Aussies’ memo to PM: Stop swanning around the globe

With Australians in the middle of a cost of living crisis, everyone from renters to restaurateurs has urged Prime Anthony Albanese to stop gallivanting on the world stage and focus on fixing our problems at home.

Globetrotting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been urged to focus on the home front instead of “gallivanting” around on the world stage by a range of groups representing everyone from renters to restaurateurs who claim the economy needs his urgent attention.

The calls came amid increasingly loud alarm bells warning about the parlous state of the economy, with nearly half of Aussie adults reporting that they have been unable to pay their rent or mortgage over the past year and were forced to skip meals or healthcare to make ends meet.

“Anthony Albanese has left the hospitality industry dying of hunger and has certainly not focused attention on the cost of doing business,” said Wes Lambert, CEO of the Australian Restaurant & Cafe Association, and said that restaurants were hurting due to energy prices and uncertainty around migration rules.

“The hospitality industry would have expected the prime minister to be at bat rather than gallivanting around making deals that may or may not come to fruition.

Hospitality has been one of the hardest hit economic sectors in recent times.

CreditorWatch’s October Business Risk Index (BRI), which reveals business failures are at its highest rate since peak of pandemic in October 2020.

China's President Xi Jinping and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Picture: Eric Lee/The New York Times via AP, Pool

The average failure rate for Australian businesses now sits at 5.04%, having climbed from 3.97% in October last year, just below its previous high of 5.08% in October 2020 at the peak of the pandemic.

But the food and beverage category recorded the highest failure rate of all industries in October, increasing to 8.5% on a rolling 12-month basis from 8.3% in the 12 months to September.

That means more than one in 12 food & beverage businesses that operated a year ago in Australia, no longer do.

Daniel Wild, Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, noted that US president Joe Biden once cancelled a trip to Australia to attend to a budget crisis in Washington, and said the prime minister should consider that example.

“Australians understand, from time to time, the Prime Minister needs to travel to represent Australia’s interests abroad.”

“However, it seems Anthony Albanese is desperate to escape the situation he and his government has created at home.”

“With the cost-of-living crisis hitting household budgets, with housing shortages, record energy bills and Australians are getting poorer each day, is it any wonder the Prime Minister wants to escape the mess?”

Anthony Albanese has been in Brazil while more than half of the Australian population is struggling to pay their bills. Picture: Wagner Meier/Getty Images)

“For all of President Biden’s shortcomings, at least he showed leadership in cancelling his trip to Australia in 2023 when his country faced a budget crisis.”

Leo Patterson Ross, CEO of the Tenants Union of NSW, said that while the prime minister wasn’t “technically” needed in parliament “courage is … needed to make the changes we need to see.”

Mr Ross said that this included “significantly higher and sustained government investment in genuinely affordable housing and serious conversations about the way housing is managed and provided, including pricing.”

The Scanlon Mapping Social Cohesion 2024 Report, which tracks views on key social cohesion issues, found that financial stress was widespread, with 41 per cent of respondents saying they were either ‘poor or struggling to pay bills’ or ‘just getting along’, with an even higher proportion among renters (61%) and young adults aged 25 to 34 (50%).

The survey found that the economy was still the ‘biggest problem facing our country today’ for almost half of Australians (cited by 49%, compared to 48% in 2023), followed by housing issues and affordability (cited by 15%, the same proportion as last year).

Bondi renter Reece Charlton, 22, said that the prime minister’s travel “feels really tone-deaf.”

“While we’re all struggling with rent and the rising cost of living, he’s off travelling the world.”

“Even if the Summit has positives, it feels like he’s ignoring the crisis we’re all left to deal with here.”

“If things were improving, people might not mind as much, but everything’s getting worse, and it seems like his attention is always elsewhere,” he said.

Speaking earlier from South America, the prime minister said the travel was “in Australia’s national interest, because the outcomes here will support jobs at home and economic activity in Australia. That’s why our engagement is important. One in four of Australian jobs is trade dependent and therefore our engagement here has been very much focused on what is in Australia’s national interest.”