What to make of the Coalition’s response to the trashing of the Stage 3 tax cuts? As Judith Sloan points out this week, Prime Minister Antony Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers clearly lied to the electorate. As she writes, ‘If Albo was prepared to break his word on the Stage 3 tax cuts, it raises the issue of why we would believe anything he says.’ Quite.

The opposition had two obvious options. The first, the principled and correct approach, was simply to do what oppositions are supposed to do and oppose the new tax mix because it was in breach of the government’s mandate. The second, and politically astute, alternative was to let the tax cuts through so as not to be seen to be opposing more money in the pockets of the poor at a time when everybody is being hit by inflation and a cost of living crisis (largely caused, of course, by Labor’s inflationary policies, net zero fantasy and big spending).

Comparisons with Mr Dutton’s approach to the Voice are instructive. The Coalition did not support the Voice because it was an assault on the fundamental principle in our democracy of equality regardless of race. Nothing the Voice proponents and Labor did or said could overcome that core conservative principle.

In this instance, there are two conservative principles at play. And the cunning of Labor’s ‘wedge’ was that they skewered the opposition between the two. The first principle is that governments must never be allowed to get away with breaking their word. The second principle is that lower taxes are always preferable to higher taxes. Mr Dutton and the Coalition must, in effect, find a way to uphold both these principles, however mutually exclusive they seem.

The only way to do this is to call Labor’s bluff with a new package that retains all the tax cuts – the higher end as well as the lower end. Then the Coalition will be in a position to not only accuse the PM of being ‘the liar in the Lodge’ but to promise to genuinely begin the process of reforming our income tax rates, currently among the highest in the world. And the only way to achieve that goal, the Coalition must convince the electorate, is by reducing government expenditure – and by getting rid of government waste and cutting red tape and onerous regulations in order to free up our economy and encourage investment.

No more dithering, no more pussy-footing around the issue, and no more pandering to the bedwetters.

Much hard work must be done by Coalition shadow ministers between now and the next federal election. But the message from the Coalition must be: if you thought Albo’s tax cuts were good for you, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re going much further.

And this must be combined with a clear and unambiguous message about cutting government spending in order to pay for the tax cuts. But where to start? Simple – if it’s got an acronym, it’s almost certainly wasting taxpayers money.

There are plenty of expenditure cuts that the public – or at least the 61 per cent who voted No to the Voice – would gladly approve of. First up, following a comprehensive audit, it should be possible to slash many millions from the wasteful spending on indigenous pet political projects. A line-by-line audit of the nearly three hundred pages of often loopy NIAA grants would be the place to start.

In this week’s issue, former Liberal MP and senator Michael Baume demolishes the EDO, the Environmental Defenders Office. As Michael writes, ‘If the government has no means to ensure that taxpayers’ multi-millions of dollars are being spent appropriately by the EDO, who has?’ Answer: the electorate. Convince voters to shut the thing down before it does any more harm.

Also in this issue, Scott Hargreaves looks at another dubious government-funded billion-dollar acronym, the BoM, the Bureau of Meteorology. Having completely failed to predict the weather correctly this past summer, they are directly responsible for many farmers making the wrong financial decisions, in turn driving up prices. There are far cheaper alternatives to the BoM now available. As Scott writes, ‘A peer-reviewed journal published by the [Chinese Academy of Sciences] in 2020 approvingly quoted the same research from Marohasy and Abbot that was so resolutely ignored by our Bureau.’

The ABC is a waste of over a billion dollars a year. In this day and age, the only plausible model for the ABC is a subscription-viewer model where user pays.

Peter Dutton and the Coalition must go into government having prepared the nation for smaller, leaner, more efficient government designed to pay for ever greater tax cuts. Net zero must be abandoned. The Bowen renewables doctrine must be abandoned. Red, green and black tape must be slashed. Investment must be encouraged, not hindered. Trump will pull out of Paris and we must follow suit. But to do this, the climate cult must be confronted head on, as was (successfully) the Voice.

For ten years, the Coalition avoided its chief responsibility, namely to increase the prosperity of the individual in Australia, choosing instead to follow Labor in pandering to the collective and the woke zeitgeist. The electorate is increasingly waking up to how flawed ‘the greater good’ argument is. Coalition MPs must grab the bull by the horns.

Memo to the Coalition frontbenchers and staffers: find an acronym and you’ll find a fortune waiting to be saved.