As parliament winds up for the year, this government is in deep trouble. On all of Labor’s usual vulnerabilities – the economy, national security and, above all, border protection – suddenly the Albanese government is conforming to leftist type.
Given that Labor was elected promising to be “safe change” and insisting that nothing much would be different except the identity of the resident of the Lodge, the Albanese government is now in serious danger of being a oncer, especially given its obvious failure to honour the two promises it did make: namely to cut power bills by $275 per household a year and to increase real wages.
What’s more, the reset that the government urgently needs looks like being mission impossible, because unless the fundamentals change, all they will do is reset back to the same hard-left agenda that has got them into this mess in the first place. Almost inevitably, what’s coming is a summer of discontent for a government that has been shell-shocked ever since its defeat on the voice referendum and will end the year with the detainee fiasco hanging around its neck like an albatross.
It’s hard to imagine more obvious incompetence than that shown by the home affairs and immigration ministers. Clare O’Neil should have had a plan B once she knew that the High Court was likely to rule against the indefinite detention of the convicted child rapist known only as NZYQ. Instead, she pretended that she’d been kept in the dark about the imminent foreign criminal crisis, then claimed there was nothing that could be done about it, then boasted about her tough response, and finally had to accept opposition amendments to strengthen a weak bill.
Even though she’d always known the vast majority of those whom the government had chosen to release (because the court ruling referred only to one case, NZYQ) had committed “serious offences”. Further, Andrew Giles should have ensured that every released foreign criminal was wearing an ankle bracelet from day one and should have ensured that the more dangerous criminals were under constant police supervision. And yet he did not.
Instead, at least four of the nearly 150 released detainees, have already offended again and are behind bars. One allegedly indecently assaulted a woman in Adelaide, despite being locked up seven years ago as a “danger to the community”. Another was arrested in Sydney for possession of drugs. And a third, a convicted ringleader of a child exploitation gang, was arrested in Melbourne for breaching visa conditions about proximity to minors.
And it’s far from clear that Australians will be safe from these foreign predators, even after any new legislation that’s passed, given government briefings that the only people to go back into detention must have committed an offence punishable by up to seven years’ jail, with judges to make the call.
Perhaps the worst feature of this ongoing political and policy disaster is that the Prime Minister has at no stage sought to take charge. Even though the whole point of being prime minister is to sort out the things that no one else can. Unlike cost-of-living relief or inflation reduction, which are multi-factorial, economy-wide challenges, voters will judge governments harshly if they can’t fix what’s under their immediate control.
This is the problem the Albanese government now faces: how could you release dangerous foreign criminals into our midst when that wasn’t required by the High Court’s judgment; and how could you pretend it was all the court’s fault when the Left faction that now dominates modern Labor has always despised detention. Meaning a border protection reset under a Prime Minister who has never believed in strong borders is wishful thinking.
So, too, an energy reset because Labor is convinced that fossil fuels are destroying the planet and can’t bring itself to admit that nuclear power on land might be as practical as the nuclear power at sea that it (just) supports. It must be obvious even to the most diehard opponent of fossil fuels that the installation of 22,000 solar panels every day and the installation of a major wind turbine every month until 2030 are simply not going to happen, given farmer and conservationist opposition to the destruction of agricultural land and wildlife; let alone the construction of at least 10,000km of new transmission lines; let alone the gas-fired, pumped hydro or battery “firming” power needed when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
A cost-of-living reset is impossible too: first, because at least some of the extra costs (for energy, for instance, or for labour) are the result of deliberate government policy to mandate renewables or to re-unionise the workforce; and second, because the government’s preference, to subsidise power bills and rents, just moves costs from some consumers to taxpayers.
And an Indigenous reset is impossible because the government is still committed to special local and regional Indigenous “voices” over and above the say that Aboriginal people have as part of the wider community; and to treaties with so-called First Nations, and to so-called truth telling about Australia’s past.
All of that is still on the table, and millions still being spent on bodies like the Makarrata Treaty Commission, despite the overwhelmingly rejection by voters of race-based rights.
But after 18 months of the Albanese government, its biggest problem of all is actually the person at the top. Anthony Albanese may not be a carpetbagger, like Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull, two recent prime ministers who didn’t believe in anything much except their destiny to be No.1.
This Prime Minister has always seemed fair dinkum about his mission in life being to “fight Tories”. It’s just that being an effective prime minister requires so much more than that. You’ve got to have an agenda for government that most people can understand, relate to and measure as you implement it.
It’s why Tony Abbott saying he would scrap a carbon tax and stop the boats was powerful because it was what people wanted, they voted for it, and they could clearly see if it was delivered (as it was). So far, this Prime Minister is better known for days at the tennis, or spinning discs on his DJ deck, as well as overseas travel making him look indulgent when he’s supposed to working for the country 24/7.
Successful prime ministers all have something slightly remarkable about them. Albanese does not. He’s not a bad man but he’s more in the mould of a premier than a prime minister. You might not always know leadership when you see but, like now, you can sure tell when it’s absent.
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