Joe Hildebrand: Albanese must be wary of breaking his election promise
With seven short statements, Anthony Albanese saved millions of Australians thousands of dollars and his own prime ministership in the process, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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With seven short statements on Sunday, Anthony Albanese saved millions of Australians thousands of dollars and his own prime ministership in the process. I guess it really is the lucky number.
Faced with repeated questioning from the assembled press pack, the PM finally gave an emphatic and unequivocal guarantee that Labor would stand by its commitment to deliver the previous government’s final round of tax cuts in 2024.
And thank God he did. Had he not, the broken tax promise would have been as toxic for his Labor government as the carbon tax was for the previous one and Paul Keating’s infamously abandoned “L-A-W” tax cuts were for the one before that.
The only question is that given such broken pledges brought the last two Labor governments undone, why Albanese allowed his government to swing in the breeze for so long, allowing everyone from the left-wing unions to his right-wing treasurer to publicly spitball on the policy.
The left-dominated ACTU was among the most vocal enthusiasts for the PM to break his promise, apparently oblivious to the political consequences. Maybe they really do prefer opposition to government.
After all it was the ACTU’s prominent “Change the Rules” campaign that helped cripple Bill Shorten’s chances at the last federal election by fuelling the perception of Labor as a radical proponent of the politics of envy, aided by the party’s own undergraduate class-war rhetoric about “the top end of town”.
As a result Labor lost the unlosable election and it was left to Albanese to pick up the pieces and rebuild the party’s credibility and trust with mainstream aspirational Australia. Critical to this was Labor’s support of the Coalition’s tax relief package.
And in case anyone on the left failed to notice, it worked. Albanese won. And he won with that pledge as a key part of his mandate. And whether you agree with the tax cuts or not, that is all that matters.
Indeed, it is passing strange that the hard left keeps banging on about the will of the people and yet is perfectly happy to disregard it whenever it doesn’t match their pre-existing ideology. The carbon tax is the perfect example of this and proof of the price to be paid.
Moreover, the Green and teal left keep banging on ad nauseam about honesty and integrity in government and yet are actively urging a newly-elected prime minister to break a critical election promise to the Australian people. The hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Indeed, while we are on the subject of hypocrisy, it is almost exquisitely nauseating to hear the bleats from the Greens about the rich and privileged while their leader cavorts in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge and reportedly has a taste for flying business class too.
No wonder Adam Bandt is calling for more taxes from the rich — they’re paying for him to sit up at the pointy end of the plane.
And so maybe Albanese was simply feeding the hard left enough rope to get hoisted by its own petard — give them a taste of the outrage that would flow and the chance for their pig-ignorance or rank hypocrisy to be exposed — before he swung back in and cauterised the wound.
I like to think so anyway.
His treasurer on the right, however, cuts a far more rational figure, concerned about responsible economic management rather than class envy. This is, of course, the prerogative of every treasurer: to say no to everything in pursuit of the Holy Grail of a surplus. You might call it black-line fever.
But it is also the role of the Prime Minister to take a broader view than just the Budget bottom line. After all, the stain of any broken promises will be on the legacy of the Albanese government, not the Chalmers government.
And again, all of this is true regardless of whether the tax cuts are a good idea or not or whether you agree with them or not. It simply doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that Labor made a firm promise to uphold them and the fact that it did so reluctantly only makes it all the more vital it is upheld. The test of a leader’s character is not whether he can keep the easy promises, it’s whether he can keep the hard ones.
And if Albanese can hold fast on this promise then he will have proven the strength of his leadership and forged a compact with the Australian people that no amount of political finagling can buy or break.
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