Labor under pressure across multiple fronts as PM faces a test of his leadership

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese is now facing political challenges across multiple fronts. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese is facing the first real test of his leadership.

He meets political and policy challenges across multiple fronts.

Industrial relations reform has been labelled “unworkable” and is not guaranteed to pass the Senate, housing supply laws are at an impasse and the resources tax reform is in jeopardy.

Albanese himself is under pressure to explain the Qatar decision amid calls for it to be reviewed while his deputy faces questions over his extensive use of taxpayer-funded special purpose flights.

The Indigenous voice is the most immediate of Albanese’s challenges, but this will be resolved within a matter of weeks, although the outcome will have enduring consequences for his leadership.

This week is the first time the Prime Minister – and the government – has been subjected to serious or sustained political pressure.

The only reprieve, ironically, has been a pause in the current interest rate hike cycle. This will be a short-lived amnesty.

A new strategy will be required to address the danger that household anxiety swings to anger at the inevitable delay in them coming back down again.

Having governed from a forward leaning posture since being elected, Albanese now finds himself on the back foot sooner than anticipated.

No easy path is apparent, with Labor forced to navigate an increasingly complex and contested environment.

The unexpected hurdles for Albanese’s forward agenda have converged with a return to politics as usual, as the government is forced into a defensive position across a range of issues central to its agenda and its management credentials.

Albanese has been slow to respond to the Qatar controversy, underestimated public animosity and failed to recognise its potential to feed into the Coalition’s narrative that the government is tone-deaf to cost-of-living pressures.

Transparency is also being questioned.

The government hasn’t been helped with Alan Joyce’s earlier than expected departure from Qantas.

On industrial relations, Tony Burke has taken a tactical approach with a view that the Senate crossbench could be persuaded with minor retreats on issues of concern. This is not guaranteed.

The business sector has labelled the new bill as “unworkable”, leaving the government exposed to a noisy and extended campaign against it.

Jim Chalmers’s reforms to the petroleum resource rent tax are also in doubt, facing blockage in the Senate, and cruelling what ­little tax reform the government had on its agenda.

The most recent Newspoll suggest that cracks were starting to appear in the government’s electoral armour.

With Albanese having taken a detached approach to the politics so far, leaving his cabinet ministers to their own devices, his reputation as a political and parliamentary negotiator is being probed.

At some point, in between international commitments, he will need to take a more active role or risk losing the politics and leave key policy ambitions stranded.

Albanese acknowledged to his caucus on Tuesday that the government was now dealing with “pushback”, having had an easy run for the first half of its first term back in office in almost a decade.

He was referring specifically to the industrial relations reform but resistance is appearing on a broader front, with the Greens now also engaged in political adventurism.

This week the minor party also vowed to block the government’s Murray-Darling Basin reforms.

“We are in government to make a difference, not to take up space. This legislation will make a difference,” Mr Albanese said.

An unexpected outcome of the emerging political environment is the opportunistic alignment of the Coalition and the Greens in the Senate on key policies – albeit from opposing sides of the debate – coupled with unanticipated crossbench resistance.

This is all combining to trouble the government’s legislative agenda and stall its political momentum as signs emerge that all this comes with an electoral penalty.