Anthony Albanese outlines his plan for Sydney as by-election looms
A manufacturing hub at the new Western Sydney airport to turbocharge jobs is high on Anthony Albanese’s post-pandemic agenda — but first he has a by-election to fight, in his first test since becoming Opposition Leader.
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A manufacturing hub set around the new Western Sydney airport to turbocharge jobs is high on Anthony Albanese’s post-pandemic agenda — but voters won’t get any policy detail until 2021.
The $5.3 billion airport is at least six years from opening, but, in an exclusive interview with The Saturday Telegraph, the Labor leader said it was front of mind in his post-COVID crisis economic plan.
“Badgerys Creek is not just about the runways, it’s about the aerotropolis and what can happen in terms of advanced manufacturing and science-based job creation in Western Sydney,” he said.
“The Science Park is an essential part of that, and will produce thousands of jobs.”
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Mr Albanese said the pandemic had highlighted the futility of setting policies without knowing what the economic situation will be come election time.
He said he would not repeat past mistakes, a reference to the enormous platform of costly policies Bill Shorten took to the 2019 election. “We had six years of policy announcement without revisiting, or recalibrating based on changed circumstances,” he said.
Mr Albanese denied the party would miss the opportunity to seize the momentum for bold reform, insisting specific policies will not roll out until after they are vetted at Labor’s National Conference in December.
In the wake of COVID-19, he said Australia must get better at commercialising and taking advantage of its “good ideas”. He would not reveal how his jobs plan would fit with a zero net emissions target by 2050, arguing the two were not mutually exclusive.
A thriving and vibrant Sydney with shorter commutes, booming business hubs and better urban planning is central to his vision for the “global gateway” to Australia.
As a Sydney resident, Mr Albanese said he was very conscious of the challenges the city faced, particularly in the rapidly expanding western suburbs.
“Public transport is absolutely critical, for example with Badgerys Creek. It’s good that the railway has been brought forward … but it’s also got to go to southwest Sydney.”
The lifelong Sydney local said that where a person was born was simply an “accident of history”, but he conceded that his upbringing had informed his view of how cities could be used to benefit not just its residents but the entire country.
“Obviously I’m more familiar with Sydney than anywhere else, and that impacts my thinking,” he says.
“I’m very conscious about issues like urban congestion, infrastructure and planning.
“Sydney’s natural assets are also part of its challenge.”
Growing up in council housing in Camperdown, barely two suburbs from his current home in Marrickville, Sydney’s inner west is Mr Albanese’s home turf.
But he’s aware the lives of those in his beloved electorate of Grayndler are very different from the millions of people who call Sydney home.
“I’m passionate about ensuring you shouldn’t know someone’s income by just looking at their postcode,” he says.
The city’s booming population, tangled road network and rapidly sprawling suburbs in the west were challenges a federal government shouldn’t shy away from, he said.
Mr Albanese said there was a “historic view” in the Coalition that cities were the domain of state governments, but “the trust is that a national government that represents its people, has to be engaged in our cities”.
“The (building) cladding issue in Sydney and the issue of the quality of some of the developments — some of that is a federal responsibility,” he says.
He agrees that helping Sydney will have benefits for Australia.
“Sydney is the global gateway to Australia,” he says. “The Sydney Airport is an important national asset.”
But his first electoral test since becoming Labor leader more than a year ago will take place in a very different setting.
Voters in the hamlets of the NSW south coast and the vast agricultural region inland stretching to the ACT border — a far cry from the latte lovers in inner western Sydney — will be assessing Mr Albanese’s performance.
The Eden-Monaro by-election, sparked by the retirement of locally popular Labor MP Mike Kelly presents several challenges for Mr Albanese.
But if his almost constant weekly trips to different corners of the electorate are any indication, he’s not taking anything for granted, despite a sitting government not gaining a seat in a by-election for a century.
The region has suffered through years of drought, bore the brunt of the summer bushfires and, like the rest of Australia, is now facing economic uncertainty due to COVID-19.
Mr Albanese fears many of those who have been hurt the most are being “left behind”.
Small business operators, who through their own sort of “accident of history”, have been left struggling to make ends meet.
“This government is good at big announcements … what they haven’t actually been good at is actual delivery (of funds),” he says.
He avoids saying whether he thinks this message is getting through to voters more broadly.
“I think people on the ground … (know what) the government are saying (on) the big figures, but they know that on the ground the money isn’t flowing,” he says.
As COVID-19 restrictions ease and parliamentary sitting weeks resume, it’s been helpful the Eden-Monaro boundary is so close to Canberra.
Less than a month from the by-election, Mr Albanese and a string of Morrison government ministers have frequently taken the opportunity to drive 20 minutes out of Canberra for an early morning press conference with the respective candidates over NSW border in Queanbeyan.
Mr Albanese is confident his pick in Bega, mayor Kristy McBain, is the right choice. But even if Labor retains the seat, it only means the party avoids a step backwards on the road
to government.
With five of the last seven Australian prime ministers calling Sydney home, the track record of electoral success for leaders from the city speaks for itself.
But it is Mr Albanese’s home city that presented one of the most troubling results for Labor at the 2019 election. In its once safe heartland in Western Sydney the swing against the party was about 3.5 per cent — almost triple the national average.
A line-up of model planes and an NRL ball commemorating his beloved Rabbitohs’ 2014 premiership are some of the items among the clutter of Sydney memorabilia that fills his parliamentary office.
With a federal election not due until 2022, Mr Albanese will have to find a balance between the city and country to break his own side’s near decade-long premiership drought.