One of the great myths of Australian politics – for a long, long, time now – has been that the Liberal Party are far better economic managers than Labor could ever hope to be.

It’s been a myth based on bullshit and bluster for as long as the bitter old hacks who compile this column can remember; it’s a permanently ingrained piece of the DNA of Liberal (and National) Party) pollies to chant their “only we can manage economies well” line just about each and every time they open their gobs, especially on the hustings. It’s been the sad and disgraceful duty of a compliant and supportive mainstream media to happily spread the myth forever and a day.

But it’s also a myth that should now be officially declared dead, buried and cremated in the wake of the Morrison government’s total lack of economic management skills. And there should not a single politics writer/commentator in the mainstream media who still believes in that myth if they’ve honestly and professionally and objectively viewed the smoking economic ruin left by Morrison and Co.

So, the MGH is forced to ask: what is Peter Hartcher’s excuse?

Twice in the past week, The Sydney Morning Herald‘s political editor has perpetuated the long-held myth of Liberal Party economic management superiority.

You’ve read right, BUGers. Very right. Last Wednesday, Hartcher wrote of the Liberals’ “most-sacred treasure”… “its brand advantage as the party that better manages the nation’s finances”. He repeated the claim last Saturday, with Labor’s budget having “challenged the Coalition’s (read Liberals) long-standing brand advantage as the party (told you he was thinking Liberals!) that is better at managing the national finances.

It’s all present-tense, here-and-now accolades. Hartcher is not talking about the Liberal Party’s “perceived” advantage of being better economic managers. That was true enough in Australia for a very long time when voters accepted the party and media bullshit …. but not any more. That shit has well and truly sailed in recent times. Hartcher should know that.

For Hartcher to still be perpetrating that bullshit myth beggars belief. Does he really believe that the key to Labor’s future credibility is to take from the Liberals a holy grail they’ve never possessed. That’s some pretty bizarre thinking right there.

So, what fucking parallel universe has Hartcher been travelling in over recent times when the many economic failings of nine years of LNP rule, but especially the lazy, incompetent Morrison years, have become obvious to so many others but clearly not to him?

He’s clearly been slipping through a different sliding door at Parliament to watch his own version of politics. He’s missed the technical recession before COVID. The trillion-dollar debt Morrison’s mob left behind with bugger-all to show for it. The COVID billions thrown at business with no claw-back options. The grand project announcements that weren’t even half properly funded. The pork-barreling on record, possibly criminal, levels with funds wasted on countless unworthy projects in the hope of jagging key votes in key electorates. The $600,000 plus for a few drought notes. The $20.8 billion Morrison flickpassed to his privateer mates in his last 12 months in office alone! The $30 million forked out for land worth $3 million. The huge cost to taxpayers from the botched, criminal, Robodebt scheme, not to mention the many, many, lives lost?

How the fuck has Hartcher missed all this?

The sad bottom line is that if Hartcher wants to help perpetuate this bullshit myth of Liberal economic management superiority, he forfeits all claims to being a balanced and astute politics analyst and commentator and lays himself bare to claims of being nothing more than a Tory spruiker.

Okay, not quite as big a Tory spruiker as the likes of Phillip “I came out of the womb deep Liberal blue and stayed that way!” Coorey, every politics scribe over at NewsCorpse, the nutters on Sky News and all the Nine shockjocks but a Tory spruiker nevertheless.

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