Australia is rooted. That is the message from the Albanese government as it heads towards an election it thoroughly deserves to lose but may in fact narrowly win, with the help of the Greens and the Teals. With a trillion dollars worth of gross debt, this government has shown itself to be about as fiscally responsible as a Leo DiCaprio-style Wall Street hedge fund manager on a night out with half a dozen hookers, a case of champagne, a kilo of coke and the company credit card.

Less than two decades ago our prosperous and resource-rich nation had zero debt. In a nutshell: John Howard and Peter Costello left us in the black. Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan left us with the worst debt we had ever had. Tony Abbott attempted to reverse the damage but was stabbed in the back by his colleagues. Malcolm Turnbull stood for nothing and achieved even less (other than legalising same-sex marriage), only adding to the nation’s debt burden by enhancing foolish Labor schemes like the NBN and his own Snowy 2.0 nonsense. Scott Morrison stabbed the nation (and our future prosperity) in the back by signing us up to net zero at Glasgow, despite having promised not to, and Josh Frydenberg, after first nudging us back towards the black, went completely insane and blew the lot on the fraudulent globalist Covid spend-a-thon.

Then along came Albo and Jimbo.

Inspired no doubt by the mute public reaction to Mr Frydenberg’s reckless profligacy, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have gone full DiCaprio. Just replace the limos, women and drugs with the NDIS (now completely out of control), the renewable energy fiasco (one project after another bites the dust after wasting billions), the NBN (hopeless), the bloated public service (pointless job creation on steroids), silly rebates and a plethora of unaffordable promises on everything from bulk billing to childhood education.

To complete the analogy, the cocaine that is driving this mad fantasy is of course net zero. Addicted to the concept of a carbon-free Australia, necessary to ‘tackle climate change’, the Labor party gets high on the merest sniff of anything vaguely renewables related, little realising it is a frenzied fantasy, a mirage, that will disappear the moment Australia finally wakes up from its woke, sanctimonious torpor.

Australia should be one of the wealthiest nations on earth and every Australian should enjoy standards of living far above most other nations. The size of our population compared to the Aladdin’s Cave of riches that lie beneath our feet makes it an absolute obscenity of self-indulgence,  laziness, humbug and stupidity that we are a trillion dollars in the red. Offering voters firstly an insulting $150 energy bribe followed by a satirical $5 a week tax cut is an admission of chronic failure and fiscal mismanagement on the part of Labor and its uninspiring ministers. Quite frankly, such damage to the public purse is unforgivable and those responsible should be facing jail time for this Enron-style criminal failure of financial duty of care, not standing for re-election. Enron only mismanaged $60 billion. Labor has blown a lazy trillion.

Where to from here? Depressingly, but not surprisingly, there is literally nothing in the Chalmers’ budget that offers a glimmer of hope for the future. In the last two months alone, ironically, a trillion dollars of new investment –  real money, real jobs –  has been pledged to Donald Trump’s America, much of which involves the establishing of workforces and factories on US soil. What investment has occurred in this nation of any importance over the three years of the Albanese government? Nothing. As Rebecca Weisser writes in her column, even when bribed with the promise of subsidies, investors have pulled the plug on one green energy boondoggle after another. At the same time, Australia’s energy bills have continued to rise, crippling small businesses and family households. We are on a road to ruin and the Albanese government hasn’t the faintest clue what to do about it.

But has the Coalition? As we go to press, the Coalition has yet to present its alternative vision in Peter Dutton’s budget in reply speech. Sensibly, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor dismissed Mr Chalmers’ paltry tax cut as a ‘hoax’. He could have gone further and labelled the entire budget a fraudulent scam upon the Australian public.

Needless to say, the solution is staring the Coalition in the face, although they have shown themselves reluctant to embrace it. It is called the Trump playbook. Make a song and dance about putting Australians first by declaring an investment emergency and fast-tracking all current project approvals and removing all obstacles to investment in order to rapidly attract money from around the world. This will involve withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, abandoning net zero, re-embracing fossil fuels, rapidly getting cheap and reliable energy back into the system and axing the red, green and black tape frustrating so much large-scale investment into this country. Slash immigration to manageable numbers. Reduce the size of the federal government and remove duplication by returning some responsibilities to the states. Undertake a dramatic Doge/Milei-style chain-sawing of overseas aid programmes as well as other serial wastes of taxpayer money, such as the ABC, woke arts funding, DEI projects, certain university programs, and much of the indigenous and climate ideological infrastructure.

Australia urgently needs a fiscal intervention and the government needs to check itself into the debt rehab clinic. Fast.