Parliamentary sittings are over for the year. The mass exodus of the fly in-fly out brigade is all but done and Canberra resumes its sleepy hollow city feel.
A few political die-hards remain for next week’s release of the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook but normal Canberrans should largely have the place to themselves where they can take drugs to their hearts’ content while driving around the national capital at 40 kilometres per hour.
The Albanese government limps into the break hoping Australians will head for the beach, watch some cricket and sit around the Christmas table and forget about the government for a while.
Despite the sense of endless crisis, the Albanese government is either further in front than it was at last year’s federal election, or at serious risk of losing government, depending on which poll you look at.
The Prime Minister has taken a hit to his personal ratings. The government’s best performed minister, Penny Wong, is not a participant in domestic day-to-day politics. There is a good story for the government to tell here but as the old political axiom goes, there are no votes in foreign policy.
There is something not quite right about this government. It is fundamentally reactive - the current scandal over the release of at least 148 detainees as a result of the High Court’s NZYQ ruling with now five and counting detainees allegedly committing criminal offences in the Australian community - is a case in point.
The High Court determined that under Australian law, the government could not detain non-citizens indefinitely. A 20-year precedent was knocked over. A majority of the justices of the High Court agreed that sections of the Migration Act which had been interpreted to authorise indefinite detention were beyond legislative power.
The High Court’s verdict was foreseeable and a planned response from the Albanese government and the bureaucracy was needed. Instead Dreyfus et al argued that they could not respond without first hearing the reasons for the High Court verdict.
The government needed to prepare a response and explain this to the Australian people well beyond the current farce.
Many of the 148 or more detainees have extensive criminal histories mostly accumulated in other parts of the world. The Albanese government seems not to understand the concept of recidivism and that some of these people posed serious risks to the community. Surely, a legislative response should have been in place to monitor and supervise these individuals closely, drafted and ready when the High Court gavel fell.
It is what the private sector calls crisis management.
The truth is no black letter law response which involves indefinite detention might ever survive a High Court challenge.
Instead the Albanese government fell for the oldest political trick in the book. It reacted to the Opposition leader, Peter Dutton. The Prime Minister seems to think the best response is a good, old fashioned verbal flogging of his counterpart actress the dispatch box. It is the sort of argy-bargy delivered in five seconds of a television news bulletin that most people find distasteful.
Earlier in the year, I wrote that Peter Dutton was the Coalition’s best and perhaps only viable choice as leader. He has performed as well as could be expected and his party has not lapsed into internecine feuds and a cycle of spills. Dutton sticks his chin out and demands to be hit. The trick for Albanese is not to swing wildly away at his opponent. In playground parlance, Albanese has been sucked in.
This is the sort of critical mistake that the former premier of Victoria would never make. Dan Andrews, who may or may not be on the fairways of premium Victorian golf courses now, spent much of his time as Premier speaking directly to the people of Victoria, often ending his political communications with “and I make no apologies for that.”
Regardless of what you think of Andrews, he was successful. Three election victories, extending his majority in Victoria’s Legislative Assembly on each occasion - a feat not achieved by any political leader, state or federal in modern Australian politics.
He was a very good communicator, the best I’ve seen in recent times. While he had plenty of skills in the dark arts, he was able to clearly enunciate a political narrative that went along these lines – this is where we are, this is where we want to get to and this is how we are going to get there.
Thus he was able to skate through political controversies, scandals and more than the whiff of corruption.
Andrews did not ignore his political opponents but he was never fixated by them, instead casting them as hapless clowns without the faintest idea of managing complex political issues. He was dismissive, not obsessive.
Albanese is no Dan Andrews but a seasoned political veteran should understand that a preoccupation with one’s opponents provides them with oxygen and opportunities to appear in television grabs that otherwise would not be forthcoming.
The Prime Minister needs to engage directly with the Australian people more frequently and without his usual garbled messaging, in the understanding that he only needs to enjoy the confidence of four in ten Australians.
In our preferential voting system four in ten is not just enough, it would enable his government to win a stonking majority. Dan always understood this. Anthony Albanese does, too, but appears to be incapable of delivery.
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