The Pub Test: The real state of the Australian economy... Nobody has been this broke in generations

Michael de Percy I 20 December 2024 I Spectator Australia

Labor’s machine is out in force this Christmas in a vain attempt to recover the electoral ground that is collapsing under its feet. My feed on X is replete with comments telling me how John Howard and Peter Costello taxed us more than Jimbo and then mostly squandered it. Peter Garrett is tweeting anti-nuclear sentiment, leftist think tanks are spruiking how good the economy is, and other lefties are blaming everything else on the RBA.

It’s a complete rot-fest of lies. Nobody has been this broke in generations. Just ask anyone at the pub.

As it happens, I dropped into my local pub to have a beer on the way home after learning about some impending redundancies. I caught up with a bunch of neighbours and mates, most still in their high-vis gear, and the discussion immediately went to the economy. For all Labor’s degrading spin, hardworking Australians are hurting, and I don’t think Labor pundits have a clue.

I made a joke(?) about how I am almost completely skint because all my spare cash is going to Albo. One of my neighbours replied grimly, ‘And if not him, one of his mates.’

We talked about the number of businesses that are collapsing, and that many other businesses seemed more focused on chasing government handouts than chasing new business. But what really hit home were the stories of ordinary people doing it tough, especially when they are approaching the end of their working lives.

Thanks to superannuation rules that won’t let many people access their super until they are 60 (instead of 55), there is now a group of workers who must hold on until then. The worst situation is for those who are 63 and their bodies are shot, and they are now incapable of doing the only work they know. And while they don’t qualify for the disability pension, they also don’t qualify for the age pension. The latter workers are mostly men, and they do the type of work that most modern politicians would be too physically and mentally weak to do.

While the Labor machine waxes lyrical about how good things are, my neighbour said to me:

‘I haven’t lived week to week since I was very young. But here I am now living week to week. I’ve taught myself to save, but now there is nothing left to save. I can’t believe I’ve worked hard my entire life and here I am like a bloody teenager living week to week. It’s young people and how they vote. They don’t understand what these politicians are doing to us.’

Obviously not all young people, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that Labor and the Greens are targeting young voters with other peoples’ money. Not sweeteners for those with young families, essential to our culture and our future, but young privileged voters who have been brought up with a sense of entitlement that is so ingrained they expect it to be so. Forever. Bosses are also to blame for courting this kind of behaviour. (Little do young people realise that at this rate, the current generation won’t qualify for the age pension until they are 80, if at all.)

While we have (effectively) full employment, that’s because one in five workers are now employed by the government. Not only is this driving up inflation, but it means that every four workers are carrying one other worker. Any soldier who’s done a stretcher carry for miles on end knows that four people can only carry one person for a limited time. That time is now. It’s ridiculous.

To make things worse, immigration is so out of control that we have a housing shortage. We are a nation of immigrants, and many different cultures have enriched our nation, but Labor and the Greens are courting radicals who simply hate Australia. We’re seeing it on our streets in ways that are abhorrent to Australian values.

Yes, Australian values exist. If you don’t know what they are, then you are not an Australian. Values are part of a shared community and are inculcated through a lived experience. Values don’t have to be individually unique or produced in a list designed to satisfy outsiders or self-hating academics. You either know or you don’t know, and what is happening on our streets is not in accordance with Australian values.

Indeed, we can no longer say:

‘Thank God we live in Australia, that other rot only happens overseas.’

Well guess what? It’s happening here now too because our government is too weak to do anything about it. Youth crime is also out of control. Not only is our economy collapsing but we lack any semblance of political leadership.

In the meantime, the Labor machine is going into overdrive to tell us we are better off, that the drive for endlessly subsidised renewables is cheaper and more sustainable than nuclear, that the RBA is to blame for our mortgage stress, and that the Coalition and the war in the Ukraine are to blame for many of us now living week to week like kids who party too much.

As I left my local pub, my neighbour’s words haunted me. It’s Christmas, and most people are staying home this year because they simply can’t afford to do anything else. These are salt of the earth people who make our economy tick. These are the same people that once upon a time would have given their hearts to the labour movement. But not anymore. They’ve been abandoned.

I hope the smarmy Labor machine and their pundits are making the same mistake they made during the campaign for the Voice referendum. They are all smiles and confidence while stabbing you in the back. In the military we referred to them as ‘smiling jack men’ (screw you Jack, I’m alright!). Nobody likes ‘jack men’.

So, here’s my Christmas wish: that we will have a conservative government again in 2025.

It’s not just for me, for the Pub Test is rarely wrong. It’s for the many Australians who will struggle to stretch their budgets to next Christmas if we re-elect the worst government in Australian history.

Let’s not do that. Happy New Year.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is Managing Editor of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other person or organisation.