Is Albo destined to be a one-term PM?

As the summer holiday ends and election season begins, opinion polls continue to head in the wrong direction for Anthony Albanese. So it is not too early to ask the question: what is the legacy of the first (and perhaps only) term of the Albanese government?

Of course, every government ushers in new policies; we have seen plenty during Albanese’s time. By “legacy”, I don’t mean incremental policy changes, or even fundamental policy shifts which are unwound by future governments. I mean the enduring reforms that stand the test of time – the nation-altering initiatives by which prime ministers cement their place in history.

Anthony Albanese risks being remembered, like Jim Scullin, for being a one-term PM. Credit: Joe Benke

Menzies created ANZUS. Holt was responsible for the 1967 referendum. Whitlam gave us Medibank (now Medicare), Aboriginal land rights and much else beside. Multiculturalism was the legacy of Fraser, and internationalising the economy the signature achievement of Hawke. Keating gave us compulsory superannuation, Howard the GST. Rudd will always be remembered for the apology to the stolen generations. Gillard conceived the NDIS. Abbott stopped the boats. Turnbull delivered marriage equality. Morrison gave us AUKUS.

These were not the only important achievements of those governments, but each of them became emblematic. They all changed Australia in profound ways, even if, like Rudd’s apology, they were essentially symbolic. (Sometimes, words can matter as much as actions.) Some were controversial at the time, but each achieved such overwhelming public support that they ultimately commanded bipartisan consensus. And so they became lasting milestones in our national story.

What is the big, nation-changing reform for which Albanese’s government will always be remembered? None of its defining policies – such as its renewables-only energy policy, or its crony-capitalist industry policy – will outlast a change of government. Nor will its changes to industrial relations law: not “reforms”, but productivity-inhibiting measures so reactionary that they take us back to the 1970s. Tinkering around the edges of apprenticeships or schools funding are not nation-changing reforms on the scale of Medicare or multiculturalism.

Sadly, the one big thing for which Albanese will be remembered in decades to come is his failure to deliver the Voice. It is the big event which will forever define his government. It was a multidimensional failure: not only did the proposal itself fail, but that failure froze, for many years to come, any appetite for another referendum. Say goodbye to important constitutional reforms such as four-year parliamentary terms. As for the republic, forget it.

Of course, all governments have big failures as well as big achievements: just think of Howard’s Workchoices, or Turnbull’s energy policy. But the failures are less important than the successes, simply because the failures, by definition, do not become part of the nation’s architecture, whereas the big achievements do. Failures are today’s political dramas – the screaming newspaper headlines which, in years to come, are of interest only to political historians. The achievements are what shape the future.

For a newly elected government to squander the chance for lasting reform is a hugely wasted opportunity. That is particularly so in the case of Labor governments, whose whole raison d’etre is meant to be progressivism. Liberal governments have been reformers too (see above), but their strongest brand is as competent managers. Labor’s conceit of itself is that it is the party that makes the big, history-making breakthroughs. Not this government.
If you’re a Labor voter, while I don’t share your politics, I can imagine how disappointed you must be.

Compare Albanese to his hero Gough Whitlam. Like Albanese, Whitlam did not control the Senate. But he fought tooth and nail for his signature reforms, called a double dissolution – and Australia’s only ever parliamentary joint sitting – to get them through and then won every important High Court challenge to their constitutional validity. Whitlam was an exemplar of daring political leadership, which he famously described as “crash through or crash”, by which he meant that to achieve boldly, leaders have to act boldly. Or they will fail.

It was never plain sailing for Whitlam. Few prime ministers have had to deal with such a ferocious opposition. (Perhaps Julia Gillard would disagree.) He was handicapped from within by a cabinet of old dinosaurs and clueless eccentrics. His government was endlessly crisis-prone. Yet the crises which beset it were scandals of ministerial misconduct, not policy failures. His ministers may have behaved appallingly, but Whitlam’s own integrity was never impeached. In the end, it was only his iron self-belief which gave his government its momentum, even as the political clouds darkened.

Where is Albanese’s self-belief? Where is his boldness? If ever there was any, it seems to have evaporated with the defeat of the Voice. Ever since, his government has been a sorry tale of emasculation and incoherence that could have been scripted by Samuel Beckett. Not Waiting for Godot but Waiting for Albo.

No wonder people say they don’t know what he stands for. After his National Press Club speech last Friday, they won’t be any the wiser. The dead giveaway that a government secretly knows it doesn’t have a record of big achievements is when its re-election campaign is more about trying to scare people about the opposition leader than selling itself. That was the drumbeat of Labor’s summer pre-campaign.

It is too late for Albanese to salvage a legacy from his first term. But it is looking increasingly likely that he will yet take his place in history by depriving Jim Scullin of the only thing for which history still remembers him.

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