There is no participation trophy in real life

There has been a trend afoot for a number of years to give people participation awards, particularly children in sporting competitions. They are told that turning up and participating in an event is what really matters and it’s not important if you lose. Former Olympian and LA Galaxy soccer star Cobi Jones, does an excellent job of debunking this mentality is this video from PragerU and explains why feeling the pain of losing is so important to winning.

I am sincerely hoping that this mode of thinking is not taking hold of conservatives across Australia and that the pain of losses in 2017 will instead spur us on to even greater efforts in 2018. The last few years have seen large setbacks in Australia on the federal and state level as cultural Marxists continued to entwine themselves further into every part of our country’s social and economic life while using our money to do it. Our Prime Minister essentially told conservatives that there was no place for them in the Liberal Party and then spent all of last year implementing Labor policies, making Bill Shorten’s Christmas very merry indeed.

When Tony Abbott was leader of the opposition during the Rudd/Gillard years, he did an outstanding job tearing down the Labor party, made the implementation of their policies almost impossible, and at times was almost governing from opposition. Now the leader of the opposition is likewise virtually governing from opposition but this time the party in power seems to be wilfully cooperating.

On the state level the situation is little better. In South Australia they are nearing 16 years of continuous Labor government and the state’s statistics reflect the abysmal economic performance that long term, big government thinking produces. They have a Premier that is so stupid he actually thinks you can run an industrial economy on wind, batteries and diesel generators. Yet for all of this incompetence the Liberal Party cannot even outpoll perpetual agitprop candidate Nick Xenophon and barely manages to outpoll Labor for the upcoming March election. In Victoria, which has an exceptionally left leaning Labor government, the news isn’t much better. You’d think that a government that spent $1.1 billion to not build a road and was responsible for the disgusting Safe Schools program would be easy to beat. You could be forgiven for thinking that the crime wave that isn’t a crime wave would be putting the totally incompetent Andrews government in polling freefall but apparently not. With all the ammunition in the world to tear down the Andrews regime, the Liberal party cannot poll higher than 50/50 on a two party preferred basis. As the latest by-election in the seat of Northcote has shown, Labor has more to fear from the Greens than it does from the Liberal party.

In my home state of Queensland in the recent election, the LNP did their best impersonation of a friendly uncle coming over for a chat while Labor went about tearing them to shreds. The balance of power role that One Nation was expected to fill didn’t eventuate and we’re faced with the prospect of three years of Labor incompetence. The old axiom that Labor is great at campaigning but hopeless at governing is never truer than here.

So what does 2018 and beyond hold for conservatives in Australia? The prospects are bad in the medium term and good in the long term.

To use the immortal words of Shakespeare, ‘what’s past is prologue’ and armed with that insight we can look ahead and predict with relative certainty what awaits us.

Eye Watering Debt Levels

No government in Australia, of whatever political stripe, seems to be able to live within its means. The federal government hasn’t run a surplus since Costello was Treasurer and the Liberal party at every level seems to have given up its big point of distinction from Labor, viz. sound economic management. The last election held in Australia was in Queensland and state debt was hardly mentioned. Given the performances of the last decade this trend will continue and now not only will your children be perpetual debt slaves, your grandchildren will be as well.

Doubling of Energy Costs

With the implementation of renewable energy mandates (by whatever name), you will see your power prices double within the next few years and triple within five years. This higher energy cost will flow on to every area of life with the higher cost of energy affecting all goods and services. Labor and the Greens have a religious mania regarding this subject and they care not who is destroyed in the process. The weakness of the Turnbull government on this issue is sure to take him down the same road, it is only a question of degree.

Social Division