To be fair, there have been several of those moments for the Prime Minister before this latest conflagration of self-ignited chaos. He has survived them all. But Albanese’s attempt to grab a hose at the weekend (satire intended) with a $20bn student debt bailout has potentially exposed a deeper problem for Labor.
Politics in Australia has come to a future-defining fork in the road. Competing economic, social and foreign policy approaches are now abundantly evident and aggressively disputed.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor describes the two paths as one of prosperity and one of poverty for the nation. He is convinced the public has come to the view that the reason their standard of living is in free fall is a result of Labor’s poor economic management.
Labor’s approach on the other hand is wedded to a traditional belief that people remain bound to government handouts as the answer to their problems.
The student debt policy might well represent political and economic madness, but it also poses a critical test of the Liberal leader’s resolve on this question of national mood.
Dutton will need to be confident that the electorate, or at least enough of it, has made a fundamental switch in the type of conventional thinking that Labor assumes is a universal constant.
The answer is not settled. The polls reflect uncertainty and deep distrust of both major parties.
Neither the Coalition nor the Coalition’s approach has been confirmed as electorally superior.
The Coalition has been heading down this track for some time, having already opposed $90bn in Labor spending promises in the belief that voters realise government decisions have an immediate effect on their standard of living and handouts are becoming less relevant.
There is certainly evidence that voters are becoming more blase about them.
None of Labor’s three budgets has delivered a political dividend for the government, despite billions in direct subsidies and cost of living handouts. But this is Dutton’s gamble. In opposing Labor on its pitch to Greens-voting students, the Liberal leader described it as “reckless spending”, signalling strongly that he has locked the Coalition into an assumption that a significant shift has occurred in the electorate’s economic comprehension.
Albanese’s student pitch has both political and economic significance. One might be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks it is a good idea. Chris Richardson for one didn’t pull any punches, describing it as inane at best.
A lot is still unknown about how this is to be accounted for. If it is a government decision, then it will have to be included in MYEFO. If it is an election commitment, the nation will have to wait until it’s gone through the Parliamentary Budget Office.
As Taylor describes it: ‘This is dipping into the barrel of economic irresponsibility.”
There is naked political intent. It targets the electoral demographic most at risk for Labor of going to the Greens. At the same time, the social equity argument falls away if one accepts the argument that it in fact ultimately transfers wealth back to the wealthy. It also does nothing at a cashflow level for most people struggling with cost of living today.
A sense of political desperation hangs around it. It is understandable why Albanese chose the timing of the announcement and the campaign launch used to deliver it, in South Australia in the hope of reflective glory standing next to popular Premier Peter Malinauskas.
Albanese needs to regain some political initiative and stop the drift. If the intention was to take the heat away from the Prime Minister amid the travel perks scandal and give Labor MPs something else to talk about when doorstopped by journalists, it has worked. But not necessarily in the way the government might have hoped. It is impossible to see how the Coalition could support this. Dutton and Taylor may have been more sympathetic to the idea of indexation on debt repayments.
Nevertheless, Dutton’s decision to oppose it needs to be nuanced as it is a policy that now has an elevated relevance because of the election context in which Albanese has framed it.
Simply opposing every mad spending decision the government might make is inherently dangerous unless it is explained within the context of a broader economic strategy that has a credible path to restoring living standards.
If Dutton and Taylor are right, and there have been major changes in the electoral mindset, then Albanese Labor will be exposed for having the wrong approach for the times.
This now is the big question heading into the election.
Family trusts get a second wind after court ruling on entitlements
A key court decision has found that the Australian Taxation Office incorrectly penalised many investors for breaking anti-avoidance laws – and now the tide may have turned.
Kids’ teeth troubles? You can’t always blame the parents
Parents are used to copping the blame for their children’s health, but sometimes problems with teeth have another root cause. The trick is knowing what you do next.
To quote John Howard once quoting the late political journalist Alan Reid, there may be a “dry grass” moment coming for Anthony Albanese – when all that is required is a match and the whole show goes up in flames.