The Albanese narrative risks crashing, from earnest worker to frivolous flyer

Last week, something happened in the UK that has never happened here: a female treasurer (or chancellor of the exchequer) handed down a budget.

Rachel Reeves announced that private schools would have to pay more tax, as would businesses and the wealthy, with more tax coming from sharemarket profits and inheritance. The money raised from the rich would be given to everyone else: more teachers, more money into health, bracket creep addressed.

It’s a classic budget strategy: go hard in your first budget by declaring your opponents left you a “black hole”. But it’s also sharply ideological, leaving no doubt where Britain’s Labour government stands, and the headlines, all about the wealthy and businesses being targeted, told the story clearly. “At this budget the Labour government made our choices. They’re not easy choices … and we now need to take the fight to the Tories,” Reeves declared, bringing to mind Anthony Albanese’s famous phrase, “I like fighting Tories”.

Credit: Illustration: Joe Benke

The budget may not work; some early reviews of its economic potential were pessimistic. And it may yet fail politically. But it is at least interesting, given how far it is from anything Albanese’s government has yet attempted.

Remember those early declarations about the important “conversations” that would have to be had with the Australian people? In the past fortnight the government got around to killing off another one of those difficult conversations when it ruled out changing negative gearing or abolishing the capital gains tax discount any time soon.

Of course, all this may be justified. You can make arguments, as the government has, about such changes not actually doing much to boost housing supply. And you can make a very convincing political case that there could be no worse time than the present moment to attempt such “conversations” with Australian voters – that trying such things with inflation still on people’s minds would be to kill off any such ideas for the foreseeable future, and perhaps to kill off the government as well.

That doesn’t change the fact that, for the most part, those discussions haven’t happened.

Which brings us to yet another week of the government’s first term being wasted. This time the focus was on upgrades Albanese has received over the years from Qantas, and on claims, which the prime minister has denied, that he “liaised” with Alan Joyce, the former head of Qantas, directly about his travel.

You can perhaps, if you squint a little, understand Albanese’s frustration. He has, unlike many of his colleagues, steered clear of other ways both wealth and conflicts of interest can be created, such as owning shares. Yet here he was being pinged for getting something quite a lot of other politicians get.

But that would be to miss the point. The difference between this and previous expenses scandals is that politics has changed in two ways: one outside of Albanese’s control, and one largely his doing.

The first change is the widening gap – and the growing recognition of the gap – between the elites and everyone else. I don’t use that term, “elites”, lightly. That’s because of the way it has been appropriated by the populist right. But it is a reasonable term here, capturing not only a different lifestyle but a different mindset. As is obvious from the persistent claims that people on $200,000 and over couldn’t possibly afford to pay more tax, the rich in this country just do not understand how rich they are.

And flights, as it happens, make the distinction visible in a way rare in our society: we even call the different fare groups “classes”! Which is pretty much what they are. Members of the Chairman’s Lounge, meanwhile, are another class entirely: the rich and powerful on nodding terms with each other as they criss-cross the nation.

The idea the country is run by a rich and powerful group of people who make decisions on behalf of the rest of us was once the domain of conspiracy theorists; more and more it is an accepted description of the way Australia (like other rich countries) operates.

The second change has accompanied Albanese’s particular style of governing. He has sought, ever since becoming leader, to impart an impression of quietly going about his work: doing what needs to be done without fanfare. For a while that worked. Then it didn’t.

It’s probably too late in the election cycle to do a Rachel Reeves and make a dramatic splash. Which leaves Albanese with one realistic option: leaning heavily on his early image as a quiet, competent worker. The great problem with the Qantas story – and the story of him buying a $4.3 million house, or the one about him attending Kyle Sandilands’ wedding, and so forth – is not that it contradicts his working-class background (it doesn’t) or reveals a love of freebies (a common trait). It’s the risk it carries of making him look frivolous: essentially the opposite of the serious, humble, steady public servant.

If it was obvious to the vast majority of Australians what he was doing to help them, all this would be so much chaff. But it isn’t.

On Sunday, with a series of education announcements, Albanese seemed newly determined to change that. There will have to be a lot more of that.

In politics, pain rarely comes from just one source. That’s why it’s no good complaining that the Qantas story is a beat-up, or that the criticism of buying a house is unfairly personal, or that inflation is a wicked problem – all of which might be true. The problem for the Albanese government is that in the collection of problems it faces, too many come from factors squarely within its control: it has no overwhelming policy achievements to point to, no story to tell the public about what it’s doing; it has a consistent inability to get its lines straight and deal with negative stories quickly, and a lack of discipline.

The difficulty for Albanese is that, slowly, this combination is beginning to tell a damning story about his government that, at this stage, feels more persuasive than any he has offered to date.

Sean Kelly is a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

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