After a whirlwind of winter visits across the Mallee electorate I have returned to Canberra for a sitting fortnight and in the first week I was talking about Labor’s ‘Future Made in Australia’ Bill, likening Labor’s use of the term ‘Made in Australia’ to Mickey Mouse’s sorcerer’s apprentice in Disney’s 1940 classic, Fantasia. Mickey’s incompetent apprentice grabs the magician’s wand, inadvertently animating mops, buckets and furniture, creating chaos in the wizard’s tower.

Labor have grabbed the cherished ‘Made in Australia’ brand and tried to animate a dog’s breakfast of industry policies designed to give $13.7 billion of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to billionaires who make their fortune using government handouts.  Worse still, Labor have set up a $4 billion slush fund which could be used to help rush wind and solar factories onto prime agricultural land, particularly in Mallee.

Labor’s Mickey Mouse incompetence is also on display as the independent Reserve Bank of Australia called out Labor government spending as driving the rising cost of living. Australia is the only major economy where inflation is rising, not falling. Labor’s home-grown inflation crisis is thanks to $315 billion of spending – equivalent to $30,000 more per household since they took office.

Thankfully Mickey’s Fantasia mess is cleaned up when the wise wizard returns and order is resotred. The Coalition’s role has ever been thus in Australian politics, righting Labor’s economic chaos – my hope is sooner rather than later.