Buckle up for a scary fiscal ride

AUSTRALIA is now embarked on a classic big-spending Whitlamstyle Labor agenda mixed up with a new-age big-spending Dark Green agenda. It is not going to end well.

Even if Labor gets to the 76 seats and majority government in its own right, it will be effectively in de facto coalition government with certainly the formal Dark Greens and essentially also with the socalled teals.

It both has to be and it will willingly seize the opportunity to do so, because Labor and the Greens will together have a majority in the Senate, even without counting the likely support from Tasmania’s Jacqui Lambie and her possible-to-likely second senator.

Both the formal Dark Greens and the “independent” teal-greens demand the same thing: the destruction of our national electricity generation system that has given us plentiful, cheap and reliable power for the last 80 years – albeit increasingly less so in recent years.

And the speedier the “better”, in a mad, bad and dangerous – and utterly pointless – race to 2030.

These assorted greens also demand a ban on any new coal, gas and oil projects, and then, where it starts to get really “interesting”, the actual closures of our existing mines and oil, and especially gas production.

That does suggest it will become an increasingly fractious marriage; as the crazy-green agenda collides with the reality of government and trying to keep the economy this side of Venezuela, far less North Korea.

But at least initially it will be hugs all around as Labor, DarkGreen and teal-green rejoice in taking “real action on climate change”.

Action that will have zero effect on either the world’s or our local climate, thanks to China belching more and more CO2, and even “woke” Europe deciding it actually wants to keep its lights on.

Pointless action that will have massively destructive impacts on our industry and on household budgets.

Then add on the classic bigspending Labor agenda, which will produce bigger deficits and keep the national government debt heading from $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

Labor has ’fessed up to spending at least another $20bn – but that’s only the amount spent over the four years of the formal budget out to 2025-26. And it will prove a massive underestimate.

As it unfolds, it will grow to a much bigger sum, just in those four years – and build in ever-increasing spending in every year after that.

Look at the NDIS. It was supposed to start at $15bn a year and grow “modestly” year-to-year. It’s already at $30bn this year and is projected to hit $46bn by 2025-26.

One of the big things Labor argued, late – very late, as on the Thursday before polling day – was how modest was its proposed spending compared with the new spending initiated by the government in the May budget and the mid-year budget update last December.

Yeah, but Labor’s proposed spending was coming on top of the government’s spending.

The government was already proposing to keep spending more than 26 per cent of GDP; Labor will add its spending on top.

The government was already proposing the budget would still be deep in deficit – more than $43bn – in 2025-26. Labor proposes an even bigger deficit.

The debt was already going to