Credlin: Trio of big issues take toll on Albanese government

Inflation, the energy crisis and allegations senior Labor ministers used the Brittany Higgins rape claim to embarrass the opposition has taken the sheen off the Albanese government, writes Peta Credlin.

For the first time, the Albanese government is starting to look less than politically bulletproof.

Over the past week, it’s been assailed over three issues which, in combination, while nothing like enough to turn it into a one-term wonder, certainly should finally end its long honeymoon.

There’s the ongoing price pain, that government actions are now widely thought to be making worse, not better. There’s the ongoing energy madness, which industry leaders are finally starting to call out.

And there’s also the apparent involvement of senior Labor ministers with the Brittany Higgins rape claim in order to embarrass the Morrison government rather than promote justice for women.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher is in real trouble.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher.

If the text messages from Higgins’ boyfriend David Sharaz are to be believed, Gallagher knew that the Higgins rape allegation was about to break and was in on the plot to weaponise it against the government.

Maybe activists, journos and pollies pitching scandals to score political points just evokes a yawn among the public. Still, misleading parliament, as Gallagher may have done, remains a hanging offence for a minister.

There’s also the more potent difficulty that the government paid as much as $3m to compensate Higgins over an alleged rape that has never been proven and has been denied by the alleged perpetrator.

The whole episode now looks to have been exploited for the specific purpose of embarrassing the previous government, giving it more than the whiff of a pay-off – especially given she was paid out in near record time, with Reynolds herself banned from defending taxpayers against the Higgins claims.

Naturally, the Prime Minister is standing by his minister.

The fact that Anthony Albanese went out of his way to insist that this was not something that should be referred to the new integrity commission suggests that he’s worried about what more might come out, especially if key players are forced to testify under oath. The fact Gallagher went to ground late last week is telling, too, but with parliament back this week she’ll have nowhere to hide.

Then we had the procession of ministers, from the PM down, trying to spin a line that the latest interest rate hikes were nothing to do with them; instead, they were solely driven by the Reserve Bank. But the reality is that May’s big-spending budget and the near 9 per cent boost to minimum wages has hit inflation, and both issues sit squarely with the Albanese government.

The very fact that they’re so desperate to blame others is the clearest indication yet that voter anger is showing up in Labor’s polling.

Then there’s the crisis in our energy sector, with not just skyrocketing prices breaking consumers but now the threat of blackouts and unreliable supply over winter.

Transmission towers in Sydney. There’s a crisis in our energy sector. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Serious industry players spoke loudly last week – many for the first time – about how Australia’s renewables transition is too much, too quickly. They said it defied engineering reality. That it will cost many billions more than government is letting on. That we must have nuclear power in the mix.

While the government may be able to brazen its way through the increasingly messy Higgins matter, with the support of its media friendlies, higher interest rates and skyrocketing power prices are objective realities that can be addressed only if the government is prepared to change its policy on wages, on spending programs like the NDIS, and on climate. Is this government prepared to admit that it’s got anything significantly wrong?

I doubt that very much.

A showdown between a government on a mission and an electorate that doesn’t like the consequent pain is almost inevitable.

HIGGINS AFFAIR SHOWS END DOES NOT JUSTIFY MEANS

So, the penny has now dropped for me on the infamous “Mean Girls” affair that made the final months of Labor senator Kimberley Kitching’s life so miserable.

At the time, I couldn’t reconcile why Labor leader Anthony Albanese steadfastly refused to hold an inquiry into credible claims, including written statements from Kitching, that she was viciously bullied by a trio of her Labor senate colleagues, Katy Gallagher, Penny Wong and the now ousted Kristina Keneally. I couldn’t understand why the party accusing the Morrison government of not doing enough to support women would leave these claims untested and, worse, why the media let him get away with it. But now it’s crystal clear.

The trigger for Kimberley Kitching’s fallout with her colleagues, and the retaliatory bullying that followed, including demoting her, stemmed from the fact she refused to support their plan to use the yet-to-be revealed rape claim by Brittany Higgins as a weapon against the Coalition. At the time, Kitching was in Labor’s senate tactics group and when she discovered what was being worked up, she spoke out against it internally and, according to the Liberal minister in the middle of it, Linda Reynolds, reached out to warn her (something Kitching denied – I suspect to save her preselection).

All of this came out in a senate estimates hearing where, when confronted by Reynolds that she knew of the Higgins claims beforehand, Gallagher screamed back at Reynolds, “no one had any knowledge … how dare you?” Reynolds went further, alleging that Wong and Gallagher later admitted to her in a private meeting they did in fact know about the Higgins matter before it broke publicly.

Unlike Gallagher, it wouldn’t appear that Wong has misled the Senate although Wong’s said she did not know the “full details” of the matter which is a different than not knowing “any” details. How could Albanese hold any inquiry into the Kitching abuse, and risk all the Higgins scheming coming out? He couldn’t because the real risk for him was that any investigation would expose the use by Labor (and others) of a vulnerable young woman, to bring down the Morrison government.

And he relied on a compliant (and conflicted) media to help sweep it all under the carpet given we also know that key media personalities were in on the strategy. If Labor thought paying Higgins millions in compensation would make the problem go away, it hasn’t.

In fact, the payment is now the surest avenue to expose this scandal given the scope of the new federal anti-corruption watchdog, which opens its doors on July 1.

As more and more comes out, we are reminded again of the unique politician we lost in Kimberley Kitching, because regardless of how you vote, she was a woman of integrity, and parliament is all the poorer without her.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Credlin: Trio of big issues take toll on Albanese government