the end of free money

 

Comrades,

Everyone knows what happened last time there was an interest rate rise during an election campaign - Lil' Honest Johnnie Howard got smashed in the Kevin07 landslide and lost his own seat. That's a harbinger for you, if ever there was one.   

I've been banging on for a year at least about the economy being awash with the slosh of lazy money as dollar bills flew off the printing presses at an astonishing rate during the Pando. That waterfall of Govt. cash fueled runaway inflation from the very moment the pedal came off the fiscal stimulus metal. The inevitable end of free money will have all kinds of unintended consequences, not the least of which is in real estate and housing. I've lived in this town for more than 35 years and seen some bat shit crazy stuff go down in the real estate market (which is all Sydneysiders ever talk about, allegedly), but the Boom Boom of late last year was beyond insane. A bad case of FOMO was a big part of it, but they could see hard times are a comin' and the bandwagon just took off rapidly in a northerly direction. No-one has lived with "normal monetary policy" since the Sydney 2000 Olympics apparently, and I know voters who were not yet living their born days back then, for Chrissake. The opposite of "quantitative easing" is unsurprisingly "quantitative tightening", and that does not auger at all well for the Govt. Six million pensioners and dole bludgers will be more than happy to take their free $250 off the taxpayer courtesy of the generosity of ScoMo, and then vote Labor. No wuckers. Thanks sucker. A nice little sausage to celebrate you going out through the back door without so much as one. Pop the corks. You'd hope.

Howard's "anti-Liberal groupies" line sounded like something out of a twisted student politics fantasy where all the pretty, interesting girls were in Young Labor. Old Man talk, that. Putting aside my deep ideological differences over far too many years with Lil' Johnnie, and my general detestation of the bloke, if there's anything HJ can do right, it's know how to read the political barometer and then take a look at the tea leaves. He wouldn't have been in power for 11 years if he couldn't. Honest John predicted that if just one of the hitherto unelected so-called "Teal" candidates manages to flip a single seat off the Liberals, then "the Government is finished". Just one seat. He was probably talking more about a Climate Commie takeover in the event of a hung Parliament, but he's dead right. As the Libs complain long and loud about the Teals conveniently doing Labor's dirty work for them, on the day, it will come down to who has the best looking picture on their placard outside the polling station. All of the Teal's are very presentable people for a reason. If you don't believe me, Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72  presented very sound evidence that fully 20% of the electorate don't have a clue who they'll vote for until they turn up on the day and pictures of the candidates have a very important role to play. These folks are not early voters.

Then there's the curious case of Zoe Daniel who has the best chance of any of the 15 or so Teals of getting elected (the bookies currently have her as a raging $1.55 odds-on fave to take out the Liberal's Tim Wilson, who's worse than even money). Leaving aside her tawdry former trade, journalism, she claims to have raised more than a million bucks in campaign cash. Half comes from that most mysterious source known as "the community" (anything under $14.5K does not need to be declared), while eco warrior Mike Cannon-Brookes has tipped in the other half believing she'll give it a red hot go. Guessing most of that will be spent on Facebook advertising and misinformation (same thing?), but the Teal's chances will all come down to who looks the best on the corflutes and gets the retail politics right on the ground - just ask Maxine McKew who ousted Lil' Johnnie in '07, and claimed her victory could be put down solely to her personally knocking on every single door in Bennelong. Whether that's humanly possible or not, who knows, but you get her drift.

Integrity in Govt. is one of the Teals' three general planks in their shaky platform as far as I can make out, so ScoMo's doubling down on the scary concept of a Federal ICAC was foolish at best, disastrous at worst. It was refreshing then to hear one of the Commissioners down at the NSW ICAC, Rushton SC, have a lash at those who think public corruption is no big deal, going so far as to call them "buffoons", which is not yr usual lawyer speak. People really care about this low-down dirty shit, he reckons. Of course Rushton was splitting legal hairs saying that it's impossible for an ICAC to be, in Scotty's famous last words, a "Kangaroo Court", because an ICAC is not a "court", it's an "investigative body with Royal Commission powers". But it is a "Star Chamber" no doubt, and many have fallen by the wayside in there, and that's because these people can do whatever they like with the full protection of the law if they decide to go after you. They would also not hesitate for a single second to cook a corrupt Labor goose, either. Just ask Eddie Obeid, he'll tell you. It's a truism "if you are ever called to give evidence at a Royal Commission, be afraid, very afraid", but a good one. Never mind living in perpetual fear of Climate Commies, ScoMo, your lot are next, with Albo committed to setting up a Federal ICAC by Xmas. Just saying. Might be a bit of biting yr own arse going on here?  Especially if you don't even know the meaning of the word "autocracy" because putting the word "public" in front of it makes it entirely meaningless. Hit forehead with palm of hand.

Two weeks is an eternity in politics. Last night's free-to-air shouting match achieved nothing for anyone. Some clever dick described the upcoming exercise in the Miracle of Democracy as "effectively ten by-elections", but any psephologist could tell you that. The Masters of the Dark Arts are all over it. It's tightly reflected on the Campaign Trail, where, for instance, the importance of South Australia has been reduced to a single contestable seat while the votes in the outer west of Sydney and metro Perth are being wrung out like a wet towel. Queensland is another planet altogether. Little Tassy? Unrepresentative swill. Albo has been the best 'numbers man' in the business for decades and he's proud of it. He knows from long experience as a back room boy the importance of keeping your head low when the shit inevitably hits the fan in the final fortnight. In the meantime, he can be effusive in his private generous praise of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Half Full Phil, for taking care of that week for him.