The prime minister offered an effective argument for the new tax policy,fought off the broken-promise attacks and looked to have reaped the rewards at the Dunkley by-election,with the Liberals attracting a yawn-inducing 3.5 per cent swing. But for the most part since the tax announcement,Anthony Albanese hasn’t been a pervasive public presence.
Dionne Gain
That’s not quite true,because he has been getting media mentions. We all know that he attended a Taylor Swift show in Sydney and a private Katy Perry gig at a Melbourne mansion. And he got engaged. And of course,just a few days before the tax announcement he showed up with a bunch of wealthy worthies at the Australian Open men’s final and was roundly booed by the crowd.
Best wishes to the PM and his fiancee Jodie Haydon. But with the other stuff,given how much political trouble he and his government are in,I don’t get it. He secured the prime ministership as Everyman Albo,who understood the everyday concerns of Australians. The public stopped buying that last year as he burned through the government’s political capital and his own in the lead-up to the failed referendum on the Indigenous Voice to parliament.
Why he chooses to disport himself like a celebrity is a mystery. His job is to put his head down and be seen to be – repeat,seen to be – working on behalf of millions of Australians who are genuinely worried about their financial situation.
The major polls this week,taken together,showed how much Albanese has lost the public’s confidence. The Resolve monitor registered his net approval at minus 11 per cent and Dutton’s at minus eight. On the question of which party offers strong leadership,Labor and the Liberals came even on 29 per cent and Undecided did best with 30 per cent. This is just two years into the life of a government when a new administration should be demonstrating enough energy to be in the lead,at least,on that score. Essential and Newspoll tell a similar story,with Albanese and Dutton’s favourability ratings in the negative zone.
The government isn’t sitting idle. It’s negotiated successfully with the automotive industry over new vehicle emissions standards. And it’s cracking down on immigration loopholes and trying – and failing for the next few months at least – to introduce new deportation laws. The difficulties with getting the measures through the parliament are standard-issue problems for any administration,not a sign of chaos. And Albanese has been working on shoring up some marginal seats. Recently,he’s made announcements about education funding and the extraction and refining of rare earths in the Northern Territory,home to the highly marginal seat of Lingiari,which Labor won by fewer than a thousand votes in 2022.
But it’s the larger task of maintaining the public’s confidence that is the government’s chief problem. It’s a given that the government faces an increasingly difficult media environment. The popular media is relentlessly hostile. But a deeper problem is the issue of trust. This is a challenge for everyone in politics who aspires to govern but it is especially acute for the Labor Party,which,at least in principle,exists to remake social and economic conditions. That is,it’s there to create change,which people are naturally disinclined to embrace. They need to be persuaded. Every day.
Inequity within our society and economy has been an advancing problem for a quarter of a century,affecting access to homeownership or even just a roof over your head,education,decent incomes,and affordable healthcare. The government is making a reasonable attempt on wages and health but not making much headway on the others. Inflation,especially on daily household items,and steadily rising interest rates have made the political environment toxic.
Albanese has simply not become a commanding presence as prime minister. He is yet to find a way to articulate a coherent program for dealing with these profound inequities,much less a saleable story to go with it. He appears to have convinced himself that the political landscape in which he and his government are operating is somehow normal when there is no such thing. Surely the fact that he is running level with Dutton,who has offered no policies except for the nuclear energy three-card trick,is a sign that the government has a longer-term problem. Sure,it held Dunkley but speaking as a Melburnian,metropolitan Melbourne is politically not like the rest of the country,to put it mildly.
The Labor caucus these days is hardly a hotbed of vigorous discussion,let alone dissent,but a few of its members would do well to check in the cupboard,locate the alarm and sound it.
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