Albanese’s first reshuffle is a reminder of earlier Labor missteps | Samantha Maiden
Sending in Tony Burke to clean up a mess is a tried and true Labor tactic but lost opportunities in the PM’s first reshuffle will be closely watched, writes Samantha Maiden.
Opinion
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Anthony Albanese rolled the dice on a cabinet reshuffle this week in a tacit admission that the ministers dealing with immigration and asylum seekers were not up to scratch.
The triage response he chose to implement was not original or new, but a Back to the Future move worthy of the DeLorean time machine.
Sending in Tony Burke to clean up a policy mess in this area is a tried and true tactic. It was exactly what Kevin Rudd tried in 2013 after he rolled Julia Gillard.
In June of that year, Tony Burke was appointed as the Minister for Immigration, Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship, a position he held for less than three months before Labor was defeated in the 2013 federal election.
Previously, Burke had railed against dumping desperate people in Nauru.
But on being appointed by Kevin Rudd he offered a series of mea culpa, telling Lateline his opposition to offshore processing at that time was wrong.
“I had a view which was wrong, which was that you could choose settings, keep them in place and they would deal with all of the changes in international situations,” he said.
“The view that we should never do [offshore processing] turned out to be wrong.”
After witnessing the damage caused to Labor over this issue for decades, Burke is an astute choice and is highly unlikely to be as ineffective as Andrew Giles.
However, it’s a reminder of the strategic missteps the Prime Minister made from the start in formulating his ministry after the last election – appointing the inexperienced Giles and relegating strong media performers including Tanya Plibersek to low-profile ministries.
That was another opportunity lost in his first reshuffle.
Appointing proven performers to big jobs even if he perceives them as a leadership threat? It seems Plibersek can forget about it.
But the fact remains that the biggest threat to the government remains the economy and housing.
The decision to send in one of the ministers under pressure – former Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil – to tackle that issue will be closely watched.
Home buyers were reassured on Wednesday that an August interest rate rise is less likely after inflation figures showed inflation largely on track with Reserve Bank forecasts.
But that doesn’t mean that relief is on the way anytime soon.
Some economists believe the next move by the RBA is likely to be cut rather than a rise, although homeowners may need to wait until February to get it.
Other economists maintain that while inflation remains “sticky” and slow to decline the RBA will continue to press pause, leaving homeowners under pressure.
The Treasurer Jim Chalmers is at pains to insist that underlying inflation continues to be moderate in the economy.
“In terms of our cost-of-living relief, a tax cut for every taxpayer is an important way that we are helping people deal with these cost of living pressures,’’ he said.
“And the reason it doesn’t put additional inflation into the system is because the total spend on these tax cuts is about the same as the tax cuts that they replaced.
“But just as importantly, and we saw this in the ABS data today, our policies on energy bill relief, on cheaper early childhood education and on rent assistance are actually putting downward pressure on prices in our economy.
“And that’s not the opinion of the government.
“That’s the facts released today by the Australian Bureau of Stats.
“So whether it’s our two big surpluses, whether it is the responsible way we’re managing the economy or the design of our cost-of-living help, what the ABS has shown here, particularly in relation to cost of living help, is that we are helping, not hampering the fight against inflation.
“That’s one of the reasons why it’s come off so substantially since we were elected.”
It’s true that the tax cuts that started arriving in voters pay packets this month will provide some relief, but not enough.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that headline inflation increased by a full percentage point in the June quarter, taking the annual rate of inflation to 3.8 per cent.
The underlying measure of inflation rose by 0.8 per cent in the quarter, bringing the annual rate down to 3.9 per cent. Slowly, ever so slowly, this is the sixth consecutive quarterly fall in this measure. Rents climbed by 2 per cent.
The delayed relief in terms of the RBA cutting rates makes an early election this year less likely.
The Prime Minister’s big hope and gamble will be that mortgage relief arrives just in time for a 2025 election.
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