You are probably thinking, referring to the headline, that it is a stupid thing to say, and on the one hand, you might be right given the Government still has two years to serve. On the other, going early when your chances of winning are second to none is a good idea.

The Constitution provides that:

“… terms for the House of Representatives continue for a maximum of three years from the first meeting of the House after an election. This means that a Federal Election for the House of Representatives may be called at any time in the three years following the first sitting of the House. The Governor-General may also dissolve the House sooner than the three-year term.

The latest possible date of the next election is within 68 days from the expiry of the House. As the 47th Parliament first met on Tuesday, July 26 2022, it is due to expire on Friday, July 25 2025. The election for the House of Representatives must therefore be held by September 27 2025, the last Saturday within these 68 days. However, elections are generally called well before constitutionally or legally necessary.”

To make it clear, I support fixed election dates with 3-year terms, but in this instance, my support for an extended period of punishment for the conservative side of politics is as important to me as it is rising every day. And at my age, that is important. 

Now, allow me to put this into perspective. After almost ten years of the worst kind of grossly offensive governance, the Liberal and National parties lost the 2022 election on May 21.

In the time that has elapsed since that date, not once have I heard from the lips of a conservative politician any form of regret or apology, even remorse or shame. On the contrary, we have been served a recipe of poached platitudes, banalities and lies.

To listen to them is like listening to those who cannot express themselves adequately and repetitively mumble, “but we were still born to rule.”

People will, over time, forget their crimes of corruption, the scandals and their men of mad, destructive political beliefs and decisions. Of inequality toward women and lacking equality of opportunity. All of which have been identified in various media over the years and will now be investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

We must do as I am now, reminding everyone of how foolish and rotten they were. Then repeating it repeatedly because another ten years would be unbearable and disastrous for our nation.

And this is why we must remind the electorate right up to the next election and beyond. Now you ask what would prevent another Luddite period of (mostly) men.

Going early is not uncommon. It allows you to govern for five straight years in circumstances primarily to your benefit. It will enable you to fulfil promises in an unfulfilled, more orderly manner.

An early election campaign creates the opportunity to remind the punters of just how deplorable the conservatives governed.

Another reason the conservatives will be up against it in the next election is that many mature-aged voters dropped from the rolls and were replaced with a cohort of young folk seeking change. This is guaranteed to transpire again. Both parties knew this would happen sometime, but the LNP did nothing about it. A note of caution is that the young are desperate for change. By that, I mean significant, meaningful change that excites and promotes new ways of doing things.

Women still feel ostracised by a party that showed them an indifference that harks from an Elizabethan period when women weren’t allowed to vote or inherit. Labor needs to remind women of the LNP’s misogyny and unrefined manners.

On the road to a new election, events will emerge to focus on the former Government’s corruption. A steady stream of bad news will be revealed on the road to the latest election. I speak of Robodebt and the long list of severe misdemeanours that will be placed before the NACC in June. The Robodebt Royal Commission report will be handed to the Governor General in mid-July. The report is expected to be explosive.

Of course, the best thing Labor has going for it, is Peter Dutton himself. On all accounts, he thinks there is nothing wrong with the party he leads. Its philosophy, its morality, its trust, its economic credentials and its equality. Peter Dutton is so disliked by all and sundry that he couldn’t win an election if he started now.

Having said all this, it must be noted that there is much to do. Labor’s first year has also seen many challenges. 

Inflation is still high, as are interest rates, the cost of living is higher than it should be, and housing and rents are also high. Most of this mess the Government has inherited from the LNP. Much of it has come from events beyond Labor’s control, eg the war in Ukraine and the pandemic.

Then there is The Voice referendum. If it were to pass despite Peter Dutton’s hatchet job, it would give our First Nations people a voice in their future and allow Labor a free hand to complete its agenda. Dutton, in dismissing any form of bipartisanship, has played to form. 

Labor has fulfilled 18 of its significant commitments, whilst others, like The Voice are a work in progress, and some are on hold pending the release of reports.

While writing, I also had Question Time playing on my iPad. The deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Susan Ley, asked the Prime Minister a question that she couldn’t seem to make coherent. The House burst into laughter at its stupidity. The Prime Minister admirably addressed it by calling it a salad, which I thought; “That the word salad sums up this Opposition.” It’s a combination of many ingredients. I’ll leave the dressing with you. 

Later this year, Labor must announce significant changes leading into a fresh election. One that will cement the middle ground and a further three years.

It was a sight to behold and took the wind out of the bellicose sails of the AUKUS cheer squad. Here, at the National Press Club in the Australian capital, was a Labor luminary, former Prime Minister of Australia and statesman, keen to weigh in with characteristic sharpness and dripping venom. Paul Keating’s target: the militaristic lunacy that has characterised Australia’s participation in the US-led security pact that promises hellish returns and pangs of insecurity.

In his March 15 address to a Canberra press gallery bewitched by the magic of nuclear-propelled submarines and the China bogeyman, Keating was unsparing about those “seriously unwise ministers in government” – notably Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles, unimpressed by their foolish, uncritical embrace of the US war machine. “The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.”

In terms of history, this was chilling to Keating. The AUKUS security pact represented a longing gaze back at the Mother Country, Britain, “shunning security in Asia for security in and within the Anglosphere.” It also meant a locking alliance with the United States for the next half-century as a subordinate in a containment strategy of Beijing. This was a bi-partisan approach to foreign policy that saw the US dominating East Asia as “the primary strategic power” rather than a balancing one.

For Keating, the impetus for such madness came from a defence establishment that dazzled the previous Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. That effort, he argues, was spearheaded by the likes of the US-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Andrew Shearer of the Office of National Intelligence. They even, he argues, managed to convince PM Albanese, Marles and Wong to abandon the 20-month review period on the scope of what they were seeking.

The steamrolling Keating was also unsparing in attacking a number of journalists for their ditzy, adolescent belligerence. The sword, once produced, was never sheathed. Peter Hartcher, most notably, received a generous pasting as a war infatuated lunatic whose anti-China campaign at the Fairfax presses had been allowed for years.

In terms of the submarines themselves, Keating also expressed the view that the Royal Australian Navy would be far better off acquiring between 40 to 50 of the Collins Class submarines to police the coastline rather than having nuclear powered submarines lying in wait off the Chinese shoreline.

As we all should know, submarine policy is where imagination goes to expire, often in frightful, costly ways. For all Keating’s admiration for the Collins Class, it was a nightmarish project marred by fiascos, poor planning and organisational dysfunction within the defence establishment. At stages, two-thirds of the Australian fleet of six submarines was unable to operate at full capacity. The lesson here is that submarines and the Australian naval complex simply do not mix.

The reaction from the Establishment was one of predictable dismissal, denial and distortion, typical of what Gore Vidal would have called deranged machismo. Instead of being critical of the powers that are, they have turned their guns and wallets on spectres, ghosts and devilish images. The tragedy looms, and it will be, like many tragedies, the result of colossal, unforgivable stupidity.

At the very least, the intervention by Keating, notably in the Labor Party, has not gone unnoticed. Within the Labor caucus, tremors of dissatisfaction are being recorded, breaches growing. West Australian Labor backbencher Josh Wilson defied his own party’s dictates by telling colleagues in the House of Representatives how he was “not yet convinced that we can adequately deal with the non-proliferation risks involved in what is a novel arrangement, by which a non-nuclear weapons state under the NPT (Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty) comes to acquire weapons-grade material.”

Wilson’s views are not outlandish to the man. He is keen to challenge the notion of unaccountable executive war powers, a problem that looms large in the Westminster system. “To assume that such decision-making is already perfect, immutable, and beyond scrutiny,” he wrote in December last year, “puts Australia at risk of making the most dangerous judgments without the best institutional framework for doing so.”

A gaggle of former senior Labor ministers have also emerged, even if they initially proved sluggish. Peter Garrett, former environment minister and front man of Midnight Oil, while proving a bit squeamish about Keating’s invective, found himself in general agreement. “The deal stinks with massive cost, loss of independence, weaking nuke safeguards & more.”

I don't share Keating's benign view of China, nor his disdain for Labor ministers, but he's right. This deal stinks with massive cost, loss of independence, weakening nuke safeguards & more. "Wilfully blind’: Labor MPs blast Paul Keating over China, AUKUS https://t.co/8gYfQJh2tF

— Peter Garrett (@pgarrett) March 15, 2023

Kim Carr, who had previously held ministerial positions in industry and defence materiel, revealed that the matter of AUKUS had never been formally approved in the Federal Labor caucus, merely noted. Various “key” Labor figures – again Marles and Wong – agreed to endorse the proposition put forth to them on September 15, 2021 by the then Coalition government.

He also expressed deep concern “about a revival of a forward defence policy, given our performance in Vietnam.” For Carr, the shadow cast by the Iraq War was long. “Given it’s 20 years since Iraq, you can hardly say our security agencies should not be questioned when they provide their assessments.”

For former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, there were three questions: whether the submarines are actually fit for purpose; whether Australia retained genuine sovereignty over them in their use; and, were that not the case, “whether that loss of agency is a price worth paying for the US security insurance we think we might be buying.”

Will these voices make a difference? They just might – but if so, Australia will have to thank that political pugilist and Labor veteran who, for all his faults, spoke in terms that will be considered, in a matter of years, treasonous by the Empire and its sycophants.

10 Downing Street is set to be bathed in social media guff with the victory of Liz Truss. Confirmed as Boris Johnson’s successor, the new British Prime Minister won by a slimmer margin over rival contender Rishi Sunak than anticipated. Nonetheless, 81,326 votes to 60,399 was sufficient to guarantee her a secure margin – for the moment. (The turnout had been 83 per cent.)

There is little doubt that the Tory selectorate – a good deal of it – seem to adore her. That hardly makes them, or her, representative of a broader constituency, and certainly the same constituency that voted for Johnson in 2019. Certain conservative voices have even warned that the Tory party now resembles, in part, the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn stormed through the ranks with an adoring base of party supporters and ideological brio. The broader electorate were not quite so enamoured.

The challenges the new prime minister faces are biting. The country is facing energy bills Truss has herself described as “eye-watering”. But despite this, she is willing to deliver £30 billion in tax cuts via an emergency budget and a reversal of April’s rise in National Insurance. Betraying a characteristically woolly understanding of economics, notably on progressive taxation, she sees no problem about the accrued benefits to higher-income earners. “The people at the top of the income distribution pay more tax – so inevitably, when you cut taxes you tend to benefit the people who are more likely to pay tax.” That’s sorted then.

Over the weekend, a promise was given of some emergency plan that would emerge within a week of her taking office, with a specific focus on targeting the sharp spike of energy bills. This would go “hand in hand” with a plan to increase domestic energy supplies. All of this was vague compared to Sunak’s promises to provide relief to pensioners and the low-paid from rising energy costs while also cutting Value Added Tax on energy bills.

BBC’s Newsnight, in an effort to get a sense of what the UK is in for, trotted out a few Conservative views favourable to Truss as the flexible, adjustable figure. Baroness Morgan of Coates predicts “a combination of approaches” that would make it hard to “pigeonhole” Truss. The editor of the Conservative Home website, Paul Goodman, noted her “adaptability” over the course of her political life. “So although she has this reputation as an ideologue and she has very clear ideological roots – originally as a Liberal Democrat – she is somehow the darling of the Leavers who in the [Brexit] referendum was a Remainer.”

What was striking, and utterly deceptive, was the effort by Truss to show herself as a changeling of sorts, rather than a figure of a dying status quo. This, despite being a Cabinet member for ten years. Sunak, despite being comparatively new, was given the touch-up of status quo inflexibility, one padded by expensive suits and tastes. It did not matter that he seemed, at least relatively speaking, less inscrutable and more focused on the immediate crisis.

In her speech of uneven quality and many fictions, Truss doffed her cap to Johnson in a tribute that can only trouble those who wished him gone for good. “Boris, you got Brexit done. You crushed Jeremy Corbyn. You rolled out the vaccine. And you stood up to Vladimir Putin. You are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle.”

Hardly agreed upon history, but it seemed to be an infection coursing through the ranks. Thanks were also given to Johnson by the Tory party co-chair, Andrew Stephenson, suggesting an outbreak of masochism.

Through this, both the disgraced Johnson and his opponents in the Labour Party will be holding out hope. Truss was critical of those who removed him for the number of calamities he inflicted upon himself, his party and the British public. And then there was that bitter distinctly non-concessional speech by Johnson, taking aim at the vicious, knife-bearing “herd instinct” that had robbed him of office.

Johnson’s supporters are promising to be a disruptive bunch. Many have already put out teasing feelers suggesting a return when the time is right. Johnson’s former chief of staff, Lord Udny-Lister, is one willing to wager that Johnson “is going to be watching all of this and if something happens in the future […] the ball comes loose in the scrum, then anything can happen.”

The Sunday Mirror has reported that 12 Tory MPs are willing to submit letters to the 1922 Committee to express no confidence in the incoming prime minister – and this, even before Truss sets foot in 10 Downing Street. For Jake Berry, MP for Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire, such a move was “certainly suicidal”, while former Conservative chancellor Lord Hammond warned Johnson not to linger like a “malevolent shadow”.

The Truss factor has also given British Labour a boost of seven percentage points. Party strategists, as part of this bounce, have already readied a campaign in the so-called Red Wall seats, using previous, leaked remarks from Truss about how British workers produced “less per hour” than their foreign equivalents, “and that’s a combination of, kind of, skill and application.” But opinion polls do not deliver election victories. The Tory party machine, cunning, ruthless and mendacious, does at least know something about that.

Image from huffingtonpost.co.uk (Photo supplied by the Labour Party)

On 30 April, less than a month before the election I penned this piece, about the foreshadowed spike in energy prices, about to hit Australian consumers: Coalition promises higher electricity costs!

I wrote it because it was quite clear that the Coalition were not going to come clean before the election and it was a known major factor that was going to hit Australian businesses and consumers as winter came on.

The prices for coal, gas and petroleum products are all being hit largely due to the Ukraine war, the sanctions placed on the Russians, profit gouging by OPEC and, in the domestic context, a complete malaise on energy policy over the ten years of Coalition rule.

Clearly, we can’t do much about the supply of petrol and diesel products as we are wholly reliant on offshore producers and refiners and OPEC have told the world that they will not be increasing production to ease the shortages. However, we could start by accelerating the transition to electric vehicles now that we know that the man, who said they wouldn’t tow your boat or get you and your family to your favourite camping spot, was lying.

In the meantime we still need petroleum products to get us through the transition.

Interestingly, Venezuela holds the planet’s largest reserves of untapped oil but that won’t help us as the US have sanctions on the Venezuelan government – evidently they don’t like President Nicolás Maduro. Another fun-fact: Iran holds the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves but their exports are also under US bans and sanctions for much the same reasons.

As regards coal and gas, we are major producers of both and we have the ability to reserve or hold back a portion of our production for domestic consumption at prices that are not determined by world market fluctuations. Something that is obviously necessary until we can break the grip of fossil fuels and replace them with price-stable renewable resources – Vladimir Putin does not control the supply of sunlight or wind although he may think he does.

In the UK the conservative government has imposed a twenty-five per cent ‘windfall profits tax’ on oil and gas companies. A windfall tax being a one-off tax imposed by a government on producers and suppliers who, through no effort on their part, were lucky enough to benefit from something they were not responsible for – in other words, a windfall profit.

Our gas and coal producers are also in the fortunate position of being recipients of these windfall profits due largely to geopolitical happenings in other parts of the world: the question is, should they reap these windfall profits and should we be funding them?

The former Coalition government knew that this supply and demand price crunch was coming, it’s been forecast for over twelve months, but they suppressed the release of information because it didn’t fit with their election narrative and apart from that they love to see ‘can do capitalism’ in action. From comments made by the new leader of the Coalition, they will now be using these price spikes to attack the new Labor government for incompetence in office even though, you will note, the new government were only installed a matter of days ago – that’s Voldemort for you.

You may recall that the Gillard government enacted The Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT), a tax on profits generated from the mining of non-renewable resources in Australia. It was a replacement for the proposed Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT). The tax, levied on 30% of the “super-profits” from gas production and the mining of iron ore and coal was introduced on 1 July 2012.

The Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, went to the 2010 and 2013 elections promising to repeal the tax. They considered the tax to be the actions of a socialist regime and when they won office at the 2013 election the tax was repealed. I wonder what they now think of Boris Johnson’s actions with his windfall profits tax which, is essentially the same thing?

Surely it is time that we had some coherent taxation laws governing the extraction and sale of our non-renewable resources until such time as we can put in place reliable renewable energy infrastructure, which will not be subject to geopolitical price manipulation. We need to ensure continuity of price-stable energy rather than pandering to the multi-national mining conglomerates.

I have a great deal more confidence that the new Albanese government will do this contrasted with the flashmob we have just cartwheeled out of office – don’t let us down, Albo!