James Campbell: Laid-back Albo the last thing voters want as living standards crumble

If the Albanese government wants to be re-elected and not consigned to one term much has to change in its approach to running the country and it starts from the top.

A friend living overseas messaged me this week to ask whether I thought the government’s present doldrums were just the standard mid-first-term blues or is it really in trouble. To be honest I could argue it either way.

The reasons why Albo might be a ‘oncer’ aren’t hard to list, starting with the fact he got fewer votes than Bill Shorten, and the lack of an obvious agenda. Against that, though every first term government since Bob Hawke’s has struggled at its first time back at the polls, Australia hasn’t thrown one out after only one term since 1932.

Then there’s the undeniable fact that compared to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison ministries, this mob has been incredibly well-disciplined.

When a Labor backbencher was quoted recently mouthing off about the Government’s leadership, a number of people remarked to me how refreshing it was that normal service seemed to be resuming after an unusual period in which Labor MPs have not only not been slagging each other off in public, they have, on deepest background and not for attribution, been saying things that are utterly useless to working journalists like “this is a really harmonious group”.

Could this Albanese government be a ‘oncer’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

I’d be surprised if it’s something political scientists have turned their minds to much, but right now, the thing I’d most like to know before answering my friend’s question, is: how much is it worth to electors for a government not to be at war with itself? What we do know for sure from recent history is if the voters have decided they don’t much like a party’s leader it doesn’t matter what else it has going for it.

In 2019 Scott Morrison got the chocolates because he wasn’t Bill Shorten. Last year Albo saluted because he wasn’t Morrison. Until the recent Voice debacle I think most political commentators had assumed that while it was clear he was no Bob Hawke, Albo would still on balance be a positive for a government – certainly compared to Peter Dutton.

But reading the comments from soft voters in last week’s focus groups by pollster RedBridge, I’m starting to wonder. Because if they’re anything to go by, Jeez, we’re a fickle bunch.

“He doesn’t come across as strong. He seems like he wants to be liked but without making strong decisions.”

Worst of all: “He’s not a leader, he’s a follower. He’s a beta-male.”

The cause of this discontent was simple, the deterioration in voters’ living standards, summed up by the punter who said, “I just don’t see a lot of action on cost of living pressures”.

From this it would appear that it may be Albo’s political misfortune to have come to office by presenting an easygoing laid-back persona to the public, a persona which was fine 18 months ago, but 12 interest rate hikes later is starting to give them the shits.

The reality of course is that in the short term there’s bugger all this government, any government, can do about inflation and interest rates, so it’s important that Albo doesn’t screw up the things that are under his control. Which is why the messy response to the High Court decision to free dozens of killers, rapists and child-molesters has been so damaging. For 18 months the Prime Minister has made a virtue of the fact that, no micromanager, his ministers have been left alone to do their thing.

And for most of the time this masterful inactivity has been fine.

But when things go wrong, leaving things to a political greenhorn like Clare O’Neil doesn’t look grown-up and Hawkie-like, it looks slack. That Albo has grasped that the political weather has changed isn’t clear, if he had I doubt he’d have been posting pictures of himself in his office last week in a Radio Birdman t-shirt.

Yes, I know, he does it every year for World-Crap-Australian-Bands-Day or whatever it was, but that was in happier times before people in focus groups started calling him a beta male.

Originally published as James Campbell: Laid-back Albo the last thing voters want as living standards crumble