Budget 2022: Anthony Albanese should come clean on impossible $275 cut

Anthony Albanese in question time on Thursday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Anthony Albanese has to apologise for Labor’s inability to fulfil a promise of a $275 cut in everyone’s electricity bill.

The longer the Prime Minister clings to his impossible-to-keep promise the more damage will be done to his government, the angrier people will become and the less focus there will be on the promises he has kept.

What’s more, the longer Albanese goes without saying he’s sorry that he can’t keep the promise, the greater the blame and the sense of betrayal.

“2-7-5” has become an unanswerable challenge for Labor and a battle cry for the Coalition as it crystallises fears about cost-of-living rises and the worst inflation in 30 years.

Having gone through a full parliamentary budget week without being able to say if the promise of a $275 cut in power bills in 2025 is still alive and possible, Labor has prolonged the agony and played into Peter Dutton’s strategy of appealing to working people in the suburbs and regions.

After a week of parliament and no immediate concession and apology for not being able to keep the promise, Albanese and Jim Chalmers have refined their response to blaming Vladimir Putin and the Coalition’s failure on energy policy.

Both claims have validity but are not sustainable politically when the promise continued to be made – 97 times – beyond the invasion of Ukraine and through the election campaign. Labor left no wriggle room or backdoor exit before the election and so must now just “fess up” – as the Treasurer did to his misheard question about the $275.

The government’s attacks on Coalition policy are too complicated, historical and detailed to cut through the public debate, which is all about energy prices, household bills and financial stress.

Labor just doesn’t get it that the national “conversation” is not about carbon emissions but about power prices and supply.

Everyone else is talking about a non-existent $275 cut to electricity bills while Chris Bowen, Albanese and Chalmers are talking about “cheaper, cleaner power” and spending billions to reduce carbon emissions while relying on gas and coal to get Australia through a global energy crisis.

Until someone owns up and says Labor can’t keep the promise, while giving reasonable explanations for that failure, the focus will remain on a $275 saving that isn’t going to happen.

If this goes on too long the Albanese government will weigh itself down with a broken promise as damaging as Julia Gillard’s carbon tax pledge. Post-pandemic politics are febrile and people are afraid and anxious – Labor needs to act.