Chairman torches the ALP

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AFTER the noise of the September 14 poll abates, a more sober assessment of the Rudd and Gillard governments will begin. It is unlikely to be kind.

On the economic front it will take years before the full structural impact of waste and policy mistakes work their way through. Younger Australians, especially, are entitled to look back in anger as they realise how recklessly their future has been mortgaged.

The government begs to differ. It defiantly rejects "mindless austerity" while gleefully spending on "Labor values". The aplomb with which the Finance Minister advertised a $5 billion revision to numbers barely a week old, and Julia Gillard's parable of a fictional John, point to an administration careless with other people's money and oblivious to family budgeting.

So if Labor won't entertain serious spending cuts, returning to surplus will have to rely on the Micawber principle - sooner or later, something will turn up. This is not policy; it's gambling. The government defends its profligacy by citing the GFC, although the risks had largely passed by 2009.
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It's this hubris that has also undermined border protection. Kevin Rudd and the Prime Minister have lured unprecedented numbers of unauthorised migrants with the promise of immediate access to generous welfare. Comprehensive screening has been impossible. Yet experience shows that a significant percentage of unscheduled arrivals will stay on welfare. Many will become part of a growing underclass with the likely social consequences now so evident in Britain and Europe. As American economist Thomas Sowell observes, "While you cannot condemn all members of any group for what other members of their group may have done, that does not mean that we must ignore the fact that the costs and dangers created by some groups are much greater than those created by other groups". Yet we allow political correctness to override self-preservation and risk social disharmony rather than protect our borders.

It is symbolic that with defence expenditure at its lowest point since 1938, there is a record number of irregular maritime arrivals. Countries weak on defence are seen as soft touches.

One can only marvel at the political capital Labor has squandered. The carbon tax is unravelling less than 12 months after implementation, a hugely expensive National Broadband Network relies on compulsion for take-up, a bitterly fought mining tax yields a fraction of projected revenue, an attack on the media is aborted and the Gonski recommendations, which weaken the universities that better educated school students will attend, have generated little public support.