In the torpor of the silly season, when sensible Australians are enjoying barbies in the great outdoors, the Albanese government is crab-walking away from another of its shibboleths; an Australian republic. As the great British rock band Queen might have put it, ‘Another one bites the dust.’

When he was elected, Mr Albanese was keen to ditch the monarchy but now a royal visit from King Charles later this year will probably provide the government with welcome respite from mounting criticism of its lacklustre agenda.

Mr Thistlethwaite, the hapless Assistant Minister for the Republic with the tongue-twisting surname, has conceded that the time is not right to discuss a referendum on the republic in the government’s second term.

Disgracefully, papers released under Freedom of Information laws show that Mr Thistlethwaite seemed to think that the right time to discuss a referendum on the republic with senior bureaucrats was just days after the Queen passed away, before she had even been lain to rest. This ghoulish decision shows how out of touch the government is with ordinary Australians.

The creation of Mr Thistlethwaite’s republican portfolio in the week of the Queen’s platinum jubilee was also tin-eared and demonstrated that the government doesn’t mind insulting one of our closest allies.

The decision of the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom to cancel an Australia Day gala dinner, first because of ‘sensitivities’ and then because of the ‘cost’ provides further evidence of these tendencies.

None of this should come as a surprise since the government even failed to send a warship at the request of our greatest ally, the US, to defend the freedom of the seas, an interest that is vital to a vast, remote, export-oriented nation like Australia that relies on its allies for defence.

The fact that Mr Thistlethwaite’s republican portfolio will not be axed shows that money can always be found for Labor’s pet projects yet precious little is being spent on defence.

The government’s belated recognition that there is no enthusiasm for another referendum has no doubt been driven by the realisation that if it continues on its present path, it may not even get a second term. Support for the government has slumped since the historic defeat of its proposal to enshrine an indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution.

The government was painfully slow to recognise that the defeat of the Voice was not just a wholesale rejection of its woke agenda but a rebuke of its dismal failure to even acknowledge, let alone address, the cost-of-living crisis confronting ordinary Australians in the mortgage belt.

The pain Australians feel is largely of the government’s making, starting with the reckless spending engaged in during the pandemic. While this was largely undertaken by the Coalition, Labor’s contribution in opposition was to demand even more largesse be distributed. As surely as night follows day, rampant government expenditure has driven up inflation and interest rates.

Instead of reining in spending, the government has opted to appoint former Labor minister Craig Emerson to look into grocery prices in search of price-gouging. This will be about as useful as the Rudd government’s Fuel Watch and Grocery Choice websites which were also cooked up to show that the government was ‘doing something’ about the cost of living.

While increased global demand for fossil fuels has contributed to energy price rises, it has also been a blessing for Australians as it has swollen government coffers. But while international prices for fossil fuels will stabilise, the government’s nonsensical proposition that renewable energy is cheaper than that generated by coal will drive permanent price hikes.

The government still doesn’t seem to understand that although sunshine and wind are free, the cost of harnessing them is exorbitant, both financially and due to their outsized terrestrial footprint. As a result it will never be able to deliver on its foolhardy promise to reduce electricity bills by $275 by 2025; all it can do is hide the costs by handing out taxpayer-funded subsidies, which it is doing with its Capacity Investment Scheme. This expenditure will further undercut productivity, exacerbate inflation, and drive up interest rates.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, the massive surge in immigration to over half a million people last financial year has driven up unemployment to 4 per cent and put enormous pressure on housing and infrastructure.

Treasury’s forecast that more than 1.8 million migrants would move to Australia in the five years to June 2027 worried even normally sanguine advocates of a Big Australia and prompted the government to promise to reduce numbers by cracking down on international student rorts. The question is will it, can it? Its record is deeply discouraging.

To add insult to injury, Mr Albanese failure to tell Australians how many immigration detainees with criminal histories have been released into the community since last year’s controversial High Court decision has inflamed community fears.

It is all unwelcome evidence of a government dangerously adrift in an ever more dangerous world.

We can only hope that Labor wakes up and starts to focus on the economic and  geostrategic threats that it must address at home and abroad.