Memo to Coalition: maybe next time

At MacroBusinessalso The Australian, I've portrayed Election 2025 as a winning romp for the top 20% regardless of who becomes prime minister.

Meaning, little improvement across crucial indicators such as inequality, immigration and housing, energy and environment, education and taxation.

This comes through in parties' motherhood policies. Taken in alpha order, no hidden bias eh.

Coalition

Global-north discourse rues the backslide to inequality, under post-1970s neoliberal policies. Down Under, income inequalityand wealth inequalityare on a roll. Even the Coalitioncites collapsing real-income growth. Post-COVID- if not pre-COVID.

The intelligentsia, notably Treasury overlords, is relaxed and comfortable. Are we luckyor what? Look over there, chirps government ABC, wicked Donald Trump.

In January, Peter Dutton soft-launched his Back on Track policy booklet. Which mentions inequality once - as an Indigenous problem. Last year, the Coalition promised net-migration at 160,000, now they talk "rebalancing". What a squib, considering Labor's destructive 1.3 million immigration deluge over 2022-25.

For housing, they'd boost supply, fund infrastructure, fight inflation, "sensibly" reduce migration. These platitudes would deliver another 20 years of housing hunger-games.

Meantime, the guiding light of Labor's ideological and unaffordable energy-policy is UN fairytale, net-zero emissions. As "realised" by an alphabet-soupof federal climate-energy bailiwicks - AEMC, AEMO, AER, CCA, CSIRO, DCCEEW, EAP, ICEDS, ISP, NZEA, you name it.

Dutton too defers to net-zero, via nuclear not renewables. He offers an energy "plan" to lower energy bills and "unlock" more gas. Gas-export cartel has nothing to fear.

Education would go "back to basics", matching existing dollar-for-dollar funding agreements.

That won't budgethe past (coming) decade of increasing inequity, enrolments shifting to advantaged schools, disadvantage concentrating, diverging student achievement. You don't need a higher education, to cotton onto Australia's divisive church-versus-state system.

Nor is it any secret, our tax system panders to corporations and resources. System leverages real-estate speculation, leaving wage-earners marooned by post-1970s bracket-creep.

What about broadening taxes on resources, land, and consumption? Sorry Ken Henry, booklet stays mum. Supposedly, voters get "lower, simpler and fairer" taxes.

Greens

Life being a box of chocolates, Greens retail 47 policyflavours. Their special sauce for Economic Justiceis UN gobbledegook of "net negative global carbon economy". Immigrationpolicy too is boilerplate UN. Citizens – who largely rejectmass migration – get no say.

Trust Greens to find harshness, in Labor's world-level open-borders blitz. Which they somehow construe as a vile migrant-bashing race to the bottom.

Anything less than 300,000 per annum is demonic racism. Relating housing to population is an unacceptable premise. Cue Housing and Homelessnesspolicy. "Free" government-money would generate perpetual supplies of eco-friendly public and rental housing.

But Greens are pro-environment, right? Actually, as early as 1998, they denied the effects of population on environment, deeming that line to be racist. Today, their fully-woke Environmentalpolicy trumpets global citizenship and global warming.

Top 20% embraces UN climate-action net-zero groupthink. But trust Greens, to go the extra mile. As with the pixies at Climate Council and ANU-ICEDS, net-zero 2050 isn't exotic enough. It ought to be 2035.

Greens favourstate schools, if not contesting the church-schools funding. Arguably, their soak-the-rich tax policieshave merit, but these wouldn't be supported by Liberal or Labor.

Labor

Mate, if Labor even has a plain spun policy prospectus, you'll have to wait. Meantime, let's patronise voters with brief linesof website motherhood and 170 pages of platform motherhood.

How "lucky" are voters, enjoyingthree years of lower inflation, moving wages, tax cuts, and energy relief. In his second term, Anthony Albanese will…zzz…zzz.

On truthy ABC recently, Labor's Health Minister derided an embattled dad-renter. We're "working very hard" he smirked, to reduce immigration and "build more houses".

In fact, Labor platform (para 85) buried Albanese's radical population-agenda. In successive Budgets, his Treasury has lied about immigration targets, by 50% and more. To gay applause from the top 20%, his 1.3 million tops Kevin Rudd's record by an improbable half-million.

Icing the cake, Albo signed amateur-hour qualifications and migration compacts with sectarian India. These lopsided dealswouldn't have proceeded in Bob Hawke's day. Today's power-elite loves it, notably the Coalition. To query it would be racist.

Lying about cheaper energy, Labor platform didn't "solve housing crisis" either. Hence their housingagenda, accord, council, fund, target, and schedule, for an "aspirational" build of 1.2 million homes over 2024-29. It's never happening. Even if it did, that wouldn't accelerate housing affordability. Not while the relentless population growth and juicy tax breaks remain.

Again, Labor energy-policy hinges on net-zero. But our physical emissions won't reallyhave fallen 43% by 2030. The bipartisan safeguardmechanism is a crock.

In Treasury agitprop, fake net-zero promotes Australia to globally-envied energy superpowerin the UN net-zero transformation stream. Among ordinary voters however, energy prices creep ever higher, abated by "free" energy-relief.

Though Labor's environment platform ticked boxes, population growth is off the scale, disregarding land clearing, habitat destruction, native-forest logging, water profligacy, and species extinctions/invasions. Maybe the net-zero pilgrimage is paved with coal.

That funding-settlement favouring church-schools is Coalition-Labor concordat. Bishops, imams, rabbis, all can breathe easy, irrespective of the election outcome. While Labor, like the Coalition, evinces little interest in broadening the tax base.

Pauline Hanson One Nation, Sustainable Australia Party

PHON has a couple of federal senators, though voting for this party is deemed racist. They used to advocate net-zeromigration, backpedallingto 130,000 migration-visas annually. Yep, like Dutton, Hanson has wobbled.

SAP was once Sustainable Population Party. Like nearly all environmentally concerned groups, they've gone woke. Desirous of low migration (70,000 net) but alsonet-zero 2035.

Teals et al

Backed by Climate 200funding, Teals supportclimate-action and anti-corruption.

Heiresses Kate Chaney (WA) and Allegra Spender (NSW) are huge hypocrites on immigrationand housing. Esteeming climate-action, they also endorse open-borders. The immigration deluge gets parked at a safe distance from their ritzy habitats.

David Pocock (ACT) favours"sensible conservation" on immigration. Among 227 federal members and senators, only a tiny minority strongly demands low migration or net-zero rethink. Pocock wouldn't openly consort with them. In woke Canberra, that's a suicide-letter.

Influencers overplaythe Teal-Green differences. More recently however, Teals have started to push for tax reform.

Onya bike, Coalition

Sure, Australia's still healthy and wealthy, with untold iron and carbon yet to ship. Granted, individual parliamentarians win respect, through hard work for their communities.

But the party "contest" is dispiriting, eying off each other not voters. Platforms drip with indolence and contempt. Revelling in visibly destructive (gas cartel, massive migration) or plainly stupid (supply-side housing, net-zero 2035) solutions.

There's little yearning to sustain the economy long-term, serving communities and containing inequality. Triennially, parties pretend to care. In the other hemisphere however, you can find national polities appearing to attune more to local citizen welfare. Little Denmark and Norway are oft cited, closer to home, consider Japan and Singapore.

Then reconsider our 1970s and 1980s. Bank of Mum and Dad could snaffle housing but local paisanos also had a shot. Intentionally, today's housing goodies are strongly directed towards economic migrants and BMD. So wrong.

Hence my remark, top 20% is the real election winner. As they stoke sectarianism and inequality, their imagined Australia is a socially-just multicultural nirvana ascending to net-zero.

Top 20% claim altruism whilst deriding "hip pocket" concerns of the rest. Ordinary voters are ignorant. Heavens, most lack degrees. How could they begin to fathom our industry-sectoral pathways to net-zero? For the left-elite in particular, ordinary voters are also racist. Flouting high-level directives, they rejected The Voice. If they're struggling now, they deserve it.

Albanese and his Treasurer are apparatchiks, loyal to globalism, donors, and party. Not voters. They talk one-million jobs plus real-wage growth. Walking open borders, the long dive in real-wages, suburban crush-loading, falling living standards, and world-ranked housing unaffordability.

Since 1931, no first-term government has lost. Yet even Dutton, I claim, could have got well out front. After cyclones Trump and Alfred however, latest polls put Labor back ahead.

Back on Trackdoesn't cut it, being cautiously me-too. With Dutton own-goals, proposing nuclear net-zero and squibbing immigration-housing. Now comes his red herringof deporting deviant dual-nationals. Spent too long at Home Affairs, mate.

At docile ABC, Labor's open-borders net-zero demolition-derby is called "playing it safe" and did we mention Trump? Indeed, Labor may well return to power, riding overblown Trump insinuations. Uninspiring Coalition might have to wait their 6-12 years for Australia's largely ceremonial changeovers of government.

Labor-Greens government? Heavens forbid. To my obsolete 20^th century mentality, their toxic mix of UN-dogma and race-hysterics is scarcely recognisable as Australian.