Anthony Albanese’s first term has been a mess — but a second would be worse
The dystopian picture of an Albanese second act with major roles for Greens and teals may be just the scare campaign the Coalition needs. Yet we have to steel ourselves for the prospect that it could become our lived reality.
Our nation enters the second quarter of the 21st century with challenges aplenty: a threatening and uncertain strategic environment, a budget in structural deficit, government debt at record levels, an energy supply and affordability crisis driving a cost-of-living crisis and unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism undermining social cohesion.
Yet according to most recent opinion polling we could be facing this new era under the helm of a minority Labor government reliant on the Greens and the teals for its existence.
We do not need a great deal of imagination to consider what governance by a Labor minority government would look like. Regrettably for the nation, such an arrangement would play to Labor’s weaknesses. This is because the policy areas in which Anthony Albanese is failing the country are the same ones that an empowered Greens-teals crossbench would emphasise.
But while it is not difficult to envisage, let us not pretend that it might not be cataclysmic. Business leaders have been unusually strident in raising the alarm: “A minority government risks handing over exorbitant power to a small collection of shuttered MPs wholly concerned with their narrow agenda rather than the greater good of the nation,” Beach Energy managing director Brett Woods said this week.
Infrastructure NSW chairman Graham Bradley says: “There’ll be policy confusion and debates which are going to cause delays” – particularly in crucial industry sectors.
“Frankly, it would be a nightmare,” Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill says.
Even the Prime Minister seems to realise what he may be in for, this week summarising the Greens for a Melbourne audience: “Lost their way, don’t care about the environment, don’t vote for them.”
Yet most Labor MPs will not be elected without Greens preferences, and on the latest polling Labor has no chance of holding power for a second term without securing a deal with the Greens and teals.
This prospect of a minority Labor-Greens-teals government is the main reason this is such a historically important election.
It is not a matter of whether a bad government doing economic, social and strategic damage to the country is replaced. Rather, because of the swollen crossbench, the choice is likely between replacing the current government or making it even worse.
Albanese said in 2024 “there’ll be no deal with the Greens” and this week insisted he would not be taking a call from Greens leader Adam Bandt on the morning after the election. “What I’m interested in is governing in majority,” he said.
Yet the Prime Minister’s actions betray a different prognosis. On the same day he made that majority proclamation Albanese was campaigning in the seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s outer metropolitan fringe, held by Labor with a margin of more than 7 per cent – just the sort of seat where cost-of-living pressures hit hardest and just the sort where swings to the Coalition are likely to be strongest.
Labor is not campaigning as though majority government is in play. It is clearly looking to protect seats that normally would be safe.
Not quite as desperate as saving the furniture, but perhaps trying to save the house frame. The party obviously aims to hold enough seats to give itself the best opportunity of clinging to power in minority (while two seats would cost it majority, it could lose 10 seats and still have four more than the Coalition).
In this scenario Labor would be in the box seat to form government with the Greens and teals. It would be the most left-wing federal government in the nation’s history.
Aside from the seats Labor is targeting, its campaigning also betrays its strategy. It is pitched squarely at the true believers. Confecting the third or fourth iteration of a Mediscare and orchestrating a politics-of-envy attack on Peter Dutton just to demonstrate he has owned extensive real estate and sharemarket investments, Labor is out to lock in existing voters, not win new support with a fresh agenda.
Realistically, the choice in this election is between a Dutton Coalition government or Albanese Labor clinging on with support (and conditions) from the Greens and the teals.
The teals are the big-spending, pale green independents who behave like a political party under the patronage and guidance of Climate 200’s Simon Holmes a Court.
Put another way, the election choice is between a Dutton government and an Albanese-Bandt-Holmes a Court government.
When business leaders claim minority governments are “never good for business”, they are stating the obvious. Ostensibly railing against a minority administration in cahoots with either major party, the debate is really about a Labor-Greens-teal outfit.
If the Coalition forms government without a majority it would likely be with a small number of former conservatives and right-of-centre types such as Bob Katter, Andrew Gee, Dai Le and Rebekha Sharkie, none of whom would alter its disposition significantly.
But we know the Greens and teals would share the reins with Labor and tug to the near side, partly because they have many ideological soulmates in the Labor caucus.
To envisage a Labor-Greens-teals government, history is instructive. Labor had a practice run in 2010 when Julia Gillard formed government thanks to former conservative turncoats Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor – but Gillard then buttressed her numbers by formalising a deal with the Greens.
The agreement included a focus on climate change, parliamentary integrity, Indigenous recognition and criticism of the Afghanistan war. With the war representing antipathy towards the US alliance, this list looks similar to the Labor-Greens-teals agenda of today.
A Labor minority government dependent on various shades of green to survive would compound the misadventures and weaknesses of the Albanese Labor government in six main policy areas.
1. Energy
Energy is prime. Labor’s determination to proceed with a world-first renewables-plus-storage experiment that experts tell us is impossible on engineering and economic grounds is doing the most damage to the economy and the nation’s future. It is where the policy differentiation between the major parties is strongest and the crossbench would take a Labor minority government even deeper into the mire.
Far from delivering a $275 annual reduction in household electricity bills as promised, Labor has given voters an increase of about double that figure. Our electricity grid now supplies electrons at the highest prices and lowest reliability of the modern era. This has been driven by the deliberate decision to promote and subsidise renewable generation while forcing out coal and gas generation.
Climate and energy activism is the raison d’etre for the Greens and the teals. Any minority government involving them would rest on preconditions about accelerating rather than remediating this energy self-harm.
This would start by reaffirming the repudiation of domestic nuclear energy, but it would do most immediate damage by further demonising and impeding gas. Efforts to boost exports by extending the North West Shelf gas supplies and moves to buttress national energy grid supplies by increasing east coast gas extraction and generation would be stymied.
Under a Labor-Greens-teals government our electricity prices would continue to escalate and reliability would continue to decline. Our industrial and manufacturing base would atrophy, our economic performance and national security would be further compromised.
This would be happening precisely when the global zeitgeist is shifting in the other direction. Led by Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” energy realism, even Europe and big oil are changing tack. BP announced this week that it had “fundamentally reset” its strategy, cutting renewables investment by $US5bn ($8bn) and increasing fossil fuel investment to $US10bn.
BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss said the company “accelerated into the energy transition” five years ago but “lower-cost energy” had won out. “Our optimism for a fast transition was misplaced,” Auchincloss said. “We went too far, too fast.”
Realists might note that the same words could and should describe Australia’s policies across the past two decades. Just when Australia needs to go in the same direction as the US and BP – or in the medium-term direction of Dutton’s nuclear plan – a Labor-Greens-teals government would extend our plummet into a renewables-led energy decline.
Maybe West Australian teal Kate Chaney is reading the political winds because she is now winding back her opposition to North West Shelf gas. Still, Chaney is the most marginal of the teals and the one likeliest to have her seat reclaimed by the Liberals, so her moderation may be irrelevant.
Unfortunately, the east coast teal seats such as Kooyong and Goldstein in Melbourne and Wentworth and Warringah in Sydney are insulated by geography from the economic necessity of fossil fuel exploitation, and by household wealth from the imperative of affordable power. If Monique Ryan, Zoe Daniel, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall are returned and have the opportunity to prop up a Labor government, their climate zealotry will remain front and centre – it is the backbone of their political identity and it does not bow to science, economics or practical reality.
2. Government spending
On profligate spending we know minority government would provide no handbrake. On the contrary, the Greens’ propensity for big government interventions and welfare profligacy, along with the teals’ focus on populist policies, would only deepen our fiscal malaise.
3. Union power
Labor already has vastly increased union power, re-regulating the labour market. It has boosted federal public servant numbers by 36,000 while caving in to public sector unions to accept a bias towards working from home – according to reports 70 per cent of staff work from home in some federal departments (perhaps they could convert their offices into social housing).
None of the teals will resist these trends. The Greens have resisted even Labor’s attempts to rein in the most militant unions, including the CFMEU. This raises the bizarre prospect that rogue unions could reclaim a powerful role inside a Labor government via the Greens.
4. National security
And while we wallow in the wake of the Chinese navy’s latest provocative excursion around our continent, we know a minority government would be antipathetic to the US alliance, increased defence spending and standing up to China. Already we have seen that Albanese’s first instinct was not to call out China’s delinquency but to justify it.
5. Foreign policy
We learned this week that at the UN General Assembly in September 2024 Foreign Minister Penny Wong met officials from Iran and the Palestinian Authority but not Israel. You could be forgiven for thinking our foreign policy stance could not become any weaker, but the way to test that theory would be to elect a Labor-Greens-teals government.
The Greens have been flagrantly anti-Israel, giving succour to radical pro-Palestinian activists who have echoed the arguments and diatribes of Hamas. The teals lobbied Labor to restore full funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East even after it was confirmed that a dozen of its staff had joined the Hamas October 7 atrocities.
Antipathy towards the US alliance is deeply embedded in the Greens’ DNA and could embolden similar sentiments in the ALP Socialist Left – the Prime Minister’s faction. The Greens oppose AUKUS and some of the teals have expressed doubts, all of which could be precarious in troubled times.
6. Social cohesion
Giving these politicians greater sway over government in the current climate would be socially reckless. This week we saw students at Sydney’s Granville Boys High School chanting “Allahu Akbar” in support of a sheik who had made excuses for the anti-Semitic bile on that infamous video involving two Bankstown Hospital nurses.
We also learned another Sydney Muslim leader had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. Asked about the worry of Australians attending a terrorist leader’s funeral, Albanese had nothing to say except to defer to ASIO.
On Monday Albanese was confronted by a Jewish mother of four on the ABC’s Q+A program who detailed the devastating impact of anti-Semitism and he said, in part: “The government is doing what we can but, again, this is an issue which the whole of society has to address.”
This is the signature weakness of Albanese on foreign policy and anti-Semitism, and under a minority government there is little doubt we would see the Greens extremists dominate.
If there is one word to encapsulate Albanese’s prime ministership it would be weakness. He fails to lead, behaves like a spectator and unfailingly refuses to accept responsibility. Even in the shabby politics of attacks on Dutton over his personal finances we saw the Prime Minister repeatedly wipe his hands of the issue this week, haughtily dismissing it as a matter for the Opposition Leader. Then one of his chief attack dogs, Labor MP for Parramatta Andrew Charlton, let slip that the Dutton dirt file came from Albanese’s office.
We need to ask if Albanese is this weak now, how pedestrian will he be if he has Bandt and Holmes a Court permanently camped in the prime ministerial foyer flaunting their parliamentary numbers? Do we really think Albanese could stare down Ryan or Sarah Hanson-Young?
When the race officially begins the Coalition will campaign hard on the risk of a Labor minority government with the two shades of green. This attack will figure especially prominently in the teal seats where the Liberals hope to reclaim prized ground.
But the risk of a minority government also could help to polarise the vote more broadly, luring voters back to the Coalition. While pundits keep telling us no first term government has lost since 1931, Dutton will know Tony Abbott effectively defeated Labor after its first term in 2010, only to have it overturned by the turncoats.
The dystopian picture of an Albanese second act with major roles for Greens and teals may be just the scare campaign the Coalition needs. Yet we have to steel ourselves for the prospect that it could become our lived reality.
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