ALP review: Albanese must quicken pace of resurrection

Anthony Albanese at the National Press Club on Friday. Picture: AAP

Labor’s election autopsy is over but the bodies and bad blood ­remain.

Anthony Albanese — in his first response to the ALP campaign post mortem — showed he is more nimble and straight-talking than Bill Shorten.

The left-wing powerbroker is attempting to succeed where Shorten failed, drag the ALP back to the centre and speak honestly to the party’s base, which abandoned Labor on May 18.

Albanese’s rhetoric was on target. He put the franking credits tax overhaul — weaponised by the Coalition as a “retiree tax” — on the chopping block and ­demanded an end to Labor’s class-warfare rhetoric.

Since becoming leader, Albanese has taken on the unions on free-trade deals, copped heat from greenies over his support for Scott Morrison’s farm vandals crackdown and publicly supported the mining communities who deserted Labor. He has also met ­religious groups, cognisant he must win back Christians and multicultural voters.

After five months of navel-­gazing and self-flagellation from his senior colleagues, Albanese will use the campaign review as an instrument to reshape the party into an election-fighting unit. But he faces enormous challenges in uncluttering Labor’s policy mess and uniting a damaged team.

Shorten and Chris Bowen, the architect of Labor’s election-­losing, revenue-raising tax grabs, ­remain on Albanese’s frontbench and seem permanently trapped in the denial stage of the grief ­process.

Joel Fitzgibbon, who came close to losing his safe seat of Hunter after failing to stand up for mining communities, is on a ­mission to water down Labor’s ­climate change policies.

Albanese is also under threat from the CFMEU. Taking on John Setka and endorsing his ­removal from the ALP was smart politics. But the bad blood with the powerful union, which backed Shorten as leader in 2013, is likely to set up a fight at the ALP nat­ional conference, which Albanese has brought forward to December next year.

Senior Labor MPs say they hope the review will act as a ­circuit-breaker for colleagues to overcome their grief of losing the unlosable election and start taking on the government. “This election loss in terms of grief was much worse than 2001. This was of our own doing, by our own hand,” one said.

Albanese has urged Labor supporters to be patient. He will wade through Shorten’s long list of election policies and decide what is jettisoned.

The Labor leader’s blueprint is a good starting point. But to keep the wolves from his door, he may have to accelerate his timeline to show voters he means business well before the 2022 election.