Joe Hildebrand: It’s time the Labor government grew up

The Anthony Albanese government has staggered through its worst week since its election and most of the wounds are self inflicted, writes Joe Hildebrand.

When I was a student newspaper editor in the glory days of the mid-1990s we were sent other student papers from all over the country.

The Sydney Uni one was my favourite in one particular year.

It was outrageous, hilarious and fearless and it featured a regular no-holds-barred section that carried the motto “IF YOU DON’T WANT IT PRINTED, DON’T LET IT HAPPEN”.

As the Albanese government staggers through its worst week since being elected, these sage words have been flashing on the inside of my skull.

Hopefully by the end of this column they will be flashing in Albo’s as well.

It’s a pretty simple concept but as usual I will spell it out anyway: Whatever decision you make or whatever action you take is never measured by your intentions. It is judged by others.

Thus a handy rule of thumb for anyone in public life would be to consider not how any decision or action appears in their mind’s eye, but how it would appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

The new Governor-General Samantha Mostyn will get a $200k pay rise. Picture: Supplied

Take, as one screamingly painful example, the decision to award the incoming Governor-General a $200,000 a year pay rise.

Those in the government who sanctioned the bill – be it the GG, the PM, or the MP forced to table this exploding cigar – surely had their reasons.

There was some convoluted explanation about how it was necessary because she wouldn’t get a military pension – because she wasn’t in the military – and thus they were front-end loading a bunch of money she wouldn’t get after her time as GG had finished, which of course she wouldn’t have been entitled to anyway had she not been made GG, although she still would have got a massive pension that no one else gets because she was made GG but now she will be getting more.

At least that’s the most sense that I could make of it. Everyone else in the country simply cried bullshit.

And so it happened and so it was printed on the front page of every major newspaper in the country.

For someone in a ceremonial role that already comes with $500k a year and two mansions to receive a pay rise that is more than the entire salary of 97 per cent of Australians is, at the best of times, Pythonesque.

Amid a cost-of-living crisis in which almost all Australians are going backwards, it is simply grotesque.

I cannot even bear to contemplate the number of people this decision must have gone through without one of them saying “For the love of God: No!”

Julian Assange has returned to Australia much to the delight of the far right and the far left. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Special mention must also be given to Her Majesty’s Opposition, which condemned the move as obscene and then voted in favour of it. You can bet your bippy most of them were dreamily envisioning their own next gig.

This brings us to the government’s equally self-destructive decision to appoint former Liberal supremo Matt Kean as chair of the Climate Change Authority. This was seen by federal Labor as a masterstroke that would split the Libs.

Unfortunately what the intelligence gathering failed to gather was what everyone in NSW Labor knows: Kean had already split the Libs with the same enthusiasm used by Robert Oppenheimer to split the atom. And with similar results.

Conservatives have long believed that Kean was a Teal in blue clothing and this ingenious coup de grace merely confirmed their suspicions. Labor might as well have crowed about flipping Greta Thunberg.

That’s just two. I don’t want to go on but I have to, because sometimes therapy is hard.

Enter Julian Assange.

Labor MP Andrew Leigh has posted a meme of a three-eyed Blinky Bill suggesting the Coalition’s nuclear plan is environmentally dangerous. Picture: Instagram

Many adjectives have been attached to Assange. The least used and most accurate is “dull”.

Suffice to say that for all his pretensions he is not the Messiah, he is just a naughty boy.

But in his vaguely anarchistic and highly suss way he has managed to become a hero of the far left and far right. Among those most loudly celebrating his release this week were Tucker Carlson and Adam Bandt.

This is the literal reverse of people that Albo should be within bargepole distance of if he wants to be the hero of mainstream Australia.

As for the nuclear debate, the government had the upper hand and squibbed it. Any sober analysis shows the technology isn’t quite there and the costs don’t yet stack up.

Peter Dutton’s plan was writ large on the back of a beer coaster but instead of a stonewall of watertight argument Labor resorted to silly memes on social media that nobody intelligent believes.

It’s time for the government to grow up. No more dumb tweets. No more dumb deals for elites. And no more pissweak attacks on Peter Dutton because you assume everyone else hates him as much as your friends do. And, most important of all: If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.

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