Andrew Bolt, Daily Telegraph
“….Malcolm Turnbull yesterday fired the gun for what will be the most dishonest election campaign in your life. Both Liberal and Labor are already making reckless promises neither can possibly deliver.
Worse, even if they win, neither party will resemble what they are promising now. Both will almost certainly be worse — and more Left wing.
I am sorry to sound so negative, but the facts are so clear and the danger so great that it would be irresponsible to pretend this election gives you what both sides claim: a choice between good and bad.
It is instead a choice between bad and worse, with the reality to come worse still.
On the one hand, we have a Government that claims to be lowering taxes when it is in fact raising them to historically high levels.
It is a Government that claims it will finally start repaying our fast-increasing debt five years from now, when analysis shows it has instead over-estimated the likely growth by then.
Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens has repeatedly warned our recent sluggish growth may in fact be the new normal rather than simply a blip that last week’s Budget assumes. If he is right, we’re headed for deficits as much as $50 billion a year higher than the Government pretends.
Those deficits will be heaped onto a federal debt that will next year soar to half a trillion dollars, when just nine years ago the Government actually had money in the bank.
But bad as the Liberals are, Labor will be even worse and just as deceitful.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten last week promised — as if it was a good thing — to impose another $65 billion of taxes over the next decade, all to be frittered away on yet more spending.
But even that mad promise — so in denial of our financial strife and the deadening effect of increased taxes — was not Labor’s most flagrant deceit.
No, that prize goes to Shorten’s promise to force Australia to have 50 per cent of renewable energy by 2030.
That is a lie. As my colleague Terry McCrann demonstrated last week, that would involve increasing our existing wind and solar plans by seven times in just 14 years.
The cost would be horrific, even if it were attempted, and the poor would find power prices soar so high that they could not afford to heat their homes in winter or cool them in summer.
Add to that Labor’s manic class war, leading it to oppose company tax cuts for any businesses except the smallest, and productive Australians should fear for their future.
But whatever Labor and the Liberals are pretending to be now, after the election the winner will be worse.
First, look at the practical realities if Labor wins…”