HMAS Shambles: Labor ship of state is sinking into a sea of chaos

With a federal election looming, the PM has got only himself to blame for his government’s woes as his government sends a totally confused message to the public.

Anthony Albanese pulled a fading government back into order at the beginning of the year but there is a new sense of drift going into the middle of the year. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

The Albanese government is becoming an administration of such contradictions, conflicts and ambivalence it is sending a totally confused message to the public on a wide range of policies and issues. It looks distracted and disoriented.

Anthony Albanese pulled a fading government back into order at the beginning of the year but there is a new sense of drift going into the middle of the year when political momentum needs to build towards the election, which must be held by mid-May next year.

Even the long-awaited political gift of a Coalition nuclear power announcement has not been handled with a clear and cohesive response, despite the Prime Minister’s claim that the timing of the policy was a “mistake” and Labor had been waiting two years to pounce.

Labor’s commitment to the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, including the commission of a $5bn nuclear reactor from Britain, has compromised its arguments about the safety of “risky” nuclear power, as it issues three-eyed fish images and scare campaigns about the seven Coalition nuclear sites proposed for former coal-fired power stations.

The issue of the Coalition’s refusal to back “unachievable” 2030 emissions targets of a 43 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions has virtually disappeared after just a week and been replaced by calls for a costing of the “costly and expensive” nuclear power plan.

Just as it was at the end of last year, support for Labor is falling in the polls and Peter Dutton is closing in on Albanese’s long-held lead as preferred prime minister, a benchmark Albanese has set himself as a measure of success.

Peter Dutton is closing in on Anthony Albanese’s long-held lead as preferred prime minister. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

What’s worse for Labor’s electoral prospects is that Albanese and some of his senior ministers are dangerously moving towards telling people that the economy is ­better than it is.

There’s nothing more perilous for a political leader than to stray from the core concerns of the ­public, become enraptured with boutique, celebrity causes and then try to tell people that their lived ­experience is at odds with reality: this is the fatal mistake of becoming delusional.

On Wednesday, the ABS released its consumer price figures for May showing inflation had risen from 3.6 per cent to 4 per cent, the third monthly rise in a row. This sparked fears of an RBA cash rate rise as early as August and firmed up the view that there would be no fall in interest rates before the election. Yet in a major speech on Thursday, Albanese declared his government was putting downward pressure on interest rates.

“Inflation is down. Annual real wages growth is back. Unemployment remains at near 50-year lows. And the gender pay gap is at a record low. My colleagues and I are proud of this record,” the Prime Minister said.

This argument is in keeping with the budget forecast that inflation will fall below 3 per cent by Christmas – back within the Reserve Bank’s acceptable 2-3 per cent band, which allows for an interest rate cut – with workers also benefiting from tax cuts, energy rebates and other social spending.

In parliament on Thursday the Albanese team didn’t want to talk about anything but measures to ease the burden of higher prices on families and to point to the “high cost” of the Coalition’s nuclear power option.

As the final parliamentary sittings unfold before the long and crucially important winter break, Labor is grasping at political distractions; issuing contradictory statements; fudging its own policy costings while demanding numbers from the Opposition Leader; losing on greenhouse gas emission targets; denying energy shortfalls; ceding ground to the Greens and Coalition on the vexed Israel-­Palestine question; and bathing in the glow of a hero’s welcome for someone convicted of espionage against the United States – our most important ally, our intelligence Five-Eyes partner and our crucial AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine supplier.

Perhaps the most dangerous mixed message of all is to argue that the basic cause of all the cost-of-living pressure on groceries, petrol, gas, electricity and housing – inflation – is coming down because of government spending designed to deal with the symptoms of the problem, not the cause itself.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ mantra is that he “knows people are doing it tough and people are under the pump” and that’s why the ­government is providing “tax cuts for all”.

The government’s focus is also on Monday – July 1 – when all these measures begin to take effect.

Chalmers said the average tax cut in a seat like Aston – the Melbourne seat Labor won from the Coalition at a by-election – from Monday would be $29 a week, and because of the changes made in the budget, 87 per cent of such constituents would get a bigger tax cut.

But this parliamentary message was preceded by a week of distractions including attempts to embarrass Dutton on Monday over the appointment of former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean to replace the pro-nuclear outgoing chairman of the Climate Change Authority, Grant King.

On Tuesday, two-year West Australian Labor senator Fatima Payman, who is a Muslim originally from Afghanistan, fell for a gross political trick from the Greens and voted for a motion that supported the pro-Palestinian position in contravention of the Labor government’s own stated foreign policy on Israel and Palestine.

Labor senator Fatima Payman. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Albanese told parliament the motion, opposed in an agreed position by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and all the other Labor senators, was against ALP policy and was the equivalent of the anti-­Israel chant of “From the River to Sea”, which is used by pro-Palestinians campaigning for the elimination of the state of Israel.

It was the same sort of sentiment expressed by the Greens supporting those protesters who have occupied university campuses and attacked and damaged MPs’ offices, including the offices of Albanese and Melbourne Labor MP Josh Burns, who is Jewish.

Initially, the Prime Minister’s Office indicated Payman would not be punished for breaking a 130-year old Labor rule and tradition of caucus solidarity. Then Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said there would be no action taken against her for handing Greens leader Adam Bandt a propaganda victory and angering her caucus colleagues who have previously swallowed deeply personal feelings in the name of the collective.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

As Wong – who voted against her personal position by opposing the holding of a same-sex marriage plebiscite – said later, Labor MPs owed loyalty to their group and Payman should have dealt with her concerns internally.

For the deliberate and considered act on Tuesday of voting with the Greens against Labor government policy on the Middle East, Payman has agreed not to attend the one scheduled ALP caucus meeting next week.

The damage to Albanese’s authority, the humiliation of Marles and the still burning resentment in the Labor caucus, not to mention the continued division within Labor and the inability to deal directly with an ongoing and growing problem of social division, all detracted from Labor’s talk about tax cuts.

The executive pardon without caucus involvement means that Payman has a licence to cross the floor, as now do other Labor senators and MPs, such as Burns. Albanese, who figured in the mass expulsion of Labor councillors in Leichhardt in the 1990s when they didn’t vote for his preferred mayoral candidate, is sending the message that “rats in the ranks” will no longer be expelled from the ALP for voting against the party.

On Wednesday, there was growing excitement over the pending return to Australia of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who got a plea deal with the US over espionage charges – a guilty plea in return for a sentence of time ­already served in prison.

Albanese declared: “We have got this done” and said “this is what standing up for Australians around the world looks like”. Albanese held a special late press conference, was the first to speak to Assange on the phone and was credited with saving Assange’s life.

All Australian governments have the duty to protect their citizens and to help those in trouble overseas.

But the danger for Albanese is that he is seen to have treated Assange, a deeply polarising character over many years and for many reasons, as a returning hero in the same league as Australians falsely accused and held by repressive or communist regimes.

In fact, as Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham pointed out, Assange is guilty of espionage against our most important strategic partner and ally, the United States, and while there is recognition of the government’s role in getting Assange back to Australia, there is a danger in being seen to fete an enemy of an ally.

Wong rejected the idea there would be any damage to the US-Australia relationship but conceded the Australian government would not tolerate leaking of security material as was the case in the Assange case.

Another day, another distraction as Albanese was swept up in celebrity news and was seen talking about something other than the cost of living.