Anthony Albanese looks like Gough Whitlam 2.0

It’s taken 48 years, but we’ve finally got a fully fledged Whitlam government version 2.0.

Anthony Albanese during Question Time in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It’s taken 48 years, but we’ve finally got a fully fledged Whitlam government version 2.0.

Back in 1983, the one thing both incoming prime minister Bob Hawke and his de facto deputy treasurer Paul Keating were absolutely determined not to be, was a replay of the wall-to-wall, start-to-finish Whitlam disaster.

They built their “Not-Whitlam” ambition and their consequent policy and political success on the pivotal role played by “their little mate”, ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, delivering the all-critical Prices and Incomes Accord.

Fast-forward to 2007 and there were certainly elements of a Whitlam replay in the Rudd years – with the PM himself rather than his ministers playing multiple roles in going rogue. In the Whitlam period, it was almost the entire cabinet, going off on their own individual frolics, while Gough had played Imperial Caesar, above it all. In any event, less than a year in, Rudd – and his hapless treasurer Wayne Swan – got ambushed by the GFC.

After that it was all about paddling desperately to stay afloat, with Rudd at war with much of his own cabinet and then Julia and hers.

But now, in just 12 months, PM Albanese is looking increasingly like a 21st century replay of Whitlam, and his ministers clones of their Whitlam counterparts.

Whitlam had been all about striding the world stage, embracing grandiloquent themes, both internationally and at home – all with precious little relevance and even less benefit to the vast numbers of the hoi polloi.

So also – albeit, without the Whitlam grandeur and hauteur – has been Albanese. Indeed, given the vaster number of international groupings now than then, Albanese has spent almost his entire premiership to date flitting from one international meet to the next. They’ve been a plethora of formal groups such as G20, one-on-ones with presidents and fellow PMs, to assorted triplets such as AUKUS, and quads like, well, the Quad.

Then, when at home, it’s been all grand and not-so grand gesture – from the utterly futile and equally unachievable and just simply pointless net zero, to The Voice, and on to The Treaty and who knows what and where else.

Just as with Whitlam, does any of this mean even close to four-fifths of five-eighths of copulating all to the average Aussie? While Rome figuratively burns?

Does any of it even pretend to deal with any of the issues ripping into lives daily – cost of power, cost of living more broadly, rents, housing, soaring mortgage payments?

Whatever happened to “The Plan” that was going to wave its magic wand and solve all that, and more? But, while the PM’s away – literally on a plane, or on his higher plane – the ministers run riot, led by the “twerp-in-chief” Chris Bowen, doing a bizarre replay of Whitlam’s resources minster Rex Connor.

Connor wanted to spend billions crisscrossing Australia with gas pipelines; Bowen wants to spend tens of billions doing it with wires, strung from useless wind turbine to closed-by-night solar panels.

As for Treasurer Jim Chalmers, space permits me only to note: Jim, I knew Paul Keating, you are no Paul Keating.

Originally published as Anthony Albanese looks like Gough Whitlam 2.0