In reassuring Queenslanders facing new flooding of continued federal government disaster relief whatever “the circumstances or status of the government”, the Prime Minister cryptically ended the charade that had ruled in the House of Representatives chamber that somehow there wasn’t going to be an election called.
What Albanese was referring to in the “status” of the government was the constitutional state of the government being in “caretaker mode”, during which significant policy decisions cannot be made and only the day-to-day mechanics of government – such as flood relief – can continue.
In other words, the PM was signalling going to an election and into caretaker mode.
All the signs of an end-of-term question time where there for all to see: government MPs cheering on Albanese and his ministers; government questions being given only to MPs in marginal seats, including Bennelong, Paterson, Gilmore and Lingiari; Coalition MPs feeling pumped after Peter Dutton’s petrol excise cut, and; the dry run of election cliches such as a “cruel hoax of tax cuts” and “only being interested in the cost of lunching not the cost of living”.
There was the encapsulation of the prime fight over Labor’s $5-a-week tax cuts in 2026 and the Liberals’ halving of petrol excise if elected into “permanent” tax relief on cost of living versus “temporary” excise relief. (Labor didn’t mention its own “temporary” freeze on beer excise and nor did the Coalition in that atmosphere of the last day of school.)
Even Speaker Milton Dick, after a testing term of keeping order, had to complain about “far too much noise” when Coalition MPs decided to answer Labor’s orchestrated cheers with their own ironic cheers and jeers.
The looming election themes raised their headlines from Dutton’s opening question on “Labor’s cruel hoax of a budget” to Albanese’s derision of “Scott Morrison’s leftovers voting against tax cuts” and Jim Chalmers’s dismissal of an unprecedented opposition stance against tax cuts.
“This decision will haunt them through every single day of their campaign,” the Treasurer said without, of course, conceding there would be a “campaign”.
“What that now proves beyond any doubt is if those opposite win the next election, Australians will be worse off, they will be paying higher taxes and that is because this Opposition Leader wants to cut everything except taxes for workers,” he said.
There was even a moment of pre-campaign camaraderie when Dutton stood up to endorse Albanese’s answer on AUKUS nuclear submarines and described the Prime Minister’s defence of the agreement as “a pretty good answer”.
Once the campaign begins it’s unlikely we will see much more good-natured repartee.
• If the election is on May 3, Albanese will overtake the service record of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Turnbull and become Australia’s 16th-longest-serving prime minister a couple of days before polling day.
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It wasn’t until the very last words of Anthony Albanese at the very end of parliamentary question time that it became absolutely clear that Thursday’s sitting was the last of the first term of the Labor government.