Happy New Year and welcome to 2025 - a federal election year, I must add, where naturally I am hoping for a change of government with The Nationals in coalition government.  As I mentioned last Friday, half of the globe’s population voted in elections in 2024, with 80 per cent of governments changing hands. This is promising for Australia.

The cost-of-living crisis is sweeping the globe, but the economic indicators are clear: Australia is suffering a unique home-grown inflation crisis, due to the economic mismanagement of the Albanese Labor Government.

You need only ask yourself this question: Am I better off now than I was three years ago when the Albanese Labor Government was elected?

Almost 26,000 businesses have gone insolvent since Labor took office (over 6,9000 of them construction businesses), all while Labor repaid their union masters with regressive industrial relations changes that deter people from running a business. 

Energy prices are a major contributor to insolvencies, up 31 per cent nationwide (before the taxpayer-funded federal rebates). 560 Australian families per week are entering hardship arrangements with their energy providers.

Gas prices are up 32 per cent, finance and insurance 18 per cent, rents 16 per cent, food 12 per cent, education 11 per cent and health – like all other prices put together – up 10 per cent.

Australia’s annual economic growth is the weakest it has been – outside the pandemic – since 1991, when Labor’s Bob Hawke was Prime Minister. A certain sharp-tongued Paul Keating was in his eighth year as treasurer but by year’s end he had deposed likeable ‘Hawkie’ as PM.  I remind you Jim Chalmers holds his doctorate purely for his lengthy dissertation on Keating. 

Unlike his hero Keating who embarked on reforms to modernise our economy, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is throwing banana peels out for our economy left, right and centre.

My office re-opens on Monday the 6^th of January.  I am regularly in the Wimmera and if you’d like me to come to your town, please sms 0447 186 893 and I’ll let you know when I’m next in town.

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