Why would Anthony Albanese stoop to such squalid trickery?

This stemmed from the recent budget scheduled because Albanese decided that calling an election while Cyclone Alfred was raging was not a ‘good look’. Accordingly, the Treasurer’s budget address was scheduled for Tuesday evening, followed by the usual two days for nationwide discussion. Peter Dutton’s budget in reply was to follow on Thursday evening, also with two days for further nationwide discussion.

As usual for elections, the audience with the Governor-General would be on Sunday.

However, Albanese suddenly undermined these arrangements. He decided to ‘crowd out’ the two days of news and discussion allowed for Peter Dutton‘s reply with news about ‘Albanese calling the election’. So, even before the sun rose on Friday, an impatient Albanese was already ensconced in his chauffeur-driven limousine, heading for Yarralumla. That Governor-General Mostyn allowed her high office, an ancient politically impartial constitutional check and balance, to be tainted by association with this squalid trickery is, in my opinion, concerning.

The audience could and should have been conducted on Sunday, by Zoom if necessary. The reason for this unprecedented trickery is obvious. Albanese and his platoons of advisors were obviously fearful that just as Dutton had courageously exposed the racism in the then still popular Voice referendum, there was a danger that his budget reply would reveal what the mainstream media had long avoided reporting. This is that Dutton’s record as an experienced, competent and courageous minister is outstanding, far ahead of anybody in the government or, indeed, parliament. If anybody can reverse the mess that the Albanese government has landed Australia in, it is Dutton.

This is reinforced by the fact that he was never a lifelong career politician. As they say of a diminishing band of politicians, he had a real job. In fact, he had several. Even at school, he worked part-time in a butcher’s shop. On leaving school, he joined the police, a dangerous and demanding position. After serving close to a decade, he established himself as a successful businessman. He stood for parliament and was elected at the age of thirty. He was and remains a family man with strong beliefs and convictions, and a strong work ethic.

His experience as an active, energetic and effective minister spans a range of portfolios, including workforce participation, assistant treasurer, health, immigration, home affairs, and defence, as well as opposition spokesman on competition policy and deregulation.

He played a significant role within the parliamentary Liberal party, including bringing a timely end to Malcolm Turnbull’s disastrous leadership. As leader of the opposition, Dutton has been largely ignored by a mainstream media fixated on the ‘precedent’ that a one-term government has not recently lost an election.

By contrast, the mainstream media accorded the Albanese government what seems like the longest honeymoon any government has ever received, especially Coalition governments, some of which have enjoyed no honeymoon at all.

As to the coming election, pundits are warning about something extraordinary happening. This is that what is indisputably the worst government since federation could actually be rewarded with a second term.

If the mainstream media had treated the Albanese government as rigorously as it does Coalition governments, a second term would not now be a serious consideration.

Rigour is a media tool which should surely be applied without distinction. This is after all the government that has delivered the largest fall in living standards and the biggest decline in manufacturing in the OECD, one that is spending the largest proportion of national income in years, presiding over one trillion dollars of debt, admitting one million immigrants during a housing crisis and leaving the country defenceless.

This is the government that released 178 detainees, including seven murderers, 37 sex offenders, and 72 violent offenders, following the widely anticipated NZYQ High Court decision. The battered face of grandmother Ninette Simons, who according to a charge, was assaulted violently by one of the former detainees, became the symbol of the government’s disastrous decision.

The Daily Telegraph says the number of former immigration detainees convicted of serious crimes and released into the community has risen to an extraordinary 300.

The Albanese government would appear to have been guilty of gross and frequent misfeasances in public office.

Not only will they be generously rewarded with superannuation and ‘jobs for the boys’, it is possible, and some say likely, that they will be rewarded with a second term.

The format and thus the agenda of that second government could be even worse than the first.

Pundits are saying it is likely that this will be a minority government dependent on the support of, and thus under the control of, the far-left Greens and the Teals.

As such, despite Australia emitting just over one per cent of world emissions, a Labor minority government will be even more obsessed with climate catastrophism despite the major emitters China, US, India Russia and Japan, either rejecting, ignoring or downplaying net zero.

So what is driving this Labor-Greens-Teal obsession? Let us heed the old injunction and ‘follow the money’.

Apart from enriching local sidekicks, the increasing outlay for solar and wind farms and massive power lines covering this vast land ends up in one place, the bank accounts of Beijing’s communist billionaires.

No wonder, then, that when the Chinese were engaged, without notice, in dangerous exercises as their warships circumvented Australia, Albanese meekly excused their action as justified under international law, and untruthfully claimed they had given notice.

An election result handing power to this axis will surely fulfil the long-held fear of this column, that Australia could head towards becoming, if not the Venezuela, the Argentina of the South Seas, an impoverished third world country.

Another three years could make what is now the beginning of a trend difficult to reverse. The only answer is a Coalition government led by Peter Dutton. In the words of the rousing song made famous in rugby league circles by the great Tina Turner, of our potential leaders, Peter Dutton is simply the best.