Anthony Albanese points to his policy record amid growing political turbulence

The PM is ending his first full year in power by promoting his political agenda amid backbench rumblings he’s been distracted by the international agenda.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Saturday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Sam Ruttyn

Anthony Albanese is ending the year on a campaign to defend his political achievements and management of national cabinet, while staring down opposition to the passage of workplace changes that have escalated Labor’s conflict with business.

The end-of-year push to package his political agenda to the public comes as the Prime Minister finds himself under growing pressure amid a new national debate on community safety, border protection, social cohesion and ongoing concern over cost-of-­living pressures as polls point to a government at risk of falling into minority at the next election.

Mr Albanese - who is on leave this week until Thursday with Richard Marles stepping up as Acting Prime Minister - spent the weekend promoting his political agenda at the end of his government’s first full year in power amid backbench rumblings that he had been too distracted by his international agenda and held more press conferences overseas than in Australia since the voice referendum defeat.

After big business condemned the passage of key parts of Labor’s industrial relations agenda on Thursday – likening it to a “declaration of war” that would shatter business confidence and undermine investment – Mr Albanese said the government’s workplace reforms were aimed at giving workers a better deal and delivering on his election commitments to get wages moving again and to boost job security.

He said the government’s “same job, same pay” shake-up would crack down on companies that had dudded their own workers; other changes would make wage theft and industrial manslaughter criminal offences.

“This will help make workplaces safer and it will make it clear that businesses can’t get away with stealing from their employees,” Mr Albanese writes in The Australian.

“Labour hire laws were designed to help employers bring in people with specialist skills or deal with temporary shortages, but for too long some companies have used labour hire to undermine enterprise bargaining and drive down wages,” he says. “These laws will put a stop to that.”

Miners have railed against the “same job, same pay” changes, with BHP saying the shake-up could increase their costs by $1.3bn a year and the Minerals Council accusing Labor of declaring war on the sector.

Holding his ninth press conference in the country since the October referendum, Mr Albanese on Saturday talked up the passage of Labor’s preventive detention regime in response to the release of dangerous non-citizens into the community following the High Court’s “NZYQ” ruling.

Ahead of this week’s mid-year economic update, Mr Albanese listed the outcomes secured from Wednesday’s national cabinet meeting for a national firearms registry, a new plan for health and hospitals funding and a more sustainable trajectory for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Promoting his management of the Pacific, Mr Albanese also pointed to the finalisation of a ­legally binding national security agreement with Papua New Guinea and noted the passage of key environmental legislation “including our Nature Repair Bill, and with that a water trigger, and an agreement on the Murray-Darling Basin”.

One of Mr Albanese’s key objectives is to frame Labor as a competent manager of the federation following last week’s grand bargain that saw the commonwealth commit about $25bn in GST top-ups and extra health funding to the states and territories in exchange for a doubling of the annual increase in their funding for the NDIS from 2028.

“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to achieve this year through the co-operation we’ve built at national cabinet,” he writes. “Our government has made boosting housing supply, affordability and construction a priority … and in August, national cabinet came together to agree on the biggest set of housing reforms in a generation.”