Joe Hildebrand: Labor must stick to the straight and narrow

There is a strong sense that the Albanese government is at a crossroads—which is why Jim Chalmers’ esoteric 6000 word essay in The Monthly has had such an explosive impact, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Everybody remembers the movie The Graduate for its saucy taboo sex scene but in fact the most important scene features nothing happening at all — and tellingly it is the final scene of the movie.

The graduate has just crashed the wedding of his ex-girlfriend, fought off half the guests and spirited the bride away on a public bus.

Then, as all the laughter and excitement fades, they sit there in silence, together alone, unsure of what to do or say next.

As 2023 begins in earnest there is a strong sense that the Albanese government is at the same crossroads.

Where it decides to go from here and how it decides to get there will define Labor for the first time in a generation.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Anthony Albanese have a good old laugh during Question Time in Parliament House Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

The truth is that the federal ALP hasn’t really known what it is since Paul Keating was Prime Minister.

It’s 11 years in opposition after that were marked by four leadership changes and policy indecision — most notoriously on border security, memorably captured by John Howard as “flip-flopping”.

When it is your enemies who most effectively define what you are, you know you’re not much.

The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years were, as the name suggests, likewise defined by backflip after backflip again on borders and even more infamously on climate.

In opposition after that, Bill Shorten did an admirable job to simply hold the party together, as is often and rightly said, yet that in itself says something more.

Party unity ought to be the starting baseline from which Labor is able to pursue what it stands for, not an end in itself.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrives at the Labor Party State conference. Picture: Monique Harmer

As it turned out, Labor’s policy agenda this time was too cluttered and too ambitious to the point where a Coalition that had also been torn apart by revolving leadership battles and was in an absolute shambles was nonetheless able to pull off a victory that even the bloke who won described as a miracle.

This brings us, more than a quarter of a century later, to 2022.

Anthony Albanese rightly pursued a cautious small-target strategy during the election campaign and then had a great first six months fixing the Coalition’s many mistakes.

The fact that he could blame just about everything on the former government didn’t hurt either.

And that’s all well and good — they don’t call it the honeymoon period for nothing.

But just like our young sweethearts in The Graduate, that honeymoon is now over.

Anthony Albanese is now Dustin Hoffman sitting at the back of the bus with Elaine Robinson, who — in this increasingly tortured analogy — is the Australian electorate.

Actors Dustin Hoffman & Anne Bancroft in 1967 film "The Graduate".

Where he decides to take her next and whether or not she agrees to go with him is what will make or break the government’s fortunes.

This sense of a juncture is no doubt why Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ esoteric 6000 word essay in The Monthly — a niche publication for the urban intelligentsia — had such an explosive impact.

There is a long, if regrettable, tradition of Labor leaders penning long-form think pieces for The Monthly to sound erudite and intellectual for urban elites and so Chalmers’ contribution should have been utterly unremarkable.

But the fact that there is still so little that has been laid out in the government’s big picture economic agenda — scare campaigns on IR and climate notwithstanding — meant that whole armies on both sides of politics were combing through every word searching for meaning like a soothsayer staring at gizzards.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers MP. Picture: Aaron Francis

And yet the whole piece was so lofty and so clearly filled with language to make inner-city lefties feel better while never actually committing to their knuckle-dragging economic policies that the end result was everyone saw either whatever they wanted to see or whatever they were most scared of.

As one Labor insider told me: “I’ve read every piece of commentary on Chalmers’ essay. Apart from being a 6000 word mess, its real ability is to upset everyone from the left, right or centre. That’s what happens when you actively say nothing.”

But this is not to directly attack Chalmers, far from it.

For most in the Labor Right, including this figure, he is the great white hope — the heir apparent to Albanese who will ensure the party sticks to the sensible centre.

The frustration is that even though Albanese and Chalmers have done so much good work in holding this line internally — and doing the right things on the national and international stage — there seems to be an incurable tendency to play footsies with the fashionable left.

Bill Shorten briefly fell prey to this unfortunate disease and it probably cost him the prime ministership.

These days he is a changed man and doing phenomenal work on myGov and the NDIS.

Likewise the fallout from Chalmers’ touchy-feely thought bubble in The Monthly will no doubt set him back on the straight and narrow.

And the next time Labor wants to articulate its big economic vision, it will tell the whole nation, instead of just Northcote and Newtown.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Labor must stick to the straight and narrow