Albanese once said his purpose in life was to “fight Tories.” In government he has done little more than surrender to them.
The menu for Anthony Albanese over the next few weeks provides good examples of Labor’s problems in controlling the agenda and sticking to the narrative over the lead-up to the next federal election.
The ACT election result will be known on Saturday night. There has been no public polling, but the campaigning style of the ACT Labor leader, Andrew Barr suggests that he expects to lose seats and fears that he might have to get support from independents, with or without the Greens, if he is to continue in government.
The Greens have two ministers in Barr’s government but are, as ever, arguing that they would be a more progressive government were they to dominate a coalition with Labor and have made strong criticisms of the Labor style and focus. Their campaigning weakness is that they must share the blame for the alleged sins of Labor, including longevity and running out of ideas. For the first time, observers calculate that the Liberals have some chance – a slim one – of forming government with the help of Independents. Over most of the past two decades they have shown themselves out of touch with mainstream Canberra opinion, particularly by their conservatism on social policy, such as voluntary assisted dying, abortion and same sex marriage.
It seems certain that Labor will face a significant setback. It will be hard for anyone to blame this directly on Albanese, but Labor tragics will consider that he hasn’t helped Barr as much as he could have. First and foremost is with the muddiness of the Labor brand, encapsulated by adopting old coalition policies on defence, immigration and the environment. A sense of momentum or searching for progressive solutions and optimism in the Albanese government might have made a big difference to life on the street in Canberra.
Albanese once said his purpose in life was to “fight Tories.” In government he has done little more than surrender to them.
Labor at the federal level has not done much to inspire voters, or to imbue them with the sense that Labor is working, cautiously but deliberately on an agenda for working Australians. Apart from a sense of disappointment with the timidity and lack of achievement of the Albanese government, many voters are particularly angry with the government’s position on AUKUS and nuclear submarines, Australia’s biases and effective support for Israel over Gaza and Lebanon, and the prospect of escalation of conflict with Iran.
They are not fooled by Labor’s minimal efforts on the environment, and furious with the renewed subsidies and support for coal-fired stations. And many are extremely disappointed that Labor shows every sign of giving up on improving indigenous living conditions, focused only on a cosmetic housing program that, like most Albanese Labor programs, is doomed to expensive failure.
Barr is guilty of his own sins and will deserve most of whatever blame is passed around. Or credit, if the swings are manageable. But the prospects of Albanese’s being invited to explain how he has contributed to Labor’s being on the nose are very high.
Queensland promises bad news for Labor, which will be partly blamed on Albanese
A week later, Queenslanders go to the election. The polls seem to indicate that the Labor government will fall, and that most will blame federal factors, not least the cost of living and interest rates. Labor has survived in office in Queensland for most of the past two decades. This has involved being ruthlessly pragmatic on practical management and government, even in frank opposition to national Labor policies. The federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers is a Queenslander, but his charms and his abilities do not appear to have done much to bring Queensland – fundamentally, like the ACT, a state whose default setting at state level is Labor ‑ into the federal fold.
Many federal parliamentarians are given to deriding the ACT as a little Lilliput, a glorified town council, or as an inner suburban consciousness transplanted into the middle of NSW. (Witness, for example, its Yes vote on the Voice.) Actually, the ACT is a bigger and much more important economy than Tasmania, even if it is not (thank God) lavished with Albanese football stadiums. But the loss of government in Queensland cannot be dismissed as some typical Queensland eccentricity, unimportant in the national calculus. Nor will it be without its impacts on federal economic management, particularly over energy and the environment. It is hard enough to get any sort of unity from mostly Labor governments, as umpteen prime ministers over the years will attest. But when a state is of the opposite persuasion and a federal election is nigh, any amount of mischief and sabotage can occur. As it happens, the leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton is a favourite son of Queensland and may have some cause to make life extra difficult.
What’s worse from Albanese’s point of view is that a bad result in Queensland will galvanise nervous federal backbenchers, who have translated the impacts of any swings onto their own electorates. The discipline of the federal Labor caucus, with the singular exception of Senator Payman, has been remarkable over the past two terms of parliament. Win (in 2022) or lose (2019) There has been very little in the way of splits, disunity, or open dissent within the party, being used by its enemies to suggest the party cannot govern itself. In very recent times, the increasing nervousness about Albanese’s performance has caused an increase in soft dissent (for example about gambling advertising, and the refusal to contemplate changes to negative gearing) without causing significant problems. But if polls deteriorate, some members will realise that only desperate action can save their seats. The only thing they can do is to raise their profile — which, usually can be done only by clashing with government announcements.
Trump and Harris will dominate the airwaves for long after November 5
Then, 10 days after Queensland comes the US presidential election. At the moment, the contest seems close, and many observers consider that Donald Trump is at least slightly ahead in projecting how the all-important electoral college vote will go. No doubt Australia is well prepared for a Trump victory, even if it is equally prepared for what it hopes – a Harris victory. But a Trump victory – a consequence of a contest overwhelmingly focused on domestic considerations – will fall like a thunderclap around the world. Generally, changes of administration have not made big differences in American foreign policy. But a Trump victory is likely to cause significant changes to policies towards Russia, and the Ukraine war, as well as to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. A Trump administration says it would change policies towards the European Community, and to NATO. It will also change policies on climate change.
If Trump is serious about a mass deportation policy, there are many flow-on effects that will dominate public discussion through the early months of 2025. Quite apart from the way they might be “distractions” to Albanese’s promotion of his domestic policies, they will almost certainly influence the policies that make up the election platform. Dutton sees defence and immigration matters as political strengths for the coalition and will be hounding Labor about strengthening its own policies in this area.
Even if Harris is the new president, Albanese knows that Ukraine and the Middle East may blow up at any time. These are matters in which Australia cannot influence the outcomes, and the prime minister must be nimble in navigating his way through it. Given the vagueness and uncertainty about Trump’s policies, Albanese will not necessarily be working with a script.
If Trump wins, he will take office in mid-January and has promised a host of instant dramatic action. No doubt some of this will be focused on his domestic political enemies, the consequences of which could well affect politics in Australia. But he has hinted at upping the ante in a trade war with China, while dialling down some of the bellicosity.
If he loses, as well he might, there is every prospect of his claiming that he has lost only by electoral fraud, and that he will contest the result, as he did in 2020. Some of his more hot-headed followers have absolutely convinced themselves that a Harris victory could be achieved only by skulduggery and foreshadows some form of communist revolution. Trump’s good old boys may be beyond his control.
A big problem from Albanese’s point of view is that the outcome, whatever it proves to be, will dominate the airwaves for months – at just the time Albanese is trying to make the conversation about why his government should be re-elected.
In the meantime, Albanese has been trying to persuade his followers that the second election campaign will see another suite of promises on childcare, new policies on housing access, and further policies in education and health, all core matters of concern. No doubt the planning of this campaign involves his hopes and expectations about a falling inflation rate, and a fall in interest rates, preferably before the Budget itself. With this, and a further projected surplus as an evidence of responsible economic management, election goodies may be less subject to the usual close questioning about how they can be afforded.
Meanwhile, has Labor crafted and road-tested a plan to take to the electorate? By now it is probably too late for it to enter public consciousness
The election-framing conversation with the public is one that has yet to begin. Indeed, it has only just begun with policy boffins and runs every risk of being full of holes for want of close checking. Albanese has left it too late for it to take.
The public may know, vaguely that Albanese is planning changes in housing policy and childcare, but it has very little idea how. It is certainly cynical about whether Labor is shaping a political or a policy solution to the crisis in the housing market.
After all, nothing the government has done so far (and nothing it has proposed only to be frustrated by the wicked Greens) has or would have had any significant impact on housing supply, or on the parcel of disadvantages suffered by people out of the housing market compared with those already in it. That Albanese has shown himself scared of any impact on the tax advantages enjoyed by those who have crossed the barriers suggests that there will be two practical effects of his policies. First, housing prices will not fall and thus, doing anything for the disadvantaged means artificial ways of subsidising their way in. This will almost certainly lead only to further housing price inflation, with the already disadvantaged likely to suffer most. Second, the overall tax system will become more and more distorted in favour of upper- and middle-class voters, particularly to older ones. There are severely disadvantaged elderly Australians, but a good deal of their plight comes from the way that the nation has privileged and subsidised house purchases by those with the deposits and the incomes.
Some seem to think that the campaign will expose Dutton for the absence of policies across most of the field of government, as well as for the expense, impracticality and inanity of his nuclear proposals. They may be assuming too much of a conventional campaign, with coherent, costed policies debated at every street corner. Dutton does not want to be caught out on detail. He can argue that the public knows his inclinations and approaches to policy, and that he will be focused on broad sensible and prudent administration in response to events, rather than programs of goodies or efforts to put the government in the centre of the marketplace. For that reason, he can argue, he has concentrated on a few policies only, with voters able to expect that he will behave much as he behaved while in government three years ago, with the general approach and policies that the Morrison government had.
Labor has spent years trying to demonise him and seems confident that the public will run a mile. Yet the polls already show that voters consider Dutton fit to govern, and more likely to govern better in critical areas such as defence and foreign policy, immigration and the economy – even education! You would think that’s not a very high bar.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.