Judged purely on a metric of dealing himself and his party back into contention after a bad election loss, Peter Dutton has done a good job as Liberal leader.
In the past 12 months, he’s got the Coalition around level pegging with the government in the polls, and he’s dragged Anthony Albanese down to the point where they share similar levels of personal disapproval.
Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain
The next election is not too far away – today marks the second anniversary of the first full day of the 2022 election campaign – and if the trend continues, Dutton has some sort of show of becoming prime minister in May next year.
That prospect concentrates the mind, especially given the condition of the country. Australia’s social and economic models are collapsing under their own weight. To keep the economy on a growth path, we have to import human beings. Our main export is what we extract from the ground. Immigration and commodity prices determine our fortunes.
Government programs that both sides of politics agree are a must –the NDIS and the mainstay of our health system, Medicare – are perpetually underfunded and subject to a game of financial ping-pong between the Commonwealth and the states. The aged care sector that we allowed past governments to develop is so poorly structured that it cannot pay its employees decent wages; last year the government had to step in to fund pay increases to aged care workers at a cost to the budget of $11.3 billion over four years.
Intergenerational inequality is a festering sore that spreads further every day. The housing situation is a well-examined intergenerational catastrophe in the making.
Wage stagnation became a feature of our economy more than 10 years ago, Labor’s recent industrial relations law changes notwithstanding.
Qantas, our national carrier, the business that is Australia’s face to the world and the nation, and in receipt of enormous sums of taxpayer money in recent years, has gotten itself into such bad odour over its long-term treatment of customers and employees that it embarks on a charm offensive in the hope of getting back into the community’s good books.
Replace the other mob and change nothing: Welcome to modern Australian politics
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10.04.2024
Judged purely on a metric of dealing himself and his party back into contention after a bad election loss, Peter Dutton has done a good job as Liberal leader.
In the past 12 months, he’s got the Coalition around level pegging with the government in the polls, and he’s dragged Anthony Albanese down to the point where they share similar levels of personal disapproval.
Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain
The next election is not too far away – today marks the second anniversary of the first full day of the 2022 election........
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