Labor must spend its political capital, not more taxpayers’ dollars

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The sun radiated light and heat and civic kindness over Albonia on Saturday.

Away from the quiet lines of voters at schools and the street theatre outside the library, this reclaimed territory of inked millennials and Gen Zs in Sydney’s inner west went about its laid back busyness on election morning.

A serious face-masked trio on Marrickville Road are pasting up every bus shelter with a flyer for August’s Socialist-palooza; mass communion is taken in revived industrial-age workshops, of elaborate single roasts and $22 sandwiches, while ride-shares unload the cashed-up blow-ins at the entrance of the Bob Hawke Leisure Centre.

Pictures of Bob Hawke on the wall at the Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre in Marrickville. Picture: Damian Shaw

In his triumph later that night, the Prime Minister lamented that he will be doing other things for at least three more years rather than sharing the youthful, crafty and welcoming streets of the exuberant area he has represented for almost three decades.

In victory, the Labor leader reprised his 2022 incantation: no one held back, no one left behind.

But what if the country itself is stuck, or worse, going backwards?

Australia’s post-pandemic settlement risks becoming more statist, insular, and entitled, as if waiting for the clouds to clear, the menace to pass, something to show up to kick things along, be it more rate cuts or the end of bill shock.

Hearing ALP president Wayne Swan’s assessment of a historic moment to an ABC reporter was instructive: “Inclusive growth is stronger growth”.

Sure, but unless you make it, you can’t share it.

Anthony Albanese and his partner Jodie Haydon arrive to vote at a polling station in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west. Picture: AFP

Over the past three years, based on Treasury’s forecasts in the budget, our economy has grown by 6 per cent; the population has increased by 6.3 per cent over that time.

The years 2023 and 2024 are etched in our economic annals as the time when we recorded seven straight negative quarters of GDP growth per capita.

As a nation we were like the struggling Wests Tigers in the NRL or AFL’s North Melbourne, no offence, but at least those clubs were rebuilding and neither had the revenue windfalls or spending tendencies of Labor in power.

It’s been obvious for a while that our luck cannot last.

We’ve had a decade-long stagnation in living standards, because our ability to get more out of our toil (labour) and treasure (capital) has stalled.

Compared with other rich countries, our performance has been abysmal.

Real gross household disposable income across OECD nations has increased by 20 per cent since 2014.

Here? Well, there was an artificial taxpayer-assisted income surge (and a productivity bubble) during the pandemic. And then, after a peak in living standards in September 2021, a steep tumble.

Someone, somewhere will be thrilled we’ve posted an early net zero on something. But the nation needs renewal as much as renewables.

If this disastrous misfiring of the engine of our prosperity had prompted policy imagination, innovation, boldness and a promise of action by our leaders to mend our ways, this election may have delivered a mandate to reset our business model and ease the coming burden on our young people.

Yet after a bipartisan fiscal auction that invariably means more borrowed money on top of servicing the current mortgage, Australia is settling for eco-stasis and inertia, because dynamism and truth-telling weren’t on the ballot in 2025.

The nihilistic and forsaken will seek to portray Labor’s emphatic victory as a grift or moment of collective madness; some of the natural-born overseers are already claiming they were denied by bad luck, lies and mass delusion.

There’s a lot more political capital in the bank for Albanese over the next three years; he should leverage it, use the clear air Labor has been gifted by a weary public, look forward not back, and cast off his default timidity.

The PM is adamant he’s building Australia’s future.

“This is a time of profound opportunity for our nation,” he declared amid the din of clubland on Saturday night.

“We have everything we need to seize this moment, and make it our own.”

Everyone is hoping the sun keeps shining on Albo’s Australia, but that’s not a national strategy.

We’ll only be spared the worst from a less-friendly world by making it, not faking it.