Morrison-lite PM ‘leads’ by dumping fight for the republic

Anthony Albanese holds a press conference after the voice to parliament was defeated in the referendum at Parliament House in Canberra.

Fresh from eschewing any responsibility for the Albanese voice, the Prime Minister now has dumped the republic – putting it, like Indigenous issues, on the never-never list.

Anthony Albanese would have you believe he’s a conviction politician. But increasingly he’s looking more and more like a confected and confused politician, mouthing the words he thinks you want to hear without the delivery or the courage under fire displayed by John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Gough Whitlam or Bob Hawke.

Albanese had carefully crafted an image of himself as a left-wing warrior. There was Tom Uren, selfies with British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, an ale named after him and a teenage heart-throb “DJ Albo” T-shirt produced by adoring fans. (Remember he simply loved “fighting Tories”?)

As the heavy demands of his office were thrust upon him throughout 2023, the Albanese image has dissolved. Granted Scott Morrison lost the last election, but Albanese looks like the dog who caught the car; now all he seems to want is accolades and victory laps in Toto One. He also has benefited from a weak and compliant Labor caucus that looks increasingly like a room of shrooms.

The Prime Minister still commands a compliant audience of courtiers, unions, social elites and some in the commentariat. The Australian Republic Movement, for example, would rather stay on Albo’s Kirribilli Australia Day drinks list than speak up for a republic. It now joins a conga line chorus that parrots Albo’s “cost of living, cost of living” message. Those same people think cost-of-living pressure is about paying more for Mumm and Moet. There doesn’t seem to be a single hard decision that Albanese hasn’t cut and run from. No issue that he doesn’t condemn to the too-hard basket. Australians respect grit, determination and an “I get knocked down and I get back up again” attitude.

Call me old-fashioned but I thought we elected governments to govern, leaders to lead and parties to deliver on their policies.

Anthony Albanese

Albanese runs the real risk of the balance of this term of the Albanese project just being about him being re-elected. Not about families under pressure, renters getting squeezed and people paying more and more to see a GP despite the Labor promise of strengthening Medicare. It will be like a looped re-run of that famous Seinfeld episode The Pitch.

Voters demand nothing less from the premiers and prime ministers. Annastacia Palaszczuk showed this in Queensland; Chris Minns is showing us how it should be done in NSW. John Howard, for all the dislike of him among Labor voters, won four elections and changed Australia forever. Howard is a respected elder statesman who still is leading the Liberals intellectually.

It’s the manifest contradictions that undermine Albanese.

Shakespeare famously said, “all the world’s a stage and one man in time plays many parts”, but it’s not amateur theatre night at the Grayndlar RSL, it’s national politics and we should demand more of Albanese.

It’s not enough to tell us what he thinks we want to hear; rather, he must lead through action and remain steadfast to his convictions and principles. The voice and the republic are still in the ALP’s national platform and Albanese should at least stand up for the party and its beliefs, even if he finds them an inconvenient truth.

I voted for the republic 25 years ago. Half a lifetime later I watch us once again being let down by a Labor prime minister. As a nation we finally need to stand on our own two feet.

Scott Morrison

Labor is under attack from an emboldened Peter Dutton and from Greens leader Adam Bandt, who both sense that voters are getting increasingly concerned with “Fake Albo”. No doubt the bumper stickers will be there by the next poll.

Australian politics is robust and leaders who fake it until they make it don’t survive. Paul Keating famously said of his Liberal opponent John Hewson that he was “shiver looking for a spine to run up”. Howard cut Kim Beazley mortally when he opined the big fella didn’t have the ticker.

Albanese skidded into office with a small-target strategy of “say nothing, do nothing”. He wanted to be “not Morrison” but instead has become largely Morrison-lite.

The notable exceptions were his stated conviction about the voice and naming a minister for the republic. In a policy landscape so bare, these stood out as beacons of commitment.

When Albanese lost the referendum so badly, he sobbed that he was a “conviction politician”. Since then, however, he has taken his bat and ball and retreated to the pavilion. In reality, his cost-of-living reset has been simply to jettison the last of his supposed convictions, hoping no one would notice across the summer break.

Kim Beazley

This strategy has been clumsy and shambolic. The dilemma for Albanese is that summed up by the aphorism “those who stand for nothing fall for anything”. I’m also reminded of an Australian colloquialism: “as shallow as an upturned dish”.

If Australia wasn’t facing such a critical juncture in our nation’s future perhaps we could tolerate an actor rather than a PM of action to lead our nation.

But we’re far from the shallows now, and while Albanese would tell us he’s keeping it so hard core, instead we are seeing him abandon nation-changing reforms when we need them most.

The timid, insipid desire simply to be liked and hope the polls somehow turn around denies that Australians like strong leaders; decision-makers, not note takers. Risk takers, not fakers.