Election campaigns should be about solving the serious problems of government. Unfortunately, the NSW campaign is anything but.
Chris Minns and Labor are miles ahead in the polls, so they are simply trying to stay out of trouble, coasting into office on March 25. Minns has become the Derek Zoolander of politics: skilled in striking poses on frivolous matters.
He’s a policy-free zone on the two big issues facing the state: official predictions of blackouts after the 2025 closure of the Eraring coal-fired power station; and the way in which, this century, NSW has had the fastest falling school academic results in the world.
Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet hasn’t recovered from the news that he was zany enough to wear a Nazi uniform to his own birthday party. He leads an old government, out of ideas and out of time, weighed down by the green madness of his deputy, Matt Kean.
At NSW One Nation over the past four years, we have been working on policies to tackle the major problems.
Minns has become the Derek Zoolander of politics: skilled in striking poses on frivolous matters (pictured: Minns, left, and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauska, right, go for a run along Bondi Beach)
Mark Latham with outspoken MP Tania Mihailuk who quit Labor for One Nation is and running for the upper house in the upcoming state election
Energy Security
NSW should be a global energy superpower with flourishing nuclear, coal, gas and renewable energy. Increasing the State’s power supply would bring down electricity prices, giving households much-needed cost of living relief.
Instead, the Perrottet-Kean Government has put all its eggs in the renewables basket, driving baseload power out of the system. When the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, the lights will go out.
Ideally, NSW should build the Bayswater2 power station, but this cannot be done in time for the 2025 blackouts deadline.
The pressing need is for an extra gas-peaking plant, to back up the wind and solar farms.
When I asked Perrottet about this at Budget Estimates he was clueless, displaying an amazingly reckless attitude to the looming NSW electricity crisis.
Mark Latham says NSW should build a second Bayswater Power Station (pictured: current coal-fired plant in the Hunter Valley)
School Results
The tragedy of schools policy is that we know exactly what works in the classroom. It has been studied inside-out all over the world.
Yet too many teachers deviate from this evidence base, introducing fads, experiments and even political indoctrination into the classroom. One Nation’s policy is to create a new system of school inspectors to report directly to parents on the education of their children.
The inspectors will ensure that best practice is being followed in classrooms. This means Direct Instruction teaching, phonics literacy, regular testing and data collection and high standards of student behaviour.
Teachers who can’t achieve best practice and fail to improve student learning will be removed from the system. High performing teachers will be paid more, plus encouraged to share their success in networks of Best Practice Teaching.
Mark Latham with Tania Milhailuk, upper house candidate Amit Batish (far right) and candidate for Parramatta MK Singh (second right)
Law and Order
In recent decades, the scales of justice have tilted in favour of offenders and against the rights of innocent victims.
In NSW an offender can receive a reduction in their sentence for an early plea, even though the evidence shows they are a menace to society and deserve a lengthy period of incarceration.
So too, criminals are being set free after faking mental health problems or blaming drug use. One Nation will close these sentencing loopholes. The number of mental health excuses in our courts is rising exponentially, especially from celebrities.
Court waiting times have blown out and justice is now unacceptably delayed. Prisons are overcrowded and cheap alternatives such as home detention and ankle bracelets are becoming the norm, even for serious crime.
One Nation strongly opposes the Liberal/Labor/Greens proposal to lift the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14. Young adolescents will commit more offences and be recruited into crime gangs, safe in the knowledge they are immune from consequences.
Street crime is a huge problem in too many neighbourhoods and a softer approach to teenage crime will make it worse.
Ending Debt and Deficit
The Perrottet-Kean Government has been on a massive spending spree and, of course, Labor will be worse. Gross State debt has now topped $180billion, off the back of huge budget deficits.
Fiscal discipline has become an alien concept in Macquarie Street. In the last two budgets, there have been 362 discretionary policy changes, of which only three involved cost savings.
One Nation wants to run the razor through wasteful spending.
There’s a long list to attack: renewable energy subsidies, green energy programs, transmission wire costs, National Party pork barrelling, Matt Kean’s bribes to Teal women, arts subsidies, the growth in bureaucracy, consultancies, government advertising, trade posts, R&D overfunding, biodiversity programs, empty national parks and the bloated NSW Parliament House budget.
The Perrottet-Kean Government has been on a massive spending spree and, of course, Labor will be worse
Voters know they get straight-talking and a fighting attitude from our party.
We never surrender to the woke, left-wing nonsense that has overrun the Liberals, Nationals and Labor.
We believe in job creation, good schooling, safe streets and balanced budgets.
Our team includes upper house candidates Tania Milhailuk, Amit Batish and Colin Grigg, all in electable positions.
One Nation is fighting the major party madness. To use some old political language, We’re Keeping the B*****ds Honest.
Mark Latham is the leader of One Nation in New South Wales and a member of the NSW Legislative Council.
