Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese’s shocking week could be the start of the end

The Prime Minister looked weak and out of touch last week, writes Peta Credlin: failing to discipline Senator Fatima Payman, lionising Julian Assange, and giving the Governor-General a $220k pay rise during a cost of living crisis.

If the Albanese government turns out to be a one-term wonder, last week could mark the point when things really started to fall apart.

The Prime Minister looked weak and out of touch — exactly as the Opposition is tagging him — in failing to discipline Senator Fatima Payman and for lionising Julian Assange.

With inflation ticking up, the government’s economic strategy is fraying and its response to Peter Dutton’s nuclear initiative has been, frankly, juvenile.

There’s no doubt the electorate cuts first-term governments some slack and doesn’t lightly change its mind.

But the Coalition under Peter Dutton is nothing like the outfit that looked too cocky and smug under Scott Morrison against a Labor Party that, hiding its true intentions from the public and with only 32 per cent of the primary vote, hardly won a popular mandate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese showed some serious errors in judgment last week, writes Peta Credlin. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

In defying conventional wisdom to oppose Labor’s divisive Voice last year, Dutton showed that he knows what he’s against: the scourge of identity politics; and in taking a justified risk to support nuclear power, he’s now showing what he’s for: achieving net zero without destroying the economy and putting out the lights.

Finally, there’s now a clear contest over something that’s vital for our future and not just the puerile personality politics. Finally, there’s a big difference between the two major parties over a matter of real policy substance: the maintenance of the affordable and reliable electricity system that’s essential for modern life.

ALP Senator Fatima Payman. Picture: Martin Ollman

Labor says we can trust our future to the wind and the sun; Dutton says we need power 24/7, not just when the wind blows and the sun shines, and that means making a place for the only proven form of emissions-free baseload power.

His nuclear pledge makes him the first leader to inject a note of realism and honesty into the energy debate in at least a decade, which is why he’s now neck-and-neck in the polls with Anthony Albanese as a credible alternative PM.

Albanese’s misjudgment was not so much using his influence to get Assange out of jail, because not even someone who’s more traitor than hero could be locked up forever. His mistake was thinking that the release of someone who’d put national security at risk was a cause for national celebration.

A PM who can’t wait to place a sympathetic call to an admitted felon but who couldn’t find time to visit the Perth victim of one of the foreign criminals his government had released and couldn’t find it in his heart to immediately call his Israeli counterpart after the October 7 atrocity has got his priorities wrong.

Albanese calls Julian Assange to welcome him home. Picture: Supplied

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange touches down. Picture: Martin Ollman

A compounding factor last week was the government awarding its new Governor-General a $200,000 pay rise at a time when most households are tightening their belts.

When the Prime Minister initially admonished Senator Payman over her use of the genocidal phrase “from the river to the sea” he was arguably extending some latitude to a political novice.

But in failing to impose any serious penalty in the wake of her crossing the floor in favour of a Greens motion in support of Palestine, he has junked 130 years of Labor history.

Never before has a Labor MP crossed the floor without sanction.

Indeed, this is only the second time in Labor’s history that an MP has crossed the floor during their time in government. The last time was under Bob Hawke when two Labor politicians crossed the floor and were immediately suspended from the party by Hawke.

And yet, with Payman, she’s told to merely miss one caucus meeting.

This is the first time a Labor rat has been allowed to stay in the ranks. The Prime Minister has either given up on internal discipline, or he’s decided that the rules don’t apply to a Muslim woman who wears a hijab because he’s fearful of blowback in seats in Western Sydney where he needs the Muslim vote to survive.

Governor-General Samantha Mostyn’s pay rise hit headlines this week, too. Picture: Supplied

Meanwhile, the government’s economic policies are making all our problems worse.

Under Labor, government spending has more-or-less permanently gone up from 24 per cent to 26 per cent of GDP and much of it is misspent, such as the NDIS, that will soon have nearly a million clients and cost $100bn a year. To put it into perspective, that’s more than double the cost of Medicare — and it services all 26 million Australians.

Is it any wonder inflation is sticky?

Labor’s economic plan was to bask in the goodwill of tax cuts and power bill subsidies that will hit bank accounts this week, and build an election campaign around interest rates starting to come down.

As an anti-inflation strategy, the RBA was never likely to be impressed by extra handouts to manipulate the CPI. Now, this month’s worse-than-expected inflation figure means that the next interest rate move is more likely to be up than down, which would be politically devastating for Labor because, rightly, the experts will argue that Jim Chalmers’ budget made things worse, not better.

I still think that a pre-Christmas election is more likely than not, because Labor will want to go to the polls before the economic news gets worse, and its next budget will not be able to hide the reality of deficit, debt and taxes as far as the eye can see.

And after Albanese’s surrender to a bolshie senator, he could be even more motivated to go early, before the internal rumblings against his leadership really get going.

LET’S BE CLEAR WHAT ASSANGE IS

Around the world we rely on people in brutal places like Iran and Afghanistan to give us information to help our governments and our military to keep us safe.

Julian Assange exposed many of those people by name when he published thousands of confidential US documents over a decade ago.

I agree that he could not be detained indefinitely, but let’s not forget that was of his own choosing; first, in hiding over rape charges in Sweden, and second, in prison while he fought extradition to the US to face trial.

Rather than a special deal, I would have preferred Assange to face a trial in a court and see justice done.

He is out now but we should not turn him into some sort of hero. He is not. He is a self-aggrandising narcissist who will very likely emerge as the left’s latest celebrity candidate.

If I was to write here all the things I have been told or read in confidential papers I would be locked up. As I should be. Freedom of speech and transparency are critical in a democracy. But it is not without its limits, as narrow and tightly defined as they should be.

TIME FOR BIDEN TO CALL IT A DAY

I’ve said since last year THAT Joe Biden would not be on the ballot paper in November.

After Friday’s trainwreck debate, even Democrats and their media cheer squad are demanding he stand aside. The reason he is still there is that they can’t agree on his replacement.

But it’s like watching Weekend at Bernie’s as they prop up a man who is in poor physical and mental health and should be allowed to depart with dignity.

The world desperately needs a strong US president, now more than ever.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Anthony Albanese’s shocking week could be the start of the end