Theatrics from the listless PM won’t cut cost of living
Anthony Albanese has been working hard at looking like the man of action while the rest of Australia has been at the beach or catching up on summer reading.
Albo would have you believe his new-found zealotry for fighting the cost of living is a profound change of direction for his listless government.
He’s even thrown the switch to vaudeville by calling the Labor caucus together two weeks earlier than ever before.
There’s a danger, though, that this will be another victory for a process story over a solid policy outcome.
It’s reminiscent of the then under-pressure Julia Gillard taking Wayne Swan’s advice to use her big headland Australia Day National Press Club speech to announce, wait for it, an election in September. It was the ultimate example of process winning out over policy.
The out-of-session caucus meeting is also designed to pull backbenchers into line and ensure they don’t spend any more time in their electorates, listening to voters under crippling cost-of-living pressures.
They are clearly being asked to be as disconnected from voters as their leader.
No doubt there’ll be a glossy campaign brochure and social media memes, and, if backbenchers want, Uncle Albo will read them a bedtime story and hand out warm milk and cookies for the Canberra sleepover.
The move reeks of panic from within the Albanese camp. For the entirety of the first half of his term Albanese talked anything but actually doing something about the cost of living.
On election night in 2022, after having surfed a wave of discontent against Scott Morrison and the then perceived pain of the cost of living, Albanese declared the purpose of his government was to deliver the Uluru Statement from the Heart – you remember the one that was voice, truth and then treaty. Well, the Albanese voice was so 2023: the new suit for a new year is cost of living.
The Prime Minister has frittered away political goodwill on overseas trips and his failed voice. He says he wasn’t responsible, but now promises to be responsible for taming inflation, bringing interest rates down, housing all the new migrants, keeping full employment and giving genuine cost-of-living relief.
If only Albanese hadn’t accepted the small-target strategy with a side dish of policy Ozempic and had opted for policy muscle to tackle the challenges facing Australia rather than a hollow man approach to government.
No doubt the Dunkley by-election is focusing Albanese’s mind. It’s his Come to Jesus moment far more than his loss of the voice. It will be the only poll that matters in 2024.
Labor instead needs a plan to govern across multiple terms to reverse the policy damage done by a decade of Liberal rule, most notably the lost years of economic reform under Malcolm Turnbull.
While Turnbull was aloof and patrician, Albanese is aloof and all too often simply absent. He seems to see the greatest challenge of governing is getting over the jetlag.
Albanese shuns detail. There was the small-target campaign and reading from notes at a campaign policy launch. The Albanese voice failed in large part because of the refusal to provide any details.
Fortunately for Albanese, his Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has been on the job in Canberra.
He will no doubt use the caucus meeting on Wednesday to propose a politically risky trimming to the stage three tax cuts.
It could set up envy games between those on $45,000 who will still get a tax cut and those above $180,000 who will see their’s massively slashed.
Chalmers and Albanese will calculate that high-income earners either aren’t voting Labor or are post-materialists voting on climate.
The wider issue of breaking a solemn promise – one of the very few – from the election will weigh heavily on their thinking.
Chalmers would dearly like the money and will channel his inner Wayne Swan envy of anyone who’s ever been successful. We’ll be treated to the one-percenters tweets from the former world’s greatest treasurer.
Albanese, though, has far less political capital left in the bank. He used so much on his voice and looking out of touch every time he travelled. Chalmers won’t be concerned as his leadership stocks rise as Albanese’s evaporate, but no doubt Albo is live to his ambitious Treasurer’s multiple motivations on stage three tax cuts.
Meanwhile, Labor voters and Labor supporters are crying out for a Labor government. Labor should be at its best when helping workers and families doing it tough. Instead, we have the Morrison government led by Albanese.
Increasingly we are seeing that Albanese had a plan to win an election, not a plan to govern. The Labor caucus needs to hammer out a Labor agenda rather than rubberstamp a broken promise and a policy backflip.
A Labor caucus that listened to its electorate would also go a long way to getting Labor back on track after a shambolic and wasteful first 18 months in office.
Cameron Milner is director, GXO Strategies.
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