Anthony Albanese, the incredible shrinking Prime Minister

Anthony Albanese seems bent on avoiding pitfalls rather than taking a stand on anything.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese congratulates Bill Shorten after his retirement announcement on Thursday.

When an inner-city Labor MP from the Socialist Left faction rises to the prime ministership and loses the adulation of the green-left opinionistas of The Sydney Morning Herald, we know he is in strife. Anthony Albanese is certainly not pleasing the aspirational mainstream who are strung out by his broken cost-of-living pledges, but so soulless is his leadership that the virtue signallers are dropping off him too.

A cartoon in the SMH this week by Cathy Wilcox demonstrated the dilemma. She had Albanese cowering under the shadows of issues such as the Gaza conflict, gambling, immigration and climate action with a preachy heading; “After striving so hard to be the smallest of targets, he could no longer remember what he was for or against.”

No humour or wit, sure, and no reference to the most pressing issues such as the economy and border security, but a manifestation of how even Albanese’s ideological soulmates do not have a clear grasp of his values. The Prime Minister is offering nothing to the mainstream and nothing to the woke.

His government lacks a sense of purpose. And he lacks a sense of conviction.

Back in June, on the back of Albanese’s cowering to China and ridiculous three-eyed fish scare campaign over nuclear energy, I wrote in these pages that he was shedding authority like fur off a sick cat. He has spiralled downwards since then.

The Prime Minister has been feeble over Gaza visas, refused to declare that Hamas supporters would not meet our immigration character test, blocked mining developments, has seen renewable boondoggles hit the doldrums and confirmed a per capita recession throughout most of a government term he won by promising to “raise living standards” and “ease the cost of living”. Albanese does not speak with passion, conviction or cut-through; instead he uses the language of a spectator.

Confronted repeatedly about the granting of almost 3000 tourist visas to Palestinians fleeing the Gaza terrorist zone, Albanese kept duckshoving. “We take the same advice from the same security agencies, even the same security personnel, as the previous government did,” he said. “We have confidence in our security agencies.”

The Prime Minister did not dissent from or override ASIO director-general Mike Burgess when Burgess was on the record saying visa applicants from Gaza who were supporters of Hamas would not receive an adverse security finding so long as their support was only “rhetorical”.

Yet now that Burgess has clarified his position and declared any supporters of Hamas would be blocked, Albanese automatically goes along with that too.

A couple of months back, when Sky News presenter and former Chinese prisoner Cheng Lei was blocked by Chinese officials at the Prime Minister’s joint press conference with China’s Premier Li Quiang, Albanese said: “I didn’t see that.”

Back in February when a boatload of asylum-seekers managed to make it to the mainland, Albanese was asked about it at a media conference: “I’ve been travelling in the car, so I haven’t been advised about that.”

During the Indigenous voice referendum campaign Albanese said: “This is not my proposal this is the Australian people’s proposal.” On inflation and interest rates, Albanese promised to bring them both down but in government has been quick to blame global factors and defer to the Reserve Bank: “The Reserve Bank of Australia are an independent body, and the government doesn’t direct them on what to do.”

In May when an International Court of Justice prosecutor was calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister on war crimes charges, even US President Joe Biden found the strength and clarity to condemn the overreach. But Albanese said: “Well I don’t comment on court processes in Australia, let alone court processes globally.”

He used court processes, too, to refuse to comment on criminal non-citizens freed from detention and allegedly reoffending. Albanese even refused to discuss the performance of a measure his own government had established to deal with that situation: “The community protection board is of course a board that’s independent of politicians.”

On the GST carve-up between the states, the Prime Minister also has washed his hands. “Well, the Commonwealth Grants Commission operates at arm’s length from the government, it’s not something that my government has direct involvement in,” he said.

As for that major broken promise to reduce electricity bills by $275 a year, again Albanese constantly duckshoves. “We know that there’s been an impact of global energy prices.”

He is the Prime Minister who is not even there. Like William Hughes Mearns’ famous man on the stair in Antigonish, Albanese is the “man who wasn’t there, he wasn’t there again today, I wish, I wish he’d go away”.

Albanese has been revealed as an onlooker as the wheels of the bureaucracy spin around him.

All of this is the polar opposite to what Albanese promised during the 2022 campaign. He said, “If I’m prime minister, I’ll accept responsibility each and every day, I’ll work hard and I’ll accept responsibility, not always seek to blame someone else” and “I won’t blame someone else, I’ll accept responsibility, that’s what leaders do”. Indeed, that is what leaders do.

Albanese has been revealed as an onlooker as the wheels of the bureaucracy spin around him. He needs to read Teddy Roosevelt’s famous “man in the arena” speech and understand this is his time in the field of play – after a lifetime spent in petty party and parliamentary machinations, now, as Prime Minister, it is his time to make a difference.

Yet he was left standing idly by again this week, watching on after he called a full prime ministerial courtyard media event to announce the exit of Bill Shorten and all but one of the questions went to his factional rival. Only Shorten is not actually leaving yet, he will stay in cabinet until his new highly paid university job is ready in February.

Why? Shouldn’t Albanese be reshuffling his cabinet to put a longer-term prospect into the crucial National Disability Insurance Scheme portfolio, freshening up his team in the lead-up to the election? Did Shorten just instruct Albanese how to handle this arrangement? Who is in charge?

There was a moment this week when the Prime Minister actually sounded passionate and proactive. It was when he was ripping into the Liberals over their NSW local government nomination debacle.

“I mean this is a farce,” Albanese said, suggesting the federal Liberal leadership should be dumped for stuffing up the repair job on the NSW branch. It was a meaningless intervention, but it was pointed and strong, something we seldom see from this one-time political street-brawler.

It reminded me of Albanese’s tearful lament during the Rudd era leadership traumas when he said, “I like fighting Tories, that’s what I do, that’s what I do.” Maybe that is all he has got, and when he is not “fighting Tories” he really does not have a plan.

Certainly, I have read, briefed and drafted enough departmental and political talking points to know that much of what we hear from Albanese is diligent recital of those points. It seems he is hellbent on avoiding pitfalls rather than letting us all in on what he really thinks or believes.

Either that, or he knows his real political values will not be shared by mainstream voters and are best left concealed. Albanese either has no real political instincts or beliefs, or he knows he has to hide them – and I truly do not know which is worse.

When voters wake up to political hollowness, they fall off quickly – ask Kevin Rudd. Minority government is not the worst fate looming for Labor next year; losing power after just one term is not out of the question.