Anthony Albanese punches miners – then says ‘play nice’

Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There aren’t too many sectors of the economy with which the Albanese government has not yet picked a fight.

But the government’s notion of conflict resolution seems to be asking an opponent not to react when it punches them in the face.

The Prime Minister has now clearly decided that he wants to take on the big miners, with their big profits. If this wasn’t his in­tention, then its another clumsy example of poor political management.

And while Albanese’s speech to the miners on Monday night wasn’t aggressive, it was clearly written with intent. The mining companies see it as dismissive of their concerns, littered with contempt for their success.

Assuming Albanese’s intention was to raise the temperature, this is a high-risk strategy. Tania Constable has called his bluff and signalled as sharply and coherently as possible that the sector isn’t for turning.

The gloves are now off. But industrial relations is just one front. Constable listed a list of grievances the sector now has with the Prime Minister.

While few have been surprised by the private message that the government wasn’t happy with their campaign against Labor’s industrial relations changes, what came as shock on Monday morning to mining bosses in town for Canberra’s annual mining festival was that Albanese has personally decided to take the fight into a public arena.

But why the government feels aggrieved by the stance the sector has taken is bewildering.

Unlike some of the woke agendas that big business signed up to with Labor, the IR reforms go ­directly to the mining companies’ bottom line. Did the government seriously expect some of the country’s largest taxpayers to simply roll over and take it?

This is a policy agenda from Canberra that is going to cost them money and it should have been no wonder to anyone in government that the mining lobby has decided it was going to go harder than it has on other issues.

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable. Picture: John Feder

Albanese says he doesn’t want conflict with the sector, with rhetorical claims to how im­portant it is not only to the nation but to Labor’s own clean-energy strategy.

Following Resources Minister Madeleine King’s spray at BHP a fortnight ago, Albanese’s pugilistic missive in his speech to the Minerals Council dinner was already starting to look a bit like unfinished business from the Swan/Gillard days and Labor’s last attempt at a mining tax.

Two theories are now doing the rounds about King’s aggressive crack at BHP in Perth two weeks ago. The first is that this was a reflection of long-held personal enmities between certain figures in the company and the WA Labor Right faction to which King belongs.

The second was that the attack was directly authorised by central command – being the Prime Minister’s office. This has been rejected with Albanese reported to have issued internal demands for colleagues to cool things down.

Albanese’s double-down, however, makes it likely that the second theory has some truth to it. Considering the simmering tensions between BHP and King, which sources claim is personal in origin, it is probably a case of a bit of both.

Whatever the genesis, what is clear now is Albanese has flicked the switch on a new set of emerging battlelines that pit Labor as the champion of the worker against the monolithic might of the big miners. And presumably anybody else who decides to stick their head up.

One gets the sense that a new class war, of the kind Albanese promised would not be repeated after Labor’s 2019 blunder, is back on the political table. The PM wouldn’t be taking this approach if Labor hadn’t done some polling to support a thesis that there is a political dividend for the government by going back down this road, with an electorate pummelled by the fall in living standards and perhaps more receptive to another blame-shifting exercise.

But the question must now be asked, especially in light of the war with the RBA over inflation: How many fronts does Labor want to be fighting on as the election date comes racing towards it?