For once, we will vote at the polls on policy, not politics

One thing for which the current parliament has been notable - on both sides of the aisle - is its stability. Sunday’s cabinet reshuffle demonstrates one of Anthony Albanese’s key political strengths: keeping both his cabinet and his caucus together. (The defection of Senator Fatima Payman is a rare exception that proves the rule.)

The retirement of Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor, and the demotion of two other poorly-performing ministers (Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles) will strengthen the government. The important decision to return responsibility for ASIO to the Attorney-General’s portfolio - thereby reversing a serious mistake by the Turnbull government - will give greater cohesion to national security.

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will fight the election as a contest of ideas. Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

None of these changes signify political instability. The government may have been mediocre, but it remains unified.

Like Albanese, Peter Dutton, too, has commanded a united political ship. The leadership of both is secure. The daily political news is about the contest between government and opposition, not endless stories of skulduggery and intrigue.

The fact that both major parties are enjoying a period of unity is often overlooked because, like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, it’s the significance of what doesn’t happen that often goes unnoticed. In the current parliament, that’s been the absence of political instability.

Such a degree of internal harmony is unusual. The last Liberal government was blighted by the rivalry between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. Before that, the Labor power struggle between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard was even more savage. Four leadership coups and counter-coups in eight years meant that, at every election from 2010 to 2019, the government was led by a different prime minister than the one the electorate voted for.

Before that divisive period, even when the government was politically stable, the opposition was usually a mess. During the 11 years of the Howard government, there were five successive Labor leaders (one, Kim Beazley, recycled). In the 13 years of the Hawke/Keating governments, there were six changes to the leadership of the Liberal Party, as well as the collapse of the Coalition due to the insane “Joh for PM” campaign in 1987.

The later years of Malcolm Fraser’s government were poisoned by his rivalry with Andrew Peacock. Gough Whitlam’s government was the rockiest of the lot: a political soap opera of regular-as-clockwork scandals and ministerial dismissals. The last years of the long Coalition government before Whitlam were defined by the toxic hatreds which culminated in the party room coup when the hopeless Billy McMahon replaced the reckless John Gorton.

Wishy-washiness is an Albanese problem, not a Dutton one

There has seldom been a time since the mid-1960s when the main political news has not been about turmoil within the government, the opposition, or sometimes both.

When the main parties are not fighting among themselves, political debate can focus where it should be - on policy. And for all the angry rhetoric, this has been a parliament whose politics has been about ideas, not intrigue.

Stability is not the same as competency. Unity gives no assurance of good policy. The Albanese government is never more unified than when it is unanimously wrong - as, for instance, in its appallingly regressive industrial relations laws; the crony capitalism of its industry policy; or the dogmatism of its one-size-fits-all energy policy.

Meanwhile, unity has given Dutton political space to take the policy initiative. The standard playbook for oppositions when a government is struggling with a cost-of-living crisis is the small target strategy. We’ve just seen a textbook example of that in the United Kingdom, where Labour won easily by keeping its head down with a policy-lite manifesto perfectly captured by its meaningless one-word slogan “Change”.

Dutton has surprised many by his boldness on a range of policy fronts. To take three examples: opening a national debate on nuclear energy; proposing the prohibition of online access by children; and his radical policy to break up supermarket oligopolies. On all three of these barbecue-stopper issues, the opposition has set the agenda.

Just as revealing as Dutton’s boldness has been Albanese’s response. With online harms, the government swiftly went along with the opposition’s idea. On supermarkets, it offered its own much weaker alternative.

The reaction to the opposition’s nuclear policy was the most revealing of all. While there was much school mistressy tut-tutting by the doyennes of the left-wing commentariat over Dutton’s description of the PM as “a child in a man’s body”, the jibe hit home because of the immaturity of Albanese’s response, preferring playground ridicule to serious engagement in an important debate. Unlike Whitlam or Keating, Albanese has neither the wit nor the venom for the devastating one-liner. His efforts at sarcasm sounded adolescent.

In each case, the opposition led the debate as the government struggled with its response. This has been the case on other issues too, like Dutton’s uncaveated condemnation of antisemitism, or his exposure of the shocking failure of policing in Alice Springs. (No political opponent will ever speak with more authority than Dutton on the issue of policing.)

Dutton’s policy courage has a secondary effect: not only does it mean the opposition is setting the agenda, it also defines him to the public as somebody with the spine to raise hard issues. Wishy-washiness is an Albanese problem, not a Dutton one.

The next election will not, like 1996 or 2007, be decided by public weariness with a government long in office. Nor will it, like 2010 or 2013, be a judgment on a government that’s collapsed from within from internal political warfare. This rare period of unity within both the alternative parties of government means the next election will, refreshingly, be focused on policy choices. And so far, it’s the opposition setting the policy agenda, while the government struggles to respond.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at ANU.