The Albanese report card: A grim year but don’t write him off

One decision stands out from all others in what has been a grim year for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – and it holds a clue as to what he may do next.

Albanese ends 2024 in a dire position for a leader who must face the people in just a few short months: the economy is weak, the federal budget is back in deficit and his personal popularity is down.

But his allies name his move to overhaul personal tax cuts in January, delivering bigger benefits to millions of workers, as the best example of what he did right this year.

Albanese began the year with a bold move by breaking an election pledge to leave the “stage three” personal tax cuts intact after years of argument about a tax package that had been written into law by the Coalition five years earlier.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton railed against the Labor changes and called for an election to be held to decide the matter, only to retreat when polls showed that most Australians liked the idea of a $313 billion package with bigger tax cuts for more workers on low and middle incomes.

Albanese won the policy and the politics. He took a risk and it paid off. The tax cuts went ahead as scheduled in July with the Labor brand stamped all over them.

If there was a reward from the electorate, however, it evaporated before the summer was over. Just as Albanese seemed to be taking the initiative, the Labor primary vote went into reverse. It fell from 35 per cent in December to 34 per cent in February and 32 per cent in March.

This became the pattern of the year. Nothing seemed to work for Albanese. His readiness to do radio interviews, while Dutton avoided scrutiny, did not appear to create a lasting bond with listeners. His speaking style, with mangled sentences instead of sharp messages, made it harder for him to cut through.

Worse, the government never seemed to galvanise Australians with a sense of political mission. It unveiled more assistance for childcare, an age limit for social media, subsidies for energy bills, a wage boost for aged care workers and changes to prescriptions to make medicines cheaper. And it drifted down in the polls.

“Labor and Albanese appear so dour, a government of grinding necessity,” says Paul Strangio, the emeritus professor of politics at Monash University. “The sense of missed opportunity is all the greater since they are in office at a time when the public shows signs of being fed up with business as usual. Albanese doesn’t appear to know how to harness or manage that sentiment.”

Strangio highlighted this challenge in an essay for Inside Story in September and says there has been no shift in the pattern in the final months of the year. “Growth in office has been a hallmark of many of Australia’s best prime ministers,” he says. “Albanese is yet to demonstrate this.”

While Albanese was elected to parliament in 1996 and watched John Howard govern for 11 years, there is no sign he is learning a lesson from the Howard era. “When Howard was in trouble during his first term, he drew upon his deep-seated convictions to strike out in a bold direction,” Strangio says. The result was a high-stakes election on the GST.

​Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold hands for the G20 group photo in Rio de Janeiro in November.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

On international affairs, however, Albanese has moved easily into overseas meetings and global summits. He lowered the temperature with China, resumed leadership meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and helped restart exports of beef, barley and lobster. This added billions of dollars to Australian industry.

There was no economic dividend, and possibly no political payoff, from his effort to secure the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the United States and the five remaining members of the Bali Nine from Indonesia. Even so, he pursued the talks to bring Australians home.

The defeat of the Indigenous Voice in October 2023 still reverberates around Australian politics – and polling shows a slide in Labor support from that moment – but the government points to other achievements in this term, such as legislating a climate target to cut greenhouse gas emissions, to counter claims it has too little to show for its time in office.

One minister says Australians will back the prime minister when the election arrives because of his personal qualities and what he offers in hard policy. “We are closer to making sure voters see this as a choice between Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese,” he says. Labor strategists say this is not just about what Albanese has delivered during this term, but about the “forward offer” of policies for the next three years.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In this assessment, from those closest to Albanese, the prime minister is just getting started in winning voters with new policy measures and attacking Dutton on Coalition vulnerabilities, such as its nuclear energy plan.

But Albanese has been subject to relentless attacks from left and right while trying to hold the middle ground on the Middle East. Greens leader Adam Bandt accused him of complicity in genocide over the war in Gaza, while Dutton accused him of deserting Israel and being weak on antisemitism. The conservative media picked up on the claim and rammed it home.

When arsonists committed what police called a “likely act of terrorism” at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in early December, Albanese condemned the antisemitism in a statement and on radio. But he was scheduled to fly to Perth and did not divert the aircraft to Melbourne, which meant he took several days to visit the destruction and stand with the Jewish community.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne on Tuesday, December 10. Credit: Justin McManus

The symbolic show of support seemed too slow, even if the actual support was strong. Albanese gave no quarter to protesters who called antisemitic chants, and he made sure that laws were passed to ban the “doxxing” used to reveal personal details of Jewish Australians. He arranged more funding to protect synagogues and schools.

This was not enough, however, when the government was infuriating Israel by voting at the United Nations for a ceasefire in Gaza in a motion that did not condemn Hamas, listed by Australian authorities as a terrorist group.

“I don’t subscribe to the view that he has been weak on antisemitism,” says Strangio. “To me, this is an idea prosecuted by dogmatic elements – especially the Murdoch media – and doesn’t allow for the diabolical challenge it has been for the government to strike a position that doesn’t aggravate the polarisation of community opinion but maintains some degree of social cohesion.”

Australians, meanwhile, felt their household incomes shrinking in real terms. Although wages moved ahead of inflation in recent quarters, they remain down in real terms since the election. With the Reserve Bank seeking to reduce inflation, the government could not risk spending more money to help voters. The pressure on households generated pain in the polls.

Voters are clearly sceptical about Albanese. Thirty-one per cent said in early December that he was doing a good job, but 57 per cent said he was doing a poor job. His net rating in the Resolve Political Monitor, minus 26 per cent, was four times worse in December than it had been in February.

The verdict is more savage from some of his own Labor colleagues. “He’s tough on the weak issues and weak on the tough issues,” says one caucus member. The complaint is that Albanese can take a strong line on something that is secondary to most Australians – like the release of the last of the Bali Nine – but struggle on the problems that will decide the election. Most of all, the cost of living.

Cautious in choosing his battles before the election, Albanese risks leaving voters with the sense that he does not know what to fight for.

“I like Anthony Albanese, and I regard him as a friend, but I find his government underwhelming,” says independent MP Andrew Wilkie. “And that would be the view of many of my constituents. It is fair to add that politics in general has become underwhelming. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Peter Dutton is any better.”

Albanese tried through the year to outline practical policies – including a rush in December to pass dozens of laws through parliament. This included the Help to Buy scheme to offer $5.6 billion in federal equity for young people buying their first homes, as well as the Build to Rent scheme to attract investment into new homes.

Also in December came the $1 billion early education fund for childcare and the “three-day guarantee” to make it easier for new parents to receive childcare subsidies. The Coalition opposes the move, which could help Albanese in a cost-of-living battle.

Albanese can point to other measures that help with costs. The changes to student loans will help young Australians by reducing their debts by $3 billion, with the promise of more change if the government holds power at the election. Again, the Coalition opposes the move.

This leaves some observers wanting a bolder vision. Saul Eslake, an independent economist, says Australia needs ambitious reform to lift living standards over the long term. Dutton has no significant economic policy, other than his nuclear plan, and Albanese is not revealing anything too risky.

“I sort of despair, really, that the government has shown no inclination to argue for an ambitious second-term reform agenda,” says Eslake. “And it’s almost too late now. Albanese seems not to have the vision or the rhetorical capacity to do this stuff.” Leaders are not only judged on what they do, but what they choose not to do.

A shadow has fallen over Anthony Albanese’s prime ministership in 2024.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Will the prime minister lift his fortunes after a difficult year? Watch for some policy moves early in 2025 to convince voters to stick with him rather than take a risk with Dutton. The Labor strategy seeks to copy the approach taken at the last election: to kick with the wind in the final quarter.

One of the prime minister’s allies says the critics of today forget the mistakes of the critics from three years ago, when Albanese was not given much credit for lining up a victory that swept Labor into power. “On the big calls he was proven right,” he says. This year has been no triumph for Albanese. But the contest is not over.

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