to such a resounding victory. And it is the ‘narrow church’ of the Liberal party that is driven by conviction; namely, traditional conservative, ‘Thatcherite’ convictions around smaller government, free speech, freedom of expression, patriotism, encouraging business, supporting nuclear power, and so on.

The irony is, of course, that at the very moment Mr Dutton can sniff victory in the wind, he has fallen into the socialist, authoritarian trap of ‘online safety’ that is the very antithesis of those convictions. Yes, self-evidently there need to be the tools available for parents to prevent their children accessing online violent imagery, pornography and so on. But, as James Allan points out, the answer is not to curtail the free speech of all in order to do so.