And so the time has come to choose. The election campaign, which at best can be described as uninspiring and overlong, leaves Australians with a less-than-perfect choice.

Despite Malcolm Turnbull’s last minute valiant efforts, the campaign has seen a confused and timid Coalition largely avoid the big issues of the day, preferring instead to hide behind a wafer-thin promise of ‘jobs and growth’ built on hugely optimistic forecasts, an unconvincing promise to ‘live within our means’ and a tentative corporate tax cut. Meanwhile, government spending spirals on and the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, fails abysmally at selling even the remotest idea of cutting bloated government welfare spending.

To add to the disappointment that conservatives feel, the government’s slapdash superannuation changes – introduced without consultation, without laying any groundwork, and without any convincing rationale – have alienated the one section of the community whose vote the Coalition should normally take for granted: self-reliant small business people and self-funded retirees. If such voters look to express their discontent by selecting conservative alternatives in the senate, the Coalition only has itself to blame.

This magazine prides itself on offering a plurality of views, and this election has seen plenty of examples.

We have given ‘deluded’ conservatives space to air their justifiable grievances, ditto numerous Independents. We’ve had plenty to say about super from both sides and we railed against the Liberals’ brief flirtation with preferencing the Greens. We’ve looked at the anti-Semitism of the Left; at Islam’s apologists; at the failures of multiculturalism; at the Budget, the submarines, indigenous separatism and we called for Mr Turnbull to invite Tony Abbott up on stage – indeed we were the first to suggest Abbott may well rescue Turnbull.

This week, in the final days of the campaign, we look at the same sex marriage plebiscite, the disgraceful mendacity of Labor’s putrid Medicare ‘privatisation’ campaign, at Twitter’s fury over the so-called arts cuts, at the cloak of Islamophilia that progressives wrap themselves in, at Mr Turnbull’s track record as a campaigner, and how your assets really are in the firing line after July 2.

But the bottom line is glaringly obvious – despite the Coalition’s aversion to campaigning hard on key issues. This election was always about what a return to Labor would actually mean. And of this there can be no doubt. Under Labor – in cahoots with the Greens – the people smugglers will swiftly be back in business, border control will collapse, debt will soar and the corruption of the union movement will worsen, eating away at living standards, small businesses and general prosperity. ‘Noooooo!’ as the kids say.

The actions of the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and his union masters in attempting to seize control of the Country Fire Authority and its volunteer workforce should have been Mr Turnbull’s ‘Tampa moment’. Not since the fateful morning of August 26, 2001 has such a perfect metaphor and heaven-sent gift appeared out of the blue during an election campaign. It beggars belief that the Coalition did not, from the moment Jane Garrett resigned, campaign solely on the bullying tactics of the union movement and its threat to everyday, decent, hard-working Australians. After all, it was supposedly to prevent chronic union lawlessness that both houses of parliament were dissolved.

Full marks to Michaelia Cash (again) for her firm commitments during the campaign to tackle the insidious role of business in propping up shonky union deals. It’s time for the Coalition to grab these crooks on both sides of the ‘bargaining’ table by the scruff of the neck and stamp out the secret deals that rip us all off. Armed with the findings of the Dyson Heydon commission, this was the election in which the Coalition owed it to Australians to smash the corrupt power of the unions. Yet you could count the number of times the unions were mentioned during this interminable campaign on the back of a large brown envelope.

The Spectator Australia urges all concerned, mainstream, conservative Australians to vote for the Turnbull Coalition in the lower house and to vote for Senators according to their conservative credentials.

We cannot afford another sequel of the grisly Labor/Greens union-led horror show.

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