If Anthony Albanese thinks he’s plumbed the depths of Australian voters’ fury already, he’s in for a very, very nasty surprise. Because voters are in for one of their own – and they’ll know who to blame.
In a way, many voters only have themselves to blame. It’s not just because they elected the Albanese government in the first place, either. It’s because so many of them demanded ‘climate action’. Well, Albanese and his ‘Climate Change and Energy Minister’, Chris ‘Boofhead’ Bowen, have been only too happy to deliver. We’ve already seen the result, in skyrocketing energy costs.
But that’s only the start. Because the iron rule of a modern, industrialised society is: when the cost of energy goes up, the cost of everything goes up.
Australians should have learned that lesson from the brief, unlamented tenure of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. When Tony Abbott called it a “Great Big Tax on Everything”, it was more than just a catchy campaign slogan, it was the harsh truth. Under the carbon tax, business costs went through the roof, which left them faced with two choices: hike their prices, or go broke. In many cases, businesses faced the prospect of both.
Albanese and Bowen’s ‘Net Zero’ agenda is a carbon tax on steroids. Since the Albanese government came to power, electricity prices have risen by as much as a staggering 50 per cent – and that’s even with taxpayer-funded rebates keeping an artificial cap on the increase. The caps have ended and the chickens are about to come home and shit all over the rest of the economy.
Now, the food distributors are stepping up to the plate and their menu for the future is entirely unpalatable. Countrywide Foodservice Distributors, representing an extensive network of warehouses and logistics, have warned that prices for our daily bread are set to climb by seven per cent in the coming months.
“We believe an increase of seven per cent in food and beverage prices, as an average across all categories, is realistic given the ongoing compounding effect of global and domestic pressures,” [Countrywide general manager stakeholder relations Richard Forbes] told the Australian.
This is not merely the result of bad luck or international volatility. It is the direct consequence of a regime that has decided that cheap, reliable energy is a crime against the planet. These distributors are currently being crushed by the weight of exorbitant diesel costs, energy prices that have been artificially inflated and a regulatory burden that would choke a horse. It is a perfect storm of government incompetence.
In the midst of this escalating catastrophe, the Labor backbench has decided to offer up the same old socialist panacea. Ed Husic has begun floating the idea of price caps on groceries. It is the sort of bright idea one expects from a government that thinks it can command the tide to recede.
It is worth reminding Mr Husic of the fate of his ideological forebear, Gough Whitlam. The Whitlam years were a masterclass in how to incinerate a national economy. When inflation spiralled out of control, the Labor response was not to restrain government spending, but to attempt to clamp down on prices by decree. It was a failure of historic proportions. One cannot cap the price of imported goods or essential commodities without causing a complete collapse in supply. Chevron does not take its pricing orders from an Australian backbencher and the global market for food commodities is not particularly interested in the opinions of a Canberra bureaucrat. If you cap the price below the cost of production and delivery, the goods simply stop appearing on the shelves. It is economics 101 – a subject in which the current ministry seems resolutely uneducated.
Husic’s lamentation about the state of play is almost comical when one considers the source of the pressure.
“We have to contemplate how do we make sure those prices don’t ramp up and put pressure on low- and middle-income Australians, and if we have to entertain price caps we should,” Mr Husic told ABC News Breakfast.
The answer is sitting right in front of him, if only he had the courage to look. The solution is not to impose more socialist controls upon the market, but to dismantle the Net Zero madness that is systematically destroying our industrial capacity. If the government truly wants to lower prices, they should start by slashing the profligate spending that is driving inflation and axing the green energy vanity projects that have shackled the Australian economy to an expensive, intermittent nightmare.
Instead, we are offered relief packages – which amount to nothing more than grudgingly handing back a pittance of the taxes they gouge from us and expecting gratitude – that barely scratch the surface, while the cost of business continues to spiral. These distributors are telling us clearly that they have run out of margins to absorb. They can no longer shield the consumer from the reality of Albanese’s agenda. When they are forced to pass these costs on, the reality will hit the household budget of every Australian.
The government claims to be concerned. They speak of productivity reforms and tax relief, yet they persist in the very policies that guarantee our continued decline. They are rearranging the deckchairs on a ship that they have steered directly into an iceberg. The voters, who have been promised a paradise of cheap energy and sustainable growth, are now finding the bill is due. And unlike the government, the Australian public will not be able to pass that cost onto anyone else. They will pay it, they will feel it and, come election time, they will remember exactly who was holding the steering wheel on the sinking ship.
