Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese would be our most left-wing PM ever

Who and what is the real Albanese: the recently reinvented moderate; or the left-wing firebrand who once boasted that he lived for “fighting Tories”, writes Peta Credlin.

For most of his time in public life, Anthony Albanese has been the hardest of hard left warriors, yet now the opposition leader wants us to believe that he’d govern from the centre, like Bob Hawke, even though he used to say that the Hawke government had “absolute contempt for working-class people”.

Who and what is the real Albanese: the recently reinvented moderate; or the left-wing firebrand who once boasted that he lived for “fighting Tories” (rather than serve the Australian people)? Should he be elected, based on his consistent record rather than his recent words, Albanese would be our most left-wing PM ever.

Last week, the opposition leader did an interview which generated the front-page headline: “I’m not woke”. That’s what he wants you to believe. But can we trust him and do we know him?

Bob Hawke with Glenda Bowden at the ALP conference in Terrigal in 1975.

So far, he’s really only telling us what he says he won’t change: he says he won’t change us into a republic, at least not in his first term; he says he won’t hit us with all the new taxes on retirees and on investors that Labor promised last time; he won’t close down the coal industry and he won’t change the government’s policy on turning boats around, or on nuclear submarines.

That’s what he reckons: even though he’s always been a fervent republican and it’s part of Labor’s platform. And even though he used to believe in wealth taxes and death duties; has declared that he couldn’t bring himself to do boat turn-backs; has frequently claimed there’s no market for thermal coal; has always been fiercely antinuclear; and has repeatedly described himself as a “socialist”.

In his recent “getting to know you” interview with 60 Minutes, Albanese told us, yet again, about growing up tough with a sole parent, pensioner mother. Good on his mum for raising someone who might be PM, and good on him for making the most of his chances in life; but surely there should have been something, since then, that’s been at least as character-forming and at least as instructive about the man who wants to be our nation’s next leader.

One of the reasons voters feel they don’t really know the alternative PM is that he’s actually made very little impact on our public life, despite 25 years in parliament, a short stint as deputy prime minister, and three years as opposition leader.

In his six years as transport minister in the Rudd-Gillard government, nothing much happened to duplicate the Pacific Highway or to upgrade the Bruce Highway; there were no big road projects in any of our capital cities; and hardly any of the big rail projects he announced ever came to fruition. Nothing happened on the Western Sydney airport; that had to wait for the Tony Abbott government.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese claims he is not “woke”. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift

At different times since becoming a youthful assistant general secretary of the NSW Labor Party in 1989, Albanese has supported the carbon tax, the mining tax, a congestion tax, more taxes on super, a housing tax, and higher taxes on family businesses. As opposition leader, his first policy commitment was to the national driver’s licence that he’d been unable to implement in six years as minister.

He’s repudiated being “woke”, yet his first response to Kimberley Kitching’s use of the phrase “mean girls” was to dismiss it as “disrespectful” – not to the late Senator Kitching but to the supposed mean girls themselves, Senators Wong, Keneally, and Gallagher, who have denied that.

In the absence of an already well-known political identity, the risk for Albanese is that he becomes defined by his deference to his subordinates and by his refusal to take seriously the bullying of the late Kimberley Kitching; even though he’s demanded inquiries up hill and down dale from everyone else faced with harassment accusations.

It’s not just the opposition leader’s palpable double standard that’s the problem here but the perception that he’s not capable of standing up to senior members of his own team; that he’s a puppet of factions who call the shots, rather than someone with the backbone we need, now, more than ever. As Bob Hawke famously put it: if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country. An opposition leader who won’t take on his own party is hardly likely to stand up to dictators with nuclear weapons over national security. Or have the courage to cut wasteful spending, stand up to militant unions and more.

Between now and polling day, there has to be a collective conversation about his real nature. If what he’s telling us now, with his small target strategy, is true, he’ll lead a do-nothing government. But if he’s true to himself, it will be the most green left government we’ve ever had. Neither is what our country needs, or deserves.

Fine print of Labor’s policies makes for scary reading

The fine print of Anthony Albanese’s policy is much scarier than his current rhetoric.

Labor is proposing that the 215 businesses that each emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year must reduce their emissions by 5 per cent annually, or buy the equivalent in carbon credits.

Labor says this isn’t a carbon tax by stealth because most of these businesses are already committed to achieving net zero by 2050.

But it’s one thing to aim to get emissions down; it’s another thing to face higher costs if you don’t – costs that will inevitably be passed onto consumers.

Senator Matt Canavan. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

The government says that these businesses would have to pay $1.6 billion a year by 2050, under Labor, based on current Australian carbon credit unit prices.

Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, who led the campaign to open the Adani coal mine and who tried to stop the Coalition’s own “net zero” push, says that the Gladstone aluminium plant alone would face a bill of $54 million a year by 2050.

The mechanism Labor is proposing to use already exists but it’s never been invoked by the Coalition.

The businesses Labor wants to target include almost every mine (iron ore and gold as well as coal), every gas facility, every major factory and every large freight network.

More than 40 of these businesses are in the two central Queensland seats of Flynn and Capricornia that Labor needs to win if it’s to form government. Ironically, because it targets direct emissions but not indirect emissions from the power a business uses, Labor’s policy penalises blue collar industries like manufacturing, but not white collar industries like banking.

That’s why coal seat MPs, like Labor’s Meryl Swanson in the Hunter Valley seat of Paterson, think their own side’s policy is a potential political time bomb. If the Liberals were smart, they would already be running this hard in marginal seats.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese would be our most left-wing PM ever