Albanese needs to admit when he’s made a mistake

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Jeremy Piper/NewsWire

Anthony Albanese needs to say sorry more but, first, the Prime Minister needs to admit when he’s made a mistake.

Albanese will often express sorrow and sympathy when there are deaths and disasters and speaks sincerely and, at times, emotionally.

But what he doesn’t do, at all let alone often, is admit that he and/or his government have made a mistake, have been caught out and need to change direction or policy.

Instead, Albanese denies the obvious, tries to tell people their lived experience is wrong and simply relies on a sometimes tetchy response to swear black is white or dismiss hard questions.

Just because people underestimated him and gave him a cushion of goodwill is no reason to deny reality and think that the goodwill is endless.

For someone who intends to fight to the last breath to become the first sitting prime minister to be re-elected in 20 years, it is hard to reconcile a continued lack of appreciation that reality will overtake fake optimism.

Indeed, as parliament resumes this week after the long winter break, the latest Newspoll shows that Albanese and Labor are effectively where they were at the end of the last parliamentary sittings, perhaps marginally worse.

Picture: David Beach/NewsWire

According to Newspoll the two-party preferred rating at the last sitting at the beginning of June was 50-50 Labor-Coalition – the same as it was last weekend at the start of the August sittings; primary vote was ALP 32, Coalition 39 (a point different) as was the satisfaction with Albanese, Dutton and the better prime minister number.

This lack of change was despite the introduction of billions in tax cuts, the beginning of energy rebates, billions in taxpayer-funded wage rises, a cabinet reshuffle, radically different Indigenous policies, billions in commitments to housing and transport and immigration changes.

The good news went nowhere because the bad news could not be denied.

Denial has become Albanese’s first and last resort. Even as he pushed Andrew Giles and Clare O’Neil aside for obvious immigration mistakes and replaced Linda Burney after the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum he said no one had made a mistake. Somehow a reshuffle just dropped out of the sky.

Yet the greatest and most damaging denial has been the in-your-face repudiation of the Reserve Bank’s clear cut concerns about government spending fuelling inflation and keeping interest rates higher for longer.

Albanese can play the politicians trick and blame other politicians for his mistakes but no one is going to take a politician’s sophistry over the mathematical certitude of the Reserve Bank governor.

Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie. Picture: Jerad Williams

What’s worse is that the lived experience of people in petrol queues and searching for non-existent supermarket specials aligns with what the RBA is saying about inflation, cost-of-living and economic management. And, that’s what people are saying through the polls.

Queensland Labor great Peter Beattie made a virtue of admitting a mistake, saying he heard the message and openly changing direction.

Political leaders can’t admit to making mistakes too often but once or twice when failure has been obvious is an advantage. Again, the Albanese government has spent billions during a parliamentary break for no change in polls.

This week the PM should try spending fewer billions that fuel inflation and admitting to an error or two. He’s always planned on a May 2025 election and still has time to adjust his tin ear and take responsibility for mistakes he is being held accountable for anyway.