PM’s judgement under scrutiny as Labor reels from voice result

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first responsibility as leader will be to unite the nation and heal division. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Two searing questions emerge from the ashes of defeat as Anthony Albanese fronts parliament on Monday amid pressure to explain how it all went so wrong.

The Prime Minister’s first responsibility as leader will be to unite the nation and heal division.

This may well be the most difficult and defining week of his leadership. He will have to keep his cool and act to lower the political temperature.

But what now for reconciliation and Indigenous disadvantage and what of the implications for the broader political contest?

Whatever the future plan may be for closing the gap, it must be forged in political collaboration, unencumbered by ideology and practical in effect. Albanese has flagged a new response over the coming months.

Peter Dutton has repeated his call for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities and an audit of Indigenous funding programs.

While this may not suit the current ruling class, it may resonate more widely in the community. There remains a gulf between the two leaders on the means to get to an outcome on which both agree. Both sides of politics are on notice. The referendum failed, but expectations have been raised that there will be new solutions to the issues of disadvantage that the voice has illuminated.

There will be resentment in some sections of the community that a deficient model was foisted upon them by the government. It would be clearly wrong to believe that the issue of recognition and redress have been settled.

This is Albanese’s problem. While he needs a new solution to the unfinished business, his priority now is to pivot back to the ­issues that are foremost in most people’s minds. This was the message that his frontbench colleagues on Sunday were pushing hard.

To the extent there is any damage to Albanese’s leadership will be a question of whether the failure of the voice is contained or seen as a systemic issue that carries over into other challenges facing the government. There will be a perception that Albanese aligned himself with the elites and was tone deaf to the majority, deferring to his inner-city left-wing leanings over a responsibility to govern for the country.

Overanalysis of seat-by-seat results of the voice try to assume there is a broader electoral effect in the Labor seats that produced a strong no vote.

This is a distortion of the outcome and the national mood.

Both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese have suffered political damage over the voice referendum. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Newspoll predicted the voice result accurately. At the same time, it has shown that on a two-party preferred vote, there has been a two-point swing to Labor since the election, despite the voice. There can be no inference that the voice result flows directly to a shift in voting intention. Labor supporters may have opposed the voice, but that doesn’t mean they are going to shift their vote at a general election as a result. Yet it would be foolish to suggest the result hasn’t produced significant difficulties for the Prime Minister.

The Opposition Leader faces a similar challenge but for differing reasons. There has been no correlation between the high no vote and increased support for the Coalition or Dutton as leader – although he has benefited from the appeal to the conservative base, and defining an issue around which the vast majority of parliamentary colleagues could unite for the past six months.

He will have to counter the negativity that is now associated with his leadership.

But it is Albanese who is under greater pressure to respond. If he doesn’t handle this correctly, there may well be implications for his leadership. He will need to apply ruthless pragmatism to his approach on the other challenges facing the government.

The overwhelming defeat of the voice has raised doubt about his political judgment, but whether there are longer-term problems is now entirely up to him.