Albanese too cool for full-frontal attack on Shorten

Anthony “Albo” Albanese has thrown a rock into the Labor leadership pond and is waiting to see where the ripples go.

Bill Shorten’s crafty rival, the “people’s choice” who won the support of the ALP rank and file in the leadership ballot, has been ­positioning himself for months and years to contrast with the ­Opposition Leader on personality, loyalty, authenticity, being working class and being just a ­little bit cool.

But now Albanese has positioned himself specifically for the by-elections on July 28 on policy and political grounds, offering an alternative to Shorten on ­business, trying to share the ­proceeds of a growing economy and representing workers, not union bosses.

Shorten is campaigning hard in the seats of Longman and Braddon against the Coalition’s tax “giveaway” to millionaires and big business as a dry run for a general campaign that offers tax relief for those earning below $120,000 a year and blocks the top company tax cuts.

His style is adversarial, combative and personally targets Malcolm Turnbull as a millionaire and “ex-merchant banker” as he accuses Pauline Hanson of selling out those on low incomes.

Albanese’s alternative view is in the name of the Hawke-­Keating wages accord reforms and tries to reassure business that Labor is not an enemy. While the challenge from Albanese is out there for all to see, it is not one of those abrupt wonders we have come to expect from both sides in recent years where leaders come and go overnight.

This challenge is slow and steady. Having struck a blow with his speech — termed a “bloody dagger” — Albanese is unlikely to do any more than just be there until the by-elections.

This is more a long march than a night of the long knives.

Should Shorten falter and lose one of the by-elections, which are being held now because of his false claims there was no fault with any Labor MPs’ citizenship, he will be even less popular than Turnbull as prime minister.

He will also be open to internal claims he is suppressing Labor’s vote and that’s when the ripples will count, and not from Coalition agitation in the mean time.