The cost of living with pressure weighs on sorry Albanese

A single moment in parliament has captured the deep rancour of Australian politics as well as the palpable frustration of Anthony Albanese and his Labor colleagues in their struggle to be heard over a wall of noise. In that moment, which lasted barely a few seconds on Tuesday, the prime minister blurted out an insult he regretted in an instant.

Albanese was taking a question about negative gearing from shadow treasurer Angus Taylor when he let the Coalition interjections get under his skin. “Have you got Tourette’s or something?” he told Taylor and others on the Coalition benches. “You sit there, babble, babble, babble.” Those around him knew he had gone too far.

It was a terrible thing to say, using an incurable disability as a cheap jibe, and it was another reminder of the way parliament behaves like a schoolyard – triggering the insults Albanese would have heard as a schoolboy. He apologised within seconds, and nobody had to drag the apology out of him. Even so, he revealed his exasperation at the relentless Coalition attack.

All leaders make dumb remarks. They talk so much, under so much pressure, that they end up uttering things they regret. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is certainly no stranger to this. He was flamed five years ago for saying the Labor candidate running against him, Ali France, was using her disability as an “excuse” for not living in the electorate. France had a leg amputated after being hit by a car in 2011. Dutton stood by his remarks at first, then apologised after a few days.

Albanese is clearly feeling the pressure at a low point for Labor when it should be getting into shape for the election ahead. Those who can hear the sledging in parliament say it is getting worse. Dutton has been keeping up a steady flow of sledging during question time – and Albanese can serve it back.

“You’re weak,” Dutton calls out to Albanese. “You’re an embarrassment.” The words are not much different from the lines Dutton uses at his doorstops, but they are more personal and in-your-face during question time. “It’s a barrage,” says one witness on the Labor benches. The interjections are designed to put Albanese off his game – and there is no doubt they work.

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But the wall of noise goes far beyond parliament. The government’s big mission this week was to prove to voters that it was acting on their cost-of-living problems. Time and again, it tried to turn attention to domestic policies that would help households, only to be shouted down every time.

The war in the Middle East is making it almost impossible for Albanese and Labor to get anyone to listen to their message about household costs. This is partly because the message itself lacks power: everyone knows that Labor will wait until closer to the election to reveal further policies on the cost of living. But it is mostly about the way the Middle East dominates all else because of the sheer scale and consequence of the war.

Dutton seems to feel ascendant. Certain of the need to offer absolute support to Israel, he wants a formal rupture with Labor over foreign policy – which meant he could not join Albanese on Tuesday in calling for a ceasefire and a two-state solution as part of a motion to mark the October 7 attack one year ago.

Australians should have seen a consensus on Tuesday. The Hamas attack on Israel was the sort of terrorist atrocity – more than 1200 dead, another 251 taken hostage, women raped – that deserved a unanimous motion to condemn the violence.

In the end, the vote formalised the divide in the Australian community and, therefore, its politics. Greens leader Adam Bandt stands for the Palestinian cause, Dutton sides with Israel and Albanese is squeezed in the middle. The Labor motion became a foreign policy declaration over 15 paragraphs, rather than a simple statement to mourn the deaths. Dutton replied with his alternative declaration in 17 paragraphs.

The conservative claim is that Albanese went too far by stressing the need for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. The reality is that United States President Joe Biden is on the record wanting a ceasefire in Gaza. In fact, his administration backed this most recently on September 25 in a joint statement with Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan and others.

This puts the lie to Dutton’s claim that Albanese is somehow at odds with Biden. It also raises the question of whether Dutton wants a ceasefire in Gaza – or whether he is at odds with Biden. It is true, however, that the Biden administration has not used the same language about a ceasefire in Lebanon, preferring instead to say there should be a diplomatic resolution.

Will voters care? As the Resolve Political Monitor showed this week, 51 per cent of Australians do not want to take sides. Of the rest, 23 per cent want to voice in-principle support for Israel and 12 per cent for Gaza. Many are simply not engaged in this foreign war – and politicians know it when they are in their electorates. “It is not on people’s minds at all,” says one Liberal.

What matters instead? The cost of living, of course. That is what will decide the election. And it is where Albanese and his colleagues are struggling to be heard.

The prime minister’s office tried this week to get ministers into the media to talk about domestic policies and steer the conversation away from the Middle East. This only achieved modest results, but it prepared for the bigger fights to come at the election.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil stepped up the pressure on her Greens opposite number, Max Chandler-Mather, to get the Help to Buy scheme passed, without much luck. At this rate, Labor may choose to go to the election blaming the Greens for stalling the solutions.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek kept trying to gain the Greens’ support to set up the Environment Protection Agency, only to be kept waiting again because the Greens demand a separate decision to ban all new coal and gas projects. This probably means Labor will go to the election blaming the Greens for blocking an EPA.

On the cost of living, meanwhile, Treasurer Jim Chalmers went after the supermarkets with tougher merger rules on Thursday. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland revealed a draft law to keep the national broadband network in public hands, in a transparent move to accuse the Coalition of wanting to privatise the asset. Education Minister Jason Clare introduced draft law to fund public schools.

All those issues could shape the election. None of those issues really cut through this week. No wonder Albanese was showing the pressure.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.