In this week’s issue, we are delighted to hear from Gina Rinehart on the importance of mining to not only our national economy but also to our geopolitical survival. Fresh from almost single-handedly financing federal Labor’s so-called budget ‘surplus’, Ms Rinehart is correct to point out the long-term damage we are doing to this nation by constantly demonising mining as ‘evil’ and ‘dirty’. With India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi currently visiting these shores – and, it has to be said, to the rapturous delight of Australia’s much-valued Indian diaspora – there couldn’t be a better time for Ms Rinehart’s warnings.

Indeed, when welcoming Mr Modi, Ms Rinehart emphasised the critical importance of Australian trade with India, and its enormous potential for growth.

As Ms Rinehart pointed out, in the last five years under Mr Modi the Indian economy has grown to $3.5 trillion, and with plans currently in place should grow over the next 25 years to $32 trillion.

‘Australia really needs to work harder to develop its relations with India,’ urged Ms Rinehart, before pointing out that one of the keys to India’s astonishing economic success is Mr Modi’s commitment to his election mantra, ‘from red tape to red carpet’. Slashing prohibitive bureaucracy and regulations in order to encourage much-needed investment.

Alas, under Labor, Australia is going in the completely opposite direction. From green tape to green poverty. As Michael Collins writes, the damage being done by Labor’s renewables strategy is enormous. He identifies nine asinine ways we are harming ourselves. Chris Bowen couldn’t be pursuing a more reckless and dangerous set of energy policies if he tried.

And it’s not as if the warnings aren’t in abundance. As Judith Sloan writes, the Snowy 2.0 scheme, touted by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as his great climate panacea, is literally bogged in the mire.  According to its former CEO, the project has no hope of ever delivering on the foolish promises repeatedly made by our climate-mad leftist overlords.

Could there be a better metaphor for the craziness of our current energy policies? Mr Bowen and Labor are literally digging us deeper and deeper into the sludge of ever-burgeoning debt, threatening us with a collapse of mining investment, with blackouts, and with an ever-lowering standard of living, at the same time as they demonise and disparage the great industries that have built this nation.

Poor Mr Modi must shake his head in disbelief as he looks at what we in this nation have – yet are so determined to destroy. Meanwhile, Mr Jinping is no doubt rubbing his hands with glee.

A letter to Crisafulli

Dear Sir,

As a Conservative Queensland voter I am absolutely dumbfounded at the inexcusable stupidity of your party (Liberal/National Party) to give bipartisan support to the socialist Palaszczuk Labor Party to undergo a “Treaty” with 150 aboriginal organizations (4% of the population) in Queensland along with “Truth Telling” and subsequent reparations amounting to millions of dollars of taxpayers money. Your party members must be completely blissfully ignorant to what really is at stake here.

The rewrite of Queensland colonial history will end up in reparations in a multitude of forms – to the financial, social and mobility detriment to the other 96 per cent of Queenslanders.

No Australian history, geography or civics has been taught in the school curriculum as a specific subject since 1972, the year a new social studies syllabus was introduced to Queensland state primary schools. Most primary school pupils can’t explain why Australia Day falls on 26 January each year, let alone tell you the name of any early Australian explorer or recount their intrepid exploits to lay the foundations of modern Australia.

Your party appears happily oblivious to the fact that the Liberals in every state in Australia (with the exception of Tasmania – for now) have been smashed to pieces in elections for their misguided efforts in trying to ‘out-Labor’ the Labor party. Even your federal counterparts have come to their senses and are now opposing Labor’s race-based Voice.

Your party needs to backtrack quickly and publicly admit your misguided judgement on the ‘Treaty’. Are you totally ignorant of what has eventuated in New Zealand and Canada with race-based treaties within these nations?

You have betrayed the centre-right conservative voter and left the silent majority of Queenslanders, who are waking up to this divisive race-based ideology, without a plausible alternative government.

If you aspire to form government you first have to oppose the tired, worn-out, long-serving, totally broke Palaszczuk government with crystal-clear policies based on core National party values – one man, one vote, one value before the law – not join them in their socialist agenda. I would welcome some explanation from you that you are in some respects conscious of the folly of your party’s action in supporting this “Treaty” legislation.

Yours faithfully,  Stan Wood, a Speccie reader from Queensland.