James Campbell: Albo facing a big challenge amid virus recovery

Despite waiting years to lead the Labor Party, Anthony Albanese now finds himself in an unenviable predicament.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire.

Poor Anthony Albanese. Being the leader of the Australian Labor Party in Canberra is, to adapt a line from the playwright Alan Bennett, not a position but a predicament.

Eighteen months ago the veteran MP, who next year will celebrate a quarter of a century in parliament, finally achieved his dream of leading Labor.

In his mind the job should probably have been his almost six years ago when he thrashed Bill Shorten with 60 per cent of the votes of Labor members.

He didn’t win of course because only 31 of 86 members of Labor’s caucus wanted him.

But through two parliaments he kept his dream alive, haunting Shorten throughout the five and half years he had the job.

In the weeks before every by-election — and there were a few — the stories would appear warning the result would be treated by Labor MPs as a referendum on Bill’s leadership and if things were to go badly, well “Albo” (as his fans in the Sydney media invariably called him) was ready to strike.

The funniest thing about his ascension to the leadership last May was how many of the same commentators who had warned for years he was on the verge of striking could say with straight faces Albanese had been loyal to Shorten during his time as leader.

Anyway, he got there in the end. And for the first few months it all went quite well. At the end of 2019 he made a speech on retooling the Australian economy that was rightly well-received which was closely followed by Scott Morrison’s surfin’ safari to Hawaii as the east coast of Australia went up in flames.

Since then? Not so much.

Morrison it seems is one of those politicians who doesn’t make the same mistake twice.

You can argue he might have done some things better but you can’t argue the man hasn’t grown in the job.

In 2019 Morrison’s win was probably more about the Australian public saying thanks but no thanks to the laundry list of taxes and spending Labor was offering, rather than them actually voting for him.

Nothing wrong with that. Most of the time most of us vote for the candidate and program we dislike and/or fear the least and all of us vote for parties despite things we dislike.

I know of plenty of people who can’t stand the religious weirdos who have flocked to the Liberal Party in recent years – the people who were convinced they were on a winner campaigning against same-sex marriage – but who still vote for it because they think Labor can’t be trusted not to take their money to give to union thugs and layabouts.

Likewise there must be plenty of people who can’t stand the preachy identity politics of the modern left but still vote Labor because they think given half a chance the Liberals would slash Medicare and let their boss pay them less money for more work.

These voters feel no affinity with modern tertiary-educated Labor politicians and probably suspect, in their heart-of-hearts, they probably look down on them. But they still vote Labor out of fear.

What if this year has changed that equation? What if that nagging concern the Liberals won’t look after them has been assuaged by the billions Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have spent protecting Australian living standards?

Think about it. This year the commonwealth has subsidised the wages of millions of us, raised welfare payments so much that we have seen the biggest drop in extreme poverty in the shortest time since records began.

Childcare has been made free.

Debtors have been protected from their creditors and tenants have been protected from their landlords.

We’ve also seen, through the arrival of telehealth, the greatest expansion of ease of access to medical services since Medicare.

If that doesn’t have the cumulative effect of blunting the traditional Labor attack lines about how under the Liberals you’re on your own, then I don’t know what will.

Of course, some of these measures have been taken by the states and Morrison and Frydenberg have been clear they believe all of them — with the exception of telehealth — should be temporary. But how temporary is temporary?

When you talk to Labor folk — the optimists anyway — about the next election, they seem to be taking Frydenberg and Morrison at their word here and things will be back to normal some time in the next year or so, well in time for the next election.

They also seem to be pinning their hopes on the fact the economy will still be in the toilet.

On that point they are almost certainly right, indeed if things get any worse with China — a good chance — it could be fully flushed.

But in that case why wouldn’t you assume the temporary measures will be maintained indefinitely?

Why would you think that a government that can borrow $200bn in one year to keep the party going would have any problem borrowing another $200bn in the next or for as long as it needs to while money is cheap?

Thanks to Australia’s handling of the pandemic — yes, yes, largely down to the states — Morrison has been given the chance to go to the next election looking not only competent but caring.

It’s a deadly combination for Albanese and goes a long way to explaining the deep hostility to Labor some social researchers say they are picking up among blue-collar voters in NSW and Queensland. (Victoria is a different story for another day.)

By allaying their fears, Morrison has allowed these voters to zero-in on what they hate about modern Labor.

And if he keeps the maddies on his own side quiet for the next 18 months he has the chance to realign Australian politics.

And there is very little Albanese or whoever leads Labor at the next election can do about it.

James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist

@J_C_Campbell