For Anthony Albanese, the day may be won but the war is far from over

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has won a high-stakes game. Picture: Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese may have won the day but he is a long way from winning the war on energy prices.

The battle has just begun.

Having secured national support for an unprecedented intervention in the energy market, the Prime Minister has emerged as a leader in control of the politics and in control of parliament.

There can be no doubt that in the short term at least, this makes for good politics.

He played a high stakes game and he got what he wanted.

Yet there is an undeniable risk to all of this, both politically and for the energy market in the application of what is at stake.

In doing what he has done, Albanese has taken full ownership of the problem.

The expectations of the community have now been set in stone.

There will be no one else to blame if it fails.

The plan to curb the excessive price rises could technically work. It may deliver what it says it will.

Peter Dutton. Picture: Martin Ollman

Even if it does, power prices for consumers and businesses are still set to rise by 23 per cent.

The government will find it hard to sustain the argument in a year’s time that people should be grateful to the government that their bills aren’t going up by more.

There is also a risk that the industry is right, that a supply crisis will be the inevitable consequence.

Or that some economists are proven correct – that the $3bn in taxpayer subsidies being tipped into the economy will have the reverse effect of Treasury’s brave assumption that it won’t be inflationary.

There is a strong sense within the Coalition that Albanese’s plan will fail to resolve the problem and that the energy crisis will endure through the life of this parliament.

This belief underwrites Peter Dutton’s strategic decision to oppose the plan, knowing that while Albanese will win the politics this week by forcing Dutton to vote against households, there is potentially a greater downside risk into next year for the government rather than the opposition.

The Opposition Leader has taken a position that as a centre-right party, there comes a point where Liberals have to draw a line in the sand.

Considering the diminished base from which he is working, Dutton has made his own political calculation that the Liberal Party could not go along with this.

He has rejected Labor’s political wedge.

To do otherwise may have risked splitting the Coalition.

For business, the penny is finally starting to drop. The Albanese government doesn’t exist to play nice with them.

The business community has yet to come to terms with how to deal with this, having sat back passively watching the government’s rhetorical attacks of profiteering and price gouging reaching a receptive electoral ear.

Albanese’s success on industrial relations, and now energy, will only reinforce in the government’s mind that business has a limited constituency and is incapable of shifting public opinion.