As Leader of the Opposition, Angus Taylor’s job is to join in defeating the Albanese government at the next election. He must surely know that his attacking One Nation will always constitute news and that this will probably ultimately hand the result right back to Labor. As to the cost of One Nation’s top programs, Pauline Hanson would easily recoup the outlay Taylor makes so much of by doing what she promises – closing down the climate change policies that Alan Jones famously labelled a ‘National Suicide Note’ – policies she alone courageously and consistently refuses to support.

Meanwhile, the nation’s most far-left prime minister has been making headlines around the world over probably the grubbiest comments ever uttered on the record in the national chancery of a democratic nation.

These crude remarks were not only about pop star Kylie Minogue but also touched on intimate aspects of the anatomy of Japan’s Prime Minister, Madame Sanae Takaichi. This descent into the gutter and appalling breach of diplomatic courtesy only adds to his government’s legacy of deceit, incompetence, outrageous waste, and inveterate lying. The Prime Minister is so arrogant that, in asserting he was telling the truth, he even counted and announced the number of times he had lied about crucial aspects of tax policy – more than fifty times, by his own admission.

This policy was introduced with the disgraceful intention of splintering relations between younger and older members of Australian families under the gobbledegook banner of achieving ‘intergenerational equity’. Hardly anyone swallowed the bait. The stated aim was to build more houses for the young and large numbers of immigrants to buy, but it hasn’t worked; few homes are being built, and rents are going through the roof.

Meanwhile, the government demonstrates two serious failings for those whose profession is administration: a complete inability to run anything – just look at the NDIS or education – and a total lack of common sense. They failed to learn the lesson the Americans gave to the world: prohibition is the greatest leg-up politicians can ever give to the criminal class. Yet, seeing the tobacco black market monstrosity they created, politicians refuse to remove the excise and open the trade to honest competition. Of course, we know the link that can exist between politicians and the criminal class, demonstrated by the insertion of crime into the construction industry by the CFMEU, whose involvement has been made mandatory by Labor.

In a functioning Westminster parliamentary system, the depths to which the Albanese government has fallen would have inevitably led to a withdrawal of confidence by the House of Representatives. But the Westminster system only truly worked in this country during the colonial period and the early years of Federation. It was fatally undermined by the installation of a tight two-party system, enforced extravagantly by the caucus rule of the Labor Party and electoral law changes. This rigid pledge robbed Labor backbenchers of their fundamental duty to judge whether a government is actually worthy of the nation, creating an elective dictatorship that forced the Coalition to adopt the exact same discipline just to survive.

Because of this structural failure, both sides of the political aisle have been able to march the country off a cliff without a parliamentary revolt. They both foolishly decided to surrender Australia’s primary economic advantage – cheap, reliable electricity – and replace it with a hyper-expensive, fragile grid. We are now paying exorbitant transmission costs to move so-called renewable energy, generated by Chinese communist equipment that will require regular replacement, across thousands of kilometres of transmission lines tearing right through our prime agricultural land.

This first suicide note has done immense damage. Australia is now trapped in a prolonged per-capita recession. With the catastrophic waste of the NDIS, an 80-per-cent illicit tobacco black market, and the CFMEU-dominated construction rackets siphoning billions from the $300-billion Suburban Rail Loop, the Albanese government is actively sending Australia backwards.

If Australians realised this, and if the media did their job, they would be furious. Under the Albanese government, average family electricity bills have skyrocketed, costing an extra $23 billion, while Australians’ per capita GDP went backwards by $760; just in that period Singaporeans became roughly $16,500 to $17,000 wealthier.

Not content with this outrage, we now see Taylor rushing to sign a second national suicide note by attacking, instead of working with, One Nation. He claims One Nation’s top financial commitments would cost a trillion dollars over a decade. But Pauline Hanson will save precisely that by recovering what Robert Gottliebsen identifies as the true trillion-dollar cost of Labor’s climate change policies – a ‘hoax’ she and Donald Trump both denounce, but Taylor supports.

As this column advised before the last election, if voters care for the future of Australia, they should give their first preference to One Nation and direct their subsequent preferences to the Coalition. The only way the Coalition will realise its duty is if they are forced to stop trying to walk on both sides of the street and start following traditional Australian values.

This second suicide note – fracturing the conservative base to appease moderate elites – is a fatal miscalculation. The next federal election must be held by May 2028, but given the volatile political climate, it could be called at any time. One Nation has surged in the polls, completely reshaping the right-wing primary vote. If Taylor continues to alienate this massive voting bloc, he risks triggering catastrophic preference leakage that will allow the Labor party to march straight down the middle and secure seats despite their own abysmal primary numbers.

Instead of launching ridiculous claims against One Nation, the Leader of the Opposition should be ensuring that all political parties with the best intentions for Australia are working together, and formally negotiating preference exchanges. The sensible objective is simple: win a minimum majority of 76 seats in the House of Representatives to ensure that the Albanese government faces its final days. Defeating Labor should not be difficult. It will only be so if Taylor and the leaders of the Coalition insist on signing another national suicide note – a note rank-and-file Australians do not want them to sign.