Albanese has finally come to the realisation that he’s in power

Most people probably don’t remember that Peter Dutton was once health minister. So it was interesting when, three weeks ago, announcing his candidate for the Dunkley byelection, Anthony Albanese reminded reporters that Dutton had been labelled Australia’s worst health minister by doctors, and that he had tried to introduce fees for GP visits.

With the exception of Julie Bishop, most people might forget that Peter Dutton was once health minister. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The attack didn’t really register, and quite possibly won’t, but it gained something when, three weeks later, data suggested incentives introduced by the Albanese government had led to a small improvement in the bulk-billing rate.

Political attacks always work best when based on contrasts. When Dutton accuses Albanese of trying to “please everybody”, it works because it highlights the fact that Dutton is unconcerned about opinions. Labor’s attack on Dutton’s health record works far better when there is a sense Labor is actually doing something on health.

The most fundamental contrast in politics – one which seems barely to have occurred to Labor until this year – is between government and opposition. Governments can do things, oppositions can’t.

This year has seen a series of political reversals. Late last year, I listed three ways Dutton was besting Albanese. The first: he was willing to pick fights, where Albanese ducked. Already this year, Albanese has picked two fights, with the supermarkets and on tax cuts. The second was speed: Dutton was nimble, Albanese lumbered. This year, Albanese struck first on supermarkets; when Dutton sought to hit back, Labor responded fast. Just two weeks later, Labor switched topics to tax cuts, and now it was the Coalition’s turn to lumber clumsily: it would reverse Labor’s changes, no it wouldn’t, wait and see, we’ll wave them through.

Together, these two enabled the third reversal. Last year, Dutton drove debate. Now, with the tax cuts, Albanese has got the nation talking about what he wants, on his terms – something he had largely failed to do both as opposition leader and prime minister. Not skilled at sharp attacks or witty lines, he has two options. One is to avoid topics, as he did in the 2022 campaign, which has shaped his governing style since. As one old Labor colleague remarked to me, it has been a prime ministership marked by omission.

Until January, when he used the other option: dominating debate by making a splash. Last week I put this in political terms, saying Albanese had discovered the way to win an election was by doing things. But as my old colleague reminded me, it is more substantive than that. Prime ministers can take a little while to understand the immense forces at their disposal: the fact that they can act and intervene in millions of lives.

This is part of what Paul Keating meant with his old suggestion that governments should act like the Road Runner: “If you run fast enough, you burn the road up behind you – there is no road for anyone else.” When oppositions struggle, it is not because they don’t have access to the same size soapbox: it is because they literally can’t do anything. What we have seen in recent weeks is a prime minister beginning to grasp the opportunities and satisfactions of governing – and an opposition leader discovering the frustrations of opposition.

What healthy governments do and don’t look like, according to Paul Keating.Credit:

Another recent reversal relates to a political rule-of-thumb: that the topic you debate matters more than what happens during that debate. For the Coalition, this has typically meant it is happy to debate the economy, even if it’s on the defensive, because voters will always believe the Coalition is better with money - so long as they’re thinking about that subject the Coalition is winning.

Now, though, we are heading into a third week in which tax is likely to be the focus, and Labor seems happy. Tomorrow, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock will hold the first in her new schedule of press conferences. Last week, three premiers called for the bank to cut rates. This was slightly silly, but for federal Labor, all this adds up to something useful: the topic of the year is falling interest rates.

Labor should not get too comfortable: political momentum never lasts, and tax is never a good subject to linger on. But here we come to the great difficulty for Labor.

Having taken a major step to define itself as fundamentally Labor, it cannot take a backwards step. But that will involve moving onto other Labor topics, like health and schools. Last week, the government reached a significant deal with Western Australia on education funding. Several other states say they want the same, but more: more money, that is. Which brings us back to tax.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis. Credit:

Before its tax cuts shift, Labor paved the way by arguing the RBA had already factored the stage 3 tax cuts into its forecasts, signalling that any changes would keep the amount roughly the same, as they did. The problem is that this doesn’t bring in a heap more revenue. How, then, will Labor pay for the other changes it needs to make? Focusing on tax reform risks branding it as a tax-obsessed government. But tax reform will be necessary if it is to reverse the long-running deterioration of standards in this country.

Labor’s recent refusal to definitively rule out other changes to tax may be a recognition of this necessity. It may also be a sign of a new political maturity: the realisation that a politics defined by omission – in which controversial topics are gradually excluded, one after the other, until there is little left to discuss – is insufficient to the challenges facing Australia.

There is another possibility. In 2024, Labor has looked nimble. But it is important to remember this is a nimbleness with a very long lead time: the government had ample opportunity to decide its course on the tax cuts and prepare. What if its recent refusals to answer clearly are just pointers to the fact it does not know what it wants to do? It can be easy to look nimble in summer. Let’s see how autumn goes.

Sean Kelly is author of The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.