Labor’s ‘Albanese experiment’ faces its moment of reckoning

Say an experiment is set to end at a certain date far in the future. On that date, you will find out whether your theory works. The problem is, you have to wait all that time, and lately the results have not been very encouraging. Do you take those results as reliable indications of what will happen on the decisive date and change course? Or do you ignore them as part of the inevitable noise that arises during long experiments – and stubbornly persist in the hope of final glory?

This is the fundamental question facing the Albanese government. Is its current polling trouble a sign it is going about things in the wrong way? Or is it just noise, distracting but ultimately meaningless?

The Albanese experiment is facing its toughest times yet.Credit: Jim Pavlidis

The polls are definitely bad. Not “bad” in an election-losing sense, but worse than they have been. At such times, pundits tend to do two things. One is to list recent events and assume correlation equals causation. The other is to restate their existing criticisms of a government, point to the polls and say: I told you so! The truth, though, is that nobody knows exactly what’s causing voter discontent.

In this case, there are at least two factors that should get first look-in. The first is inflation. Everybody includes this in their list of factors. But you can go further: what if it’s the only factor? Recently, the Eurasia Group compiled a database of election results across the world. Typically, governments lose at an election 40 per cent of the time. If an election is held within two years of an inflation spike that figure doubles to 80 per cent. Similarly, the polling company Ipsos looked at the approval ratings for American presidents. Inflation alone can cost 13 points.

The other factor Ipsos pointed to was time: the longer a president is in office the lower his approval. In Australia, we know that prime ministers tend to have lost significant approval numbers by this point. Together, these two factors – time and inflation – could explain most of what we’re seeing.

In one way, this is good news for Albanese. On the other hand, the existence of these possible explanations leaves the government in a confusing situation. Without them, it would be clear Labor had to change. But because it’s possible the polling numbers are caused by factors largely beyond Labor’s control, the question of what to do becomes more complicated.

This doesn’t mean the government should automatically continue on its way, care-free. Polling troubles may not be caused by a government’s faults. But every government has faults, and after 18 months a smart government should be asking what they are.

My own feeling is that the government’s political management needs work. Recently, I wrote that the government tends to be slow, conflict-averse, and unable to direct attention where it wants it. I doubt these have had huge impacts yet – I suspect the political fall-out of the current detainee debate is over-hyped – but at some point, if unaddressed, they will.

I am more suspicious of another oft-mentioned political critique: the idea Labor needs a better narrative. It is important to be cautious about what this means. If it means “the government needs to tell its story better” this risks falling into the same trap much criticism of the Yes campaign for the Voice fell into: the idea that if it could just find the right argument, the right ad, everything would be okay. This is a kind of magical thinking that ignores the fact that – most of the time – substance outweighs words.

Perhaps, though, what these critics really mean is: the government needs a better story, which it can obtain by doing more things, or different things.

Which returns us to the central question about this government: should it persist with its experiment? There have been different definitions offered of “the Albanese experiment”. My own version would be: the theory that a government, proceeding quietly, gradually, avoiding political fights, can accumulate significant changes over time, embedding them through winning several elections.

If the assumption beneath this experiment is correct – that this is the only way to deliver reforms in our hyperbolic, hyper-partisan media age – then wouldn’t it be an enormous mistake to abandon that experiment now, at this still fairly early stage of government? Especially if Labor’s polling troubles have little to do with its performance?

Well, perhaps: two potential difficulties have recently emerged. The first is the hard choices that are piling up. Robust immigration may put pressure on housing. Action of climate change may hit hip pockets. Cutting spending on the NDIS risks frustrating voters and states. Help with cost of living risks driving up inflation. Scrapping Stage 3 tax cuts risks breaking trust; keeping them risks adding to inflation. Sometimes, in government, there are fights in every direction and no “quiet” choices left.

The other potential difficulty is just as significant. The government’s announcement two weeks ago of new renewables policy was an admission that its existing climate policies weren’t sufficient. There is a reasonable argument that this is how incrementalism is supposed to work: announce a policy, see how it goes, adjust as necessary.

But there is another possible reading. It should be said that the government would not entirely agree with the definition of “Albanese experiment” above: it believes its reforms so far are large. Which points us to the second potential problem: the possibility that the government is simply wrong about the scale of the changes it is making, deluding itself that they are proportionate to the problems facing Australia.

In reviewing its position, Labor must at least consider the possibility. In government, making the wrong choices can be damaging. So can over-reacting to others’ melodramatic misreadings of the polls. But refusing to look at yourself squarely, and see yourself clearly, can be the most damaging thing of all.

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.

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