The ALP may not be able to run Australia, or for that matter an Australian state. The ALP cannot, for instance, balance a budget, keep treacherous trade unions under control during time of war, or more generally, think down the track to weigh the consequences of its actions.
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But with the advantage of its irresponsibility it easily outwits the coalition parties. It has just done so, at State and Federal level.
The impact on the NSW government of its law on political donations has had a devastating impact on the coalition. Mike Baird's government has just lost seven ministers and supporters, because ALP legislation made campaign donations from property developers illegal.
Fine, so let's retaliate. Let's make campaign donations from trade unions (to the ALP) illegal as well. The High Court threw it out.
The coalition parties lost a major source of donations from the people who rebuilt Sydney during the past 50 years, while the ALP kept their major donors.
Industrial relations reform has been undone. Weekend trading in shopping centres that once made city life interesting is now shut down. Thousands of jobs have gone and Sundays have become dreary.
Once again, the wharves work slowly to a trade union pace. The motor vehicle industry, all of it foreign owned, has had enough of trade union demands and is gone or going. And that is only the half of it.
Of course there was corruption in the development that has transformed our cities, but did we need to throw out a baby with the bathwater? Banning large donations from developers was a trap aimed at the coalition government which the coalition parties walked into.
In Canberra the national government is floundering, unable to produce balanced budget because of not one but three huge pitfalls, at which Joe Hockey might take a hard look. The ALP's national disability scheme is set to swallow up billions.
The ALP's National Broadband Network is gobbling up billions already. The paid maternity leave scheme, which started life a modest subsidy as part of the social welfare arrangements to help working women get through three months of unpaid leave has turned into a monster, although that's a pitfall of Tony Abbott's making.
It is not as if the coalition parties were taken unawares. The ALP has been pulling stunts since the days of Gough Whitlam and Mick Young. Nothing, however, compares with the current financial burden on budget making, which matters because deficits drive government into the loan markets, pushing up interest rates at the expense of borrowing by the private sector, which creates jobs, and because interest has to be paid on these borrowings, reducing funds available for other projects.
