CAMERON MILNER: Anthony Albanese’s Budget is turning Australia into a banana republic built on debt and tax

Hola Australia, welcome to becoming the world’s latest banana republic.

The Albanista Budget confirms our trillion-dollar debt, our tax and waste agenda and Anthony Albanese’s all-out assault on aspiration.

The Budget waves the white flag on productivity. It capitulates on debt and instead seeks to crush the Aussie spirit of having a go with ever more tax.

Paul Keating might be Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ hero, but his “banana republic” warning has been ignored in his latest Budget as we become a nation that makes less and taxes more.

The Albanista changes are far-reaching and go well beyond anything proposed by Bill Shorten.

The changes include not only a new Albanese Death Tax but one of the rudest intrusions of government into people’s personal finances and business affairs.

Worst of all is for small businesses based on families wanting to get ahead who will now see Albanese getting a free ride and a 47 per cent equity share of their growth.

It’s such a brazen move that would make a Latin American socialist blush.

But don’t worry, apparently all these changes are simply so that young people can buy a house more easily.

The Albanistas have also conceded there will be a carve out for the Tech Amigos, just not anyone who runs a business not offshoring jobs or replacing them entirely with AI.

Labor’s Budget shambles just keeps getting worse as more and more Australians realise they too will be hit by the wide-ranging changes.

This Budget, built on deceit and lies, is a Budget of losers and losers.

Young, old, homeowner or share owner, Labor has found a way to tax you more and intervene in your lives more.

Meanwhile, yet more money is handed out without any means testing making even millionaires the beneficiaries of government largesse.

The Albanista’s have a vision for Australia to be a nation of mendicants.

Public servants are their favourite variety. Bloat the public service with anonymous work from home ‘they/thems’ and then run a fear and loathing campaign around Liberal cuts.

The other move is to put every taxpayer on some type of care. Ideally a care package with a cash handout. This Budget has even more rivers of debt fuelled subsidies from everything from non-means-tested housing deposits, to childcare and $250 cash to all “workers”.

Labor’s Budget is based on the hubris of electoral lethargy. The Canberra gang are in overdrive with the Gallery professing that most Australians don’t even know a Budget was delivered.

Such inside the beltway myopia, though doesn’t match the white hot anger Labor backbenchers are copping in their electorates.

Instead Albanese’s lies are fuelling the rise and rise of One Nation as voters have simply had enough of the Canberra speak and a PM talking out of both sides of his mouth.

The Liberals should be thriving in this environment, but their brand is so trashed, conceding electoral ground to both One Nation and the Teals.

Labor feels no pressure to govern any better in the absence of an Opposition.

Albanese believes he can lie and lie again and there’ll be no electoral impact.

Our nation under Bob Hawke believed in the ladder of opportunity and called on Australians to rise above ourselves.

Kevin Rudd championed the “Fair Go” and called for an end to “this reckless spending”.

And Keating who warned of Australia becoming “a third rate, banana republic” believed a strongly growing economy was Labor’s best plan to provide individual opportunity.

Labor Premier Chris Minns rightly called out that for so many people they are now working half their week just to pay tax to the government.

His call and that of Labor great, Bill Kelty to cap the top income tax margin to 39 per cent should be taken seriously, instead its dismissed out of hand by a shrill Albanese and a Treasurer reduced to reading answers from Treasury prepared notes.

Under Albanese our standard of living is going down as inflation, interest rates and unemployment all go up.

We are taxing more than ever yet we are more in debt than ever.

We are becoming a vastly less attractive nation for investment that’s bitterly needed to drive a new phase of productivity and growth in our economy.

Simply opening the flood gates to migration might drive economic demand, but it has also delivered a recession for nearly every Australian at the personal level.

In Latin America it’s popular for the government to own the energy sector and in many cases critical minerals development can only be done with a government partner, but that’s not the Australian way.

Australia can and should be a nation based on egalitarian ideals and celebrating individual success.

Instead, Albanese is delivering a vision where aspiration is crushed by tax that funds a never-ending “care economy” run by government.

Keating’s warning from 40 years ago is even more relevant today. You can’t tax your way to prosperity and individuals need reward for effort.

It’s not time yet to say “Adios Australia”, but the Albanista Budget is a giant leap in the direction of us becoming yet another banana republic.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary