Albanese has taken hits but isn’t a terrible PM. Cut him some slack

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is at a perilous moment, when it feels like the electorate has summed him up – in a word, gutless – checked out, and may even be ready to turf his government into one-term oblivion.

Labor is slipping in the polls. Incumbents are in the cross-hairs, worldwide. There is even – heaven forbid – the faint odour of leadershite wafting from Canberra with incipient speculation that, if the government is returned, Treasurer Jim Chalmers could occupy The Lodge next Christmas.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under pressure from Peter Dutton, but his performance has not been as bad as some have made out.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

In the media there is a veritable pile-on against “Albo”, who can’t seem to put a foot right these days, whether he’s declaring a flight upgrade, buying a beach house or playing tennis. Albo’s good old log cabin story, the “Hot Albo” memes … it’s all worn a bit thin. Voters want to see some substance.

But here’s the thing: Albanese does have substance. As anyone who’s ever spoken to him would know, the PM is nobody’s fool. He has been around the block 10 times on every vexed issue in Australian politics. He knows all the players, and all the angles. Career politician? Ten out of 10.

If good policy is good politics, there have been myriad disappointments but the Albanese government did at least get the budget back into surplus post-pandemic, did get inflation back down into the target range, did abandon the Morrison government’s fiscally and socially destructive stage 3 tax cuts that would have beggared the Commonwealth and turbo-charged inequality, and shifted the federal government from a default setting of climate denial to measured but welcome climate action. Objectively, it has not been a terrible first-term government. I might wish the government would ban new coal and gas, and pull out of AUKUS, and cut public funding to the wealthiest private schools, but that’s just me.

Let’s cut the PM some slack. What Albanese is trying to do – must do – is turn the good ship Australia around, get it heading slowly but surely forwards, after years of 180-degree turnbacks on border policy, climate policy, tax policy ... you name it. There is no point introducing a brave Labor reform in one parliamentary term, only to be turfed out and have the exact-opposite Coalition policy enacted in the next.

It is not since 2004 that a popularly elected prime minister has been re-elected. By steadying the ship, calming things down, Albanese hoped Australia could end two decades of tumult – from Rudd-Gillard-Rudd through Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison. Albanese has tried not to pick fights, the miserable defeat of his soft-pedalling Voice referendum campaign notwithstanding. A likeable character with a mongrel, larrikin streak, Albanese hoped to be a consensus leader in the mould of a Bob Hawke.

The problem for Albanese is, the fights keep picking him, whether from a grimly combative Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on his right, or a newly strident Greens party led by Adam Bandt on his left.

The political centre is collapsing worldwide in an era of populism and “polycrisis” – pandemic, war, inflation, misinformation, galloping climate emergency. It takes a lot to stay calm and build consensus when there is barely time to draw breath between disasters.

Albanese crept into power using a small-target strategy in 2022. Small target is fine, coming out of opposition. John Howard pioneered the strategy in 1996, promising to be all things to all people and most particularly promising to “never, ever” introduce a GST. He quickly recanted, took an ambitious GST proposal to the 1998 election, fought for and secured his mandate, and the rest is history.

The lesson here is that “small target” does not work for an incumbent PM seeking re-election. How often did US Vice President Kamala Harris say on the campaign trail “we are not going back” to Donald Trump – surely the feeblest of slogans – only to watch her country do just that? Albanese and his colleagues are well and truly on notice that a scare campaign about a Dutton-led Coalition is not going to re-elect Labor. Albanese needs to give the voters something to vote for … concrete reasons to give him another go, so that we know what we are going to get in a second Labor term.

Hopefully, the answer is meaningful reform – on housing, on education, on foreign affairs, on climate and environment. Something big, something real, to rally the base. There is so much policy opportunity, and last week’s childcare announcement is another step in the right direction, following initiatives on help-to-buy and student loans.

If he wasn’t so blinded by hatred for the party, Albo might see that the Greens have done him a huge favour by veering hard left, opening up a lot of political space for Labor towards the centre. Not every person who considers themselves left-wing wants to rally alongside Hamas supporters or bikie gang members of the CFMEU, nor wants to see the government start capping private rents or dictating official interest rates.

Anthony Albanese’s superpower, his biographer Karen Middleton wrote, is to think strategically – often 10 steps ahead of his opponents – and play the long game. Albo has the ability to work backwards from the desired outcome – victory – and see what needs to be done in the first quarter, to finish the fourth quarter with the wind behind him.

Whenever next year’s election is to be held – between March and May – we are surely into the fourth quarter now. The breeze is variable. It’s time for Albo to kick some Labor goals.

Paddy Manning is an independent journalist, former member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and author of six books including Inside the Greens: The origins and future of the party, the people and the politics (Black Inc, 2019).

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