In two weeks, the Albanese government will have been in office for four full years.

Four years. A presidential term in America. A World Cup cycle. An Olympics cycle.

Long enough to grow a human child from scratch. And what a glorious stewardship of the Australian economy it has been.

When Labor took the keys to the executive wing, official interest rates sat at 0.85 per cent. Today they are 4.35 per cent. That is a 3.5 percentage increase.

Government debt has climbed by more than $100 billion, which is the kind of number that used to end political careers and now barely earns a press release.

Budget surpluses have been declared with great fanfare, achieved through the ancient and noble art of taxing people more, hiding more off-budget and then taking a victory lap about it.

Spending is up. Taxes are up. The public service is up.

And political pay, somehow, mysteriously, has also gone up. Funny how that works.

Meanwhile, in the part of the ledger that affects actual Australian workers, disposable income has cratered, living standards have gone backwards, and productivity has contracted.

Australians are working harder, taking home less, and being told it is a structural transition. A structural transition into what is never specified.

Enter Treasurer Jim Chalmers, a man who has discovered that every economic problem in Australia has been caused by something happening at least 12,000 kilometres away.

The war in Ukraine. The war in Iran. Global supply chains. The lingering ghost of the Morrison government, which apparently still runs Treasury from a haunted filing cabinet. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Pick a culprit, any culprit, so long as it is not the budget you handed down 90 days ago.

At some point the Pottery Barn rule has to apply. You broke it, you bought it. You have had four years, two budgets you called surpluses, a thumping election majority, and the entire machinery of state at your disposal.

The economy is your economy now. The interest rates are responding to your fiscal settings. The debt is up on your watch. The productivity numbers are being printed under your government. There is no one left to blame who is still in the building.

As my friend Labor Dry has been pointing out, the deeper problem is that none of this is new. This is the 2019 Labor election manifesto with a fresh coat of paint. In 2019, the pitch was more taxing, more spending, more regulation, all in the name of going after the big end of town. In 2026, it is more taxing, more spending, more regulation, all in the name of intergenerational equity.

Same policy. Same instincts. Same people. Same outcome. Different focus group tested justification.

And the prescription for an economy that is steadily circling the drain? More of the same, but bigger and faster. More spending. More public sector hiring. More regulation. More creative ways to describe a tax as something other than a tax.

The plan is the problem and the problem is the plan, and somewhere in Canberra a press release is being drafted explaining that this is, in fact, what success looks like.

Two more weeks until the four-year anniversary. Crack open something cheap, because that is all most households can still afford.