I have no intention today of repeating Mr Howard’s irresponsible spending spree… Unlike Mr Howard, I don’t stand before you with a bag full of irresponsible promises that could put upward pressure on inflation. Today, I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop.

That’s why the commitments I announced today will cost less than one-quarter of those Mr Howard announced on Monday.

Australia has changed a lot in the last twenty years or so. In November 2007, when Kevin Rudd spoke those words at the launch of Labor’s federal election campaign, he was standing in front of a huge image of a single flag – the Australian flag. At Labor’s launch on Sunday, Anthony Albanese stood in front of three flags.

Back in 2007 when Rudd was complaining about the Coalition’s campaign promises costing too much, the federal budget was IN SURPLUS, the federal government had NO NET DEBT, and net interest payments were less than 0.1% of spending. John Howard’s 2007 election campaign promises totalled $9 billion and Rudd made a great play out of Labor’s promises ‘only’ costing $2 billion.

Rudd even said in his speech, ‘I am an economic conservative’. Somehow people believed him. His response to the Global Financial Crisis and policies on things like Labor’s NBN, the Pink Batts scheme, and ‘Building the Education Revolution’ proved nothing of the kind. (Who could forget stories such as the one about the library at Mowbray Public School in Sydney? Built in 2010 at a cost of $1.2 million under the BER scheme, the library was demolished five years later because it was too small for the number of students at the school.)

The point of this is not that Rudd said something that wasn’t true (he was after all a politician trying to get elected). I mention it because Rudd and the Labor Party obviously thought it would win them votes to appear fiscally prudent. How times have changed. These days there are no votes in not spending other people’s money.

On Sunday Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton made election promises costing about $10 billion each. The total cost of the promises made by the two major parties over the course of the campaign so far equals about $100 billion (keep in mind total government spending is about $750 billion a year) – and there’s still two and a half weeks to go. Judith Sloan was right when she wrote on Monday, ‘I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that election campaigns should be as short as possible. I know there are constitutional limitations on this, but the longer this campaign goes, the more expensive it becomes for taxpayers and the more irresponsible – nay lunatic – the policy proposals.’

In 2025 in Australia, no politician would dare spend less money than their opponent. Any spending Labor has promised, the Coalition has basically matched. In 2026 the budget deficit will be $42 billion, net debt will be $620 billion, and gross debt will be more than $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000 or one million million dollars). Net interest payments will be 2.4% of spending. Over the next decade, interest payments will be the fastest-growing category of government spending – increasing at a rate of 9.5% a year.

According to OECD data:

Australia has recorded the sharpest increase in public debt in the developed world, with government liabilities as a proportion of national output growing almost fourfold over the past two decades… gross debt as a proportion of GDP has increased from 15.2 per cent in 2004 to 57.9 per cent last year, due to two global economic crises, the escalating big-build public-works projects and an explosion in social services spending.

None of this debt has improved our standard of living. From The Australian Financial Review last month:

Australians’ living standards have not increased at all over the past year and are barely higher than they were 10 years ago… Despite the uptick last quarter, real income per person is actually slightly lower than it was one year ago, and only 1.5 per cent higher than it was a decade ago – the weakest 10-year growth since records began in 1983, according to analysis by The Australian Financial Review.

While wages have been increasing, pay rises have been more than eaten up by a sharp rise in consumer prices, a surge in mortgage interest repayments and an increase in the share of earnings lost to income tax.

This is how Australia ends up becoming Europe – but without the cathedrals and the scenery.

If the Liberal Party promises to spend as much as Labor and won’t fight on culture, there’s not much left for it to do. Which explains the eerie drifting listlessness of the Liberals’ campaign so far. As Chris Kenny wrote on the weekend -‘ The 2025 contest is coming across as a trifling popularity contest, akin to a state politics campaign with squabbles over competing giveaways, when the issues at stake are historic, consequential and grave.’

Although, I should correct myself. What I just wrote was wrong. The Liberals are willing to fight on culture. Sometimes. They sacked one of their candidates, a former soldier, because he said women shouldn’t serve in combat units. (Which is also happens to be the view of Andrew Hastie, a former SAS commander who is the shadow defence minister.)

Coalition MPs don’t even want to talk about education. This is from The Sydney Morning Herald last week:

During the first week of the campaign, a shadow minister told this masthead there was frustration with Dutton’s personal staff for allowing the leader to continue to appear on late-night Sky News shows where he has talked about ‘woke’ school syllabuses and other non-mainstream issues.

That’s the Coalition’s problem. Right there. In black and white. Clear as day. (And I’m not talking about the unnamed shadow minister’s dig at Sky News. The disdain with which so many Coalition MPs treat the people who are expected to vote for them, including those who happen to watch Sky News, helps explain why alternative centre-right parties are polling at an aggregate of more than 10%. One Nation is on its highest primary vote in three years. Contrast the Liberal approach to what Labor does. Labor MP’s don’t attack ABC viewers or Guardian readers.)

I’m referring to the shadow minister’s complaint that Dutton talked about the ”woke’ school syllabuses and other non-mainstream issues’. Dutton describing the National Curriculum as ‘woke’, doesn’t do justice to what’s happening in Australia’s classrooms, but at least it’s a start. It’s not a plan or a policy for improvement, and it’s not really picking a fight with Labor, but at least it’s something. But even that’s too much for this unnamed Liberal. I have no reason to believe that that off-the-record comment wasn’t genuine. Goodness knows how many times I’ve been asked by Liberal MPs and party apparatchiks, ‘Why are you always going on about freedom of speech and culture and education?’ My reply is usually along the lines of, ‘that you can even ask me that question reveals more than you can ever imagine.’

It’s funny how the only fight the centre-right has won in Australia in the last decade was on the Voice and the country’s culture. Yet, culture and freedom and values and education are the last things the Liberals want to talk about in this campaign (or talk about at all). When Dutton talks about what he honestly believes in, he’s very good. I still think what he said about Australia Day and Woolworths refusing to recognise the country’s national day was one of the best things he’s done as opposition leader. But Dutton has spent nowhere near enough time speaking from the heart and turning what he believes in into policies. I suspect for example that in his heart of hearts he thinks the same about Net Zero as I do.

When Jacinta Nampjinpa Price spoke in Perth last week at a campaign event, The Sydney Morning Herald was quick to label her.

Coalition frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has vowed to ‘make Australia great again’ while standing alongside Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at an event in Perth on Saturday, echoing US President Donald Trump’s signature slogan.

The firebrand senator made the remarks at the end of her speech and before a press conference where she vowed to overhaul Australia’s education system and accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of having ‘effectively destroyed Australia.’

That was the newspaper’s news report of the event. It wasn’t an editorial or an opinion piece. For some reason reporters at The SMH believe it’s appropriate to include the epithet ‘firebrand’ about Price in their news reports. (I’ve never seen SMH journalists write about the Greens leader as the ‘extremist Adam Bandt’ – maybe I’ve just missed it.) I’d like to know what qualifies Price as a ‘firebrand’. Is it because she took a position on the Voice that 60% of Australians agreed with? Are 60% of Australians’ firebrands’?

In an article on Price, Natassia Chrysanthos at the SMH said this about what happened in Perth.

Fans and colleagues of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price have often said she should be prime minister. On Saturday, she acted like one, overshadowing the main party leaders on the eve of their campaign launches.

The Northern Territory senator had arrived like a rock star to a suburban bowling club for the Liberals’ campaign launch in Perth. A hundred-strong crowd of party faithful cheered each mention of her name. Fans swarmed for autographs…

Price has charm. Voters rated her the second-most likeable leader in this masthead’s Resolve poll.

Few Australian politicians arouse genuine passion, but Price’s wide smile and compelling way of speaking carry a celebrity-like appeal. Her fans see a patriot who does not want to divide people by race, religion or gender.

‘She’s an amazing woman who’s triumphed over so much – she hasn’t let anything get to her,’ said Rosemary Ritorto, who jumped for joy after meeting Price – an event she travelled across town for on Saturday. ‘I just love how she’s bringing everyone together. She’s a strong role model…I really think she’s the best thing for Australia since Vegemite.’

The reason so few Australian politicians arouse genuine passion is because so few Australian politicians are genuinely passionate – about anything.

When Price was asked a question at the event about how she’d change the school curriculum, she said this:

Well, the fact that our education institutions are teaching people that Indigenous Australians are victims and that white Australians are oppressors for starters. We’re hearing from students that they are learning indoctrination as opposed to education, that they’re being forced to provide a welcome to country within their essays, for crying out loud.

We need to learn our country’s history in its entirety. I’ve always said that the good, the bad, the ugly are not for weaponisation, but for understanding who we are as a people, the fact that we have incredible shared Australian cultural values that we’ve created as a country, from the first people to those who have come here on following fleets, to those who have come in migrant waves, we have created a remarkable country that is under attack everywhere we look.

That’s passion. Presumably Price wasn’t the shadow minister who said education wasn’t a ‘non-mainstream issue’.

This is what Price said, which upset media pundits.

We have incredible candidates around the country that I’m so proud to be able to stand beside to ensure that we can make Australia great again, that we can bring Australia back to its former glory, that we can get Australia back on track.

According to renowned Coalition critic Niki Savva, apparently what Price said was a pivotal event.

If he [Dutton] loses, that [Price’s remark] will be seen as one of the (many) key moments of the campaign. Price drove a nail into Dutton’s coffin. For those who believe in these things, it will be remembered as karma played out live in full technicolour.

I wonder how long Coalition politicians will be forbidden from using the words’ Australia’ and ‘great’ in the same sentence.

It’s silly beyond words to say that if Dutton loses the election somehow it will be Price’s fault. Savva’s analysis has been awry before. She wrote six months before the Voice referendum.

It would be peak arrogance for the Coalition to insist on a No vote, in the face of such overwhelming support for Yes from religious, business, ethnic, sporting and community groups.

And we know how that turned out. Thank you for your support.

kind regards John