If only Australia had a politician like Germany’s Alice Weidel
In Berlin, the opposition leader stands up and lists the failures one by one: migration, energy, the budget, the war. In Canberra the same failures drift past Question Time unanswered. Watch the speech, read the transcript, and ask what the Australian parliament is missing.
Australian politics has no shortage of press conferences, but almost no speeches. The difference matters. A speech is where an opposition leader stops managing the news cycle and actually indicts a government, point by point, in plain language, on the record. Alice Weidel’s latest address in the German Bundestag is what that looks like, and it is worth every Australian voter’s time.
English translation of the full address as delivered, presented in the order spoken.
IMigration and Asylum Policy
You declare the migration crisis over, yet every single year a six-figure number of migrants enters the country through the asylum back door. An additional major city’s worth of people arrives through family reunification (Familiennachzug), the majority coming from Muslim tribal cultures.
Following Colombia, Germany is the country that, with 2.7 million refugees, has taken in the most refugees worldwide, more than Colombia. One must ask why this is the case: Why have you taken in the most refugees globally, and why are you doing this? None of this is necessary. These are facts: There are currently over one million refugees living in Germany whose asylum applications have been rejected more than once. What are these people still doing in this country? They should be deported.
IIForeign Affairs and the Ukraine Conflict
While the United States undertakes another attempt to bring an end to the murderous war in Ukraine, you are intensifying war propaganda and escalating confrontation with Russia. You are burning the final diplomatic bridges solely to distract from your own catastrophic political record. You must finally commit to peace negotiations, as the United States is doing.
IIIEnergy Infrastructure and the Nord Stream Pipeline
In addition to permanent energy crises and constant blackout risks resulting from the failed energy transition (Energiewende), an existential gas supply crisis threatens this coming winter. You choose to forfeit affordable pipeline gas from Russia. You silently allowed the Nord Stream pipelines to be blown up right in front of you without taking action.
Instead of setting the course to resume deliveries via the remaining intact pipeline strings, you continue rewarding the suspected instigators of the attack in Kyiv with billions in financial aid at Germany’s expense. Our domestic gas storage facilities have fallen to historic record lows. There is no evidence of strategic foresight, resilience, or diversification in your energy policy. You are knowingly steering the country into a catastrophic supply shortage this winter, another absolute failure of this government.
IVThe Saxony-Anhalt Election and Federal Budget
The voters of Saxony-Anhalt have communicated with complete clarity through the voice of the democratic sovereign: The Black-Red coalition (Schwarz-Rot) is over. The public demands a fundamental change in policy (Politikwechsel) and rejects any continuation of the status quo.
The draft federal budget presented today reflects this exact muddle and functions as an open declaration of surrender by your coalition. Despite collecting record tax revenues, you are incapable of managing public funds responsibly because you refuse to break free from green ideology, mass immigration, and socialist redistribution. Instead of practicing fiscal restraint, you are bloating this federal budget to nearly €600 billion, driving Germany into national bankruptcy at record speed. Meanwhile, deindustrialization continues to sweep across the country with accelerating momentum.
VChallenge to Friedrich Merz and Governance Claims
Mr. Merz, your peculiar press conference on Monday made it entirely clear that you failed to understand the message delivered by the voters of Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday. That failure is no longer relevant, because your time is already up. Citizens demand a political turnaround, and they will receive it. In upcoming elections, voters will grant the Alternative for Germany (AfD) a clear mandate to govern so an alternative policy can be realized. We will take this mandate seriously and accept it in order to lead this country toward a better future.
What are these people still doing in this country? They should be deported.
Alice Weidel, Deutscher BundestagThe Canberra contrast
Nothing in this transcript depends on agreeing with the AfD’s program. What it depends on is a parliament in which the opposition is willing to stand up and say precisely what is failing, name the numbers, and put a government on notice. Australia has the same pressures: migration at historic highs, energy prices that broke an industrial base, budgets that never quite add up. What it does not have is a Weidel willing to assemble those facts into a single unbroken indictment on the floor of the house.
That is the real comparison. Germany’s crisis may be worse, but its opposition argues like it means to govern. Ours argues like it means to wait.
