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The coalition just never learns. For decades now, their sole compass has been on copying whatever they think is ‘The Current Thing’ and thinking voters will gobble up policy sloppy seconds. Menzies and Howard had convictions and voters respected and rewarded them for it. The coalition, like the Tories in the UK and the RINOs in the US, stand for nothing and wonders why no one respects or votes for them.
Do these clueless idiots really think left-inclined voters are champing at the bit for some lukewarm reheat of leftover Greens policies, when they can get the real thing, fresh and fanatical, from the Greens themselves?
Right-inclined voters are no more likely to have much of an appetite for Temu One Nation, either.
Non-citizens, including permanent residents, will be barred from accessing welfare under a updated migration crackdown promised by the coalition.
The coalition proposes to restrict access to more than a dozen social services including the NDIS, parental leave and carers allowance.
“If you’re not an Australian citizen then you do not get the privileges of an Australian citizen,” Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said.
He said, oozing as much sincerity as Jim Chalmers denying a new tax is in the offing. After years of meandering, finger-wagging and folding like wet cardboard the moment they sniff power, the federal coalition has suddenly discovered the virtues of putting Australians first. How convenient. Fresh off a humiliating by-election thrashing in Victoria where One Nation romped to 25 per cent, Angus Taylor is rolling out what passes for a tough migration and welfare package.
The policy would bar non-citizens, including permanent residents, from more than a dozen welfare programs: NDIS, parental leave, carers allowance and most social security. A 10-year residency requirement, even for citizens on the age and disability support pensions. Grandfathering for current recipients, of course. Exemptions will exist for defence, domestic violence cases and humanitarian arrivals. They promise it will save ‘many billions’.
It’s a start. It might even be believable – if you hadn’t heard it all before from opposition benches, only to watch it disappear like smoke at a Welcome to Country the instant they get into government.
On its own merits, on paper, the proposal is all very sensible. Why should newcomers, even permanent residents, jump straight onto the taxpayer teat before they’ve demonstrated any real commitment? Why should working Australians subsidise NDIS access for people who’ve barely unpacked? These are questions One Nation has been asking loudly for years while the major parties clutched their pearls and called it ‘racist’.
Now the coalition is scrambling to sound like they mean it.
Taylor also wants to tie net overseas migration to housing supply: one new migrant per new dwelling built. A $5 billion housing infrastructure fund. Slash the National Construction Code to axe ridiculous green tape like seven-star energy ratings, saving an estimated $70,000 per home. Scrap Labor’s various housing slush funds.
All perfectly reasonable. All things that should have been done a decade ago when the migration floodgates opened and housing construction failed to keep pace.
So: why didn’t they?
Because this is the same Liberal Party that, in government, repeatedly talked tough before bending over faster than a Victorian premier at a union barbecue. They railed against Labor’s big-spending ways in opposition, then presided over their own explosion in debt and migration. They promised to fix the NDIS, then watched it balloon into a $35 billion black hole. They told parliament not to be afraid of coal, then signed up for the whole ‘Net Zero’ scam with gusto.
Australians have seen this movie before. Tough talk in opposition, but wilted lettuce once in government. The punters aren’t buying it any more, which is precisely why One Nation is surging in traditional Liberal heartland seats and eating slowly and steadily into Labor’s foundations.
The coalition’s belated lurch rightward looks less like conviction and more like desperate electoral maths. But, it’s too little, too late: the lettuce has already wilted.
