James Campbell: Anthony Albanese and Labor slide into danger territory

The Labor Party is meant to be there to do things, change things, improve things. But now the Voice is done and dusted there’s not much sign our PM has much of an idea what he wants to do, writes James Campbell.

Suddenly a question which only weeks ago seemed silly is starting to be debated seriously in Canberra: Could this government be a oncer?

To be sure every first term government since Bob Hawke’s has been through a near-death experience at its first attempt at re-election but all of them have ended up squeaking through.

After a horror week that saw Peter Dutton legislating from the Opposition leader’s office on immigration – the Labor Party’s least favourite policy area – only weeks after he flogged the government on its cherished Voice referendum, the idea of him as PM isn’t the crazy idea it seemed six months ago.

But even before things stated to Go Wrong for Albo and his team there were always reasons to think getting back with a majority was going to be hard. The first reason is that, although he might have strode the political stage like a colossus in the first year he was in office, it does well to remember that fewer people voted for him in 2022 than Bill Shorten in 2019.

That’s right – although Scott Morrison got smashed last May, the Labor Party’s primary vote also fell.

That alone ought to have reminded us of the precarious nature of the new government’s hold on office.

Anthony Albanese is no guarantee of winning a second term. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And that’s before you get to the fact that after adding Aston to its pile in April, the Government still only has 78 seats out of 151.

To be sure Albo could almost certainly rely not only on the four Greens but most of the other 12 crossbenchers elected last year.

For months it has been clear that, although they would never admit it, Peter Dutton and the Coalition have been operating on a two-term strategy for returning to government.

To win an outright majority the Liberals will almost certainly have to win back at least part of the Teal Land

But given he has not been courting or even visiting much of it, except to fundraise, it is clear Dutton regards this as a problem for another day.

The job for the next election will be to win enough seats in Tasmania, WA, regional NSW and suburban Sydney and Melbourne to push Albo into minority, a situation likely to trigger the PTSD of veterans of the Gillard government.

And that’s without the input of the AEC, which before the next election will redraw the electoral boundaries of NSW and Victoria. All that has been known for months.

What has changed has been the dawning realisation since the Voice went down that far from distracting the government from all the other things it ought to have been talking about, the space the Voice was taking up in the national conversation was actually hiding the fact this is a government that doesn’t really have much in the way of an agenda.

OK, that’s not quite true, it does have things it’s doing, such as rewiring the nation and investing in skills, not to mention trying to fix messes like the NDIS.

The problem is this is stuff that will take a long time to come to fruition and much of it you’ll struggle to notice, even if it all goes to plan.

It’s not really clear what Labor is planning to offer up to us at the next election in order to convince us we ought to give it another three years.

Now there’s nothing new in governments going to an election without much of an agenda.

It worked for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg in 2019, though it goes without saying they got smashed when they tried to repeat the trick last year. But just being there to keep the Labor Party out is what the Liberal Party exists for – and a very fine reason to exist it is, in my opinion.

The Labor Party is meant to be there to do things, change things, improve things.

But now the Voice is done and dusted there’s not much sign our Chauncey Gardiner of a PM has much of an idea what he wants to do with the time he’s got left in office.