Will Albanese be bolder now? He’s five moves away from greatness

The one-month anniversary of Anthony Albanese’s historic victory is approaching, and the questions about the prime minister’s ambitions for his second-term agenda are piling up. What will he do with this mandate? Will he be more ambitious than he set out during the election campaign?

The prime minister bristles at the questions and offers the same responses – that he does, already, have an ambitious second-term agenda and that he will implement it over the next three years.

Will Prime Minister Anthony Albanese embrace ambition, or eschew it, in his second term?Credit: Getty Images

Few thought Labor would manage a second-term majority, let alone 94 seats. Albanese is already a Labor legend for having increased his majority, a feat unprecedented in modern Australia.

But to achieve greatness, Albanese must stop telling people how ambitious he is and instead take Australians into his confidence and tell them what he plans to do – and why.

He must pick issues and pursue policies and be willing to fight for them. But he must also be prepared to retreat, as he was not (or could not) over the Voice to parliament last term if they look impossible.

Perhaps he could pursue a referendum over a republic or fixed four-year terms (a proposition which enjoys broad support across the aisle). Cutting Australia’s company tax should also be on the list of options, as should be scaling back the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount. Perhaps a second-term agenda could even include changing the date of Australia Day, finally.

Albanese has made it abundantly clear he won’t be changing tax breaks for negative gearing in his second term (or probably ever). But there are other policy changes he can champion that will make a meaningful long-term difference to the shape and direction of this country.

And given that Albanese is now regarded by at least some in the caucus as a sort of left-wing John Howard – that is, a cautious prime minister with a genius read on the views and aspirations of middle Australia, and a determination to make his party the natural party of government – here are five policy proposals that Albanese has not spoken much about, or at all, but which he should pursue in the second term to truly enter the Labor pantheon of great leaders.

The first 18 months of a second term majority government is the point at which some of the toughest, thorniest but most nation-changing new laws are implemented.

Howard plunged head first into negotiations over the GST after his near-death experience at the 1998 election, while Bob Hawke and Paul Keating (albeit after major reforms in their first term) held a tax summit in 1985, with Keating opting to champion (temporarily) the introduction of a broad-based consumption tax, or GST.

The problem for Albanese is that few people believe he will abandon his small-target fixation. The most contentious reform Labor has proposed so far is a tax increase on super balances over $3 million, which affects a tiny percentage of people.

Changes to gambling advertising will be contentious, and other fights loom over access to cheaper childcare, the creation of a federal environmental protection agency and more.

It must be said, but Albanese’s steady-as-she-goes approach is part of what got Labor over the line on May 3 – he was seen as steadier and less risky than Peter Dutton at a time when people were focused on paying their mortgage or rent, getting food on the table and making sure they could afford to enrol the kids in Auskick or Saturday soccer.

We know he supports Australia becoming a republic. We know he wants four-year federal parliamentary terms. The idea that the prime minister, so badly burnt by the defeat of the Voice to parliament, should pursue these two additional constitutional referendums may seem laughable. But with the right preconditions and handled in the correct fashion, it is not impossible. First, Albanese should only pursue these changes if he can seek and secure bipartisan support from both the Liberal and National parties.

This does not mean that those two parties must also support both proposals – far from it – but rather, Albanese needs an undertaking that the parties will not use the two proposals as political weapons against Labor. Absent this, Albanese should not proceed. The vote could be held on election day 2028.

Cuts to the company tax rate, advocated for by former cabinet minister Ed Husic last term, are essential to maintain Australia’s international competitiveness and to encourage more Australians to take a risk and start a business. The Liberals, under Sussan Ley, could be persuaded to back this proposal. And given that those tax cuts will need to be paid for, changes to the capital gains tax break should be part of the negotiations.

While the opposition is unlikely to back the abolition of the CGT discount entirely, it is surely worth at least discussing scaling back the discount to, for example, 25 per cent (from 50 per cent).

And on changing the date of Australia Day from January 26, an increasingly contentious day of grief and mourning for some and source of bombastic national pride for others, Albanese should lead a national conversation about the issue and pursue it if the opposition is willing to be sensible.

Australia is one of very few colonised countries to have achieved independence and implemented a federated national commonwealth without having an all-in civil war. It was a significant and underrated achievement and one that should be marked. January 1, the day our constitution came into effect, is the obvious choice to replace January 26 – if the prime minister chooses to go down this path.

Halfway through the last term of parliament, after promising dozens of times that the Coalition’s stage 3 tax cuts would be implemented unchanged, Albanese changed his mind. Australia’s 31st prime minister had a light-bulb moment and realised that years from now, when he is long retired, he did not want to wake up one day and think “thank goodness I implemented Scott Morrison’s tax cuts in full”.

So he changed his mind and decided to be bold. It was arguably the finest moment of political judgment in his first term. Now, at the start of his second term, Albanese faces the same question. Will he have the courage to be guided by his head, but to follow his heart?

James Massola is chief political commentator for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.