Opposition leader Peter Dutton describes the upcoming federal election as a ‘sliding door moment for our nation’.

He is right.

It isn’t being partisan to point out that economically and socially Australia has gone into a steep decline since Labor took office. Only a change of government can arrest it.

For a start, entrenched left-wing ideology drives the agenda. That won’t change.

Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers believes in ‘the transformation of the welfare state into a managerial utopia with the government, in collaboration with superannuation funds, acting as benevolent resource allocators’.With such beneficent elitists running things, what could possibly go wrong?

While Rome wasn’t built in a day, Dr Chalmers is not off to a good start. Last financial year GDP eked out a mere 0.8 percent growth, the lowest (Covid aside) in decades. Concerned international currency traders have marked down the value of the Australian dollar from 70.94 US cents, the day after Labor came to office in 2022, to the current 62 US cents, keeping upward pressure on interest rates.

Altogether, Australians are experiencing the worst decline in living standards since 1959. Despite promises of a $275 reduction in household electricity prices, last financial year they actually rose 16 per cent. And the latest $300 relief payment is merely a political gimmick. Consumers now know their cost of living is primarily driven by government energy policies.

And it’s not only households who are struggling. As well as crippling energy costs, small businesses are faced with unaffordable minimum wages, new restrictive labour laws, under-qualified employees, suffocating red tape, and high interest rates. Little wonder they are failing at a record rate.

In an attempt to offset private sector job losses, Labor has employed 36,000 public servants, (average salary $100,000) bringing the number of federal, state and local government employees to 2,255,000. It is no coincidence that productivity is at a sixty-year low.

For all Treasurer Chalmers’ disarming rhetoric, he can’t hide the reality that this year’s projected headline budget deficit, which includes off-balance sheet items, is $47.2 billion or, 67 percent more than the foreshadowed $28.3 billion deficit. Government debt is expected to reach one trillion dollars in the next financial year.

Prominent in the public servant hiring spree has been the Department of Climate Change and Energy overseen by Minister Chris Bowen. He claims that Australia’s 0.25 percent of the people on the planet can influence the global climate. A quick fact check would inform him that China emits more CO2 in sixteen days than Australia does in a year.

But financial security and climate change aside, it is fear for their personal safety which is beginning to worry Australians. They watch the alarming spread of violent antisemitic, anti-Western behaviour and see a government which is desperate to hold seats with large Muslim populations preferring appeasement rather than face charges of Islamophobia.

Meanwhile, Jews and non-Jews observe with horror the firebombing of the Adass Synagogue in Melbourne and the violent targeting of a Jewish leader’s former home in Sydney. They watch Sydney cleric, Ibrahim Dadoun, who has 7,000 followers on Instagram, express public joy at the slaughter and rape of 1,200 innocent Israeli men women, children and babies on 7 October 2023. And they wonder whether the New Madinah College in Young is simply an incubator of hate for young minds when its principal, Sheik Abdulghani Albaf, who has 2,000 Facebook followers, insists, ‘The two-state solution just won’t work…The terrorist state of Israel must go’.

But even with such compelling evidence around it, the Albanese government admits 3,000 Gazans, whose true sympathies are unknown.

Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, laments ‘Even seemingly serious incidents that have been prosecuted, such as setting fire to a Jewish politician’s office or, breaching security to protest on the roof of (Canberra’s) Parliament House, have gone unpunished.’

Perhaps only a terrorist act involving multiple deaths and injuries will get the federal government to realise where its priorities should lie?

Meanwhile, radical Islamists in sleeper cells must take heart that violent acts and threats of more, get rewarded. Like when Foreign Minister Penny Wong betrayed Israel along with Canberra’s long-held solidarity with Washington, by voting in the UN to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories and supporting ‘permanent sovereignty’ for Palestinians.

But rather than the Australian people, it may be the second term of President Donald Trump which best exposes the Australian government’s weaknesses. Already the uncompromising nature and strength of Trump’s leadership has produced, for better or worse, discernible world-view shifts, on a range of issues, including within the media.

To date, Canberra is not for turning. But a time will come when the relationship demands alignment, particularly on foreign affairs where Australia is seen as an appeaser. The notion of Canberra playing the role of an independent middle power has attractions, but without the United States, Australia lacks the capability to defend itself. It also relies too heavily on the US for trade and investment.

And, unlike other administrations, Mr Trump doesn’t tolerate free riding. On defence and energy policy, without a close relationship, financial compensation for US-provided defence cover, can be expected.

Labor shouldn’t forget, that when it comes to a relationship with President Trump, Australia starts from behind. Previous juvenile and insulting comments from Mr Albanese himself, from the Foreign Minister and from our ambassador to Washington, will influence the relationship when it counts, whatever the diplomatic niceties suggest.

And to have Foreign Minister Penny Wong attend the Trump inauguration rather than the Prime Minister, surely sends a message of disappointment with the verdict of the American people? Not a way to win friends and influence people.

Very soon, Australian voters will be at the polling station when they must decide whether to stay on the Labor train or cross to the new Coalition line which promises to take them in a safer direction.

It truly is a sliding door moment.