Anthony Albanese needs to do better than clichéd speeches if he wants to oust Scott Morrison
Telling Covid-weary Aussies their “best days are ahead” is the sort of clichéd garbage that won’t help Anthony Albanese’s chances at the next election.
Opinion
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Standing on the tee at the Moonah Links Golf club two weeks ago with a couple of life members of the ALP, the name Anthony Albanese came up.
Not wanting to break any privacy issues with these two legends of the Labor Party I won’t name them, but trust me, they have been at the top politically and in the union movement for a long time.
Mates and colleagues of legends like Bob Hawke and Bill Kelty, and Victorian heavyweights like the late John Cain, so they know their political personalities.
Albo — as he is widely referred to — is described by my accidental golfing partners as a “good bloke” with “little or no personality” but someone you or the electorate can’t seriously dislike.
Depending on where you live in Australia, Albo has been in the media spotlight of national politics for a long time.
He is much better known in Sydney than he is in Melbourne, but despite being Deputy Prime Minister under Kevin Rudd, he’s not well known.
He wants to be our next prime minister, and while giving a speech this week in Canberra, made widely disputable and clichéd comments about our country.
According to the man who thinks he could win and lead us all out of the Covid pandemic, “Australia’s best days are ahead of us”.
It’s exactly that sort of transparently workshopped garbage that will mean the real Australia outside of his inner west Sydney seat of Grayndler will reject him.
Telling a nation emerging from two years of Covid hell that electing him rather than the other bloke will make Australia have its “best days ahead” is clichéd rubbish.
Anthony is 58 years old — born in 1963 — which means he missed the ’6os and was only seven years old when that decade ended. He was only 17 when the ’70s came to an end, so he’s really a product of the ’80s.
I know I sound like a contented baby boomer, but to think we can go back to the days of full employment, relatively cheap housing and unclogged CBD freeways is a pipe dream.
The would-be PM though has learned a lesson from the last election campaign when then Labor leader Bill Shorten made himself a huge target releasing a raft of unpopular policies so convinced was he, that he could beat Scott Morrison.
He almost pulled it off, but that had more to do with what an appalling campaigner Turnbull was.
Albanese is the oldest Opposition Leader Australia has had in 59 years. Not since Arthur
Calwell, who was 63 when he got the job, has there been an older leader.
I don’t think it’s age that will count against him, but his hard left history just might come back to haunt him.
Losing 16 kilos, getting new glasses, a haircut and new suit is all well and good, but Australians want more than optics.
Anthony, like most of the current crop of politicians from both sides of the fence, has never had a real job. A short stint in a bank before university and the predictable interest in
student politics.
He then joined Labor while still a student, studied economics and then worked as a party official and research officer for Labor’s Tom Uren, then took the job of assistant general
secretary of the NSW branch of the Labor Party.
After six years in that job, he quit to go and work as a senior adviser to former NSW Premier Bob Carr.
Notice a pattern here … installed on the inside of the Labor Party in NSW and mentored by people like Uren and Carr.
A professional Labor apparatchik who eventually won a safe Labor seat on the issue of aircraft noise, and he’s been in Canberra ever since.
As a rusted-on member of the left, he champions the usual causes mentioning in his maiden speech multiculturalism, native title, the social wage and childcare.
He has been particularly vocal all through his political career on things like euthanasia, same sex marriage and superannuation rights for same sex couples.
All those issues play well in the inner west of Sydney, and he is a popular and hard-working local member, but outside his hometown, and despite the senior positions he has held in
government and opposition, he’s not well known.
One ace he has in his campaign to defeat a tired and increasingly unpopular Morrison government, is the state Labor premiers.
Just keep an eye on how many times as he sweeps through Victoria, Queensland and WA – if it ever opens its border – he is seen with Anastasia Palaszczuk, Daniel Andrews and
Mark McGowan.
All three remain popular and are fierce critics of Scott Morrison.
Of the scant detail in his “best days are ahead of us” speech, he included promises around education — of which he only has financial oversight because schools are run by the states.
He even mentioned refurbished school buildings, which was crazy brave given the 2009 Kevin Rudd promise about a Building the Education Revolution. Remember that horror
show?
That cost $14bn and a year after it started, the National Audit Office found it was rorted. It was late in delivery and foisted unwanted buildings on many schools that didn’t want
them.
By the end of the round of golf with the Labor luminaries, our foursome agreed Albanese’s best chance of winning the next election comes down to how sick Australians are of Scott Morrison.
That fact alone has him with a big chance.
LIKES
Young Australian of the Year Dr Daniel Nour and his work with the homeless
Tennis as entertainment with Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis in the doubles
Barbecued lamb chops on Australia Day
Neighbours blasting out John Williamson’s Hey True Blue late on January 26
DISLIKES
Ongoing drama over the Indigenous flag; we should have one flag flying over one country and that’s the Australian flag
Vandals defacing the Cook statue
Despite promises, schools are cancelling things like school camps on the first week back
Lack of certainty around supply of Rapid Antigen Test kits for school return
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