Albanese may have changed the way politics operates – for now

Political fights tend to provoke immediate sparks and media headlines. Quickly, triumphs and defeats are declared. Which can be a pity, because often the real victor isn’t clear until years down the track.

Last Wednesday, the government was able to celebrate new data showing wages continuing to rise – and faster than they were. With inflation trending down, this meant Labor could boast about a year and a half of wages rising faster than prices. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the figures showed “just how spectacularly wrong some people have been when they’ve talked about fears of a wage-price spiral in our economy”.

Illustration by Joseph BenkeCredit:

These were strong words from Chalmers – but entirely fair. There have been quite a few warnings since Labor came to power about the dangers of wage hikes pushing prices up even further – from the Coalition, business groups, economists and the Reserve Bank.

It’s important to recognise this is not only an argument about Labor’s day-to-day economic management – itself a crucial political battleground. It also takes in Labor’s changes to industrial relations laws with their intended effect on wages and the government’s push for higher wages in care sectors. So this is a proxy battle over Labor’s broader agenda.

Of course, the economists can comfort themselves with the fact that just because the wage-price spiral didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. Warnings can be reasonable even when the danger doesn’t materialise. Politicians, though, have to make and test their bets in real time. On this one, Chalmers and his colleagues have earned the right to crow.

Which is the theme of the moment. There are, for example, arguments to be had about exactly why the government won the election in such spectacular fashion. And such arguments – including just how much influence Donald Trump had – are important, because of the lessons Labor takes into this term. In the end, though, unlike most of us, Anthony Albanese had to test whatever theories he had on polling day. Obviously, that test worked out pretty well for him.

It’s clear, too, from the way the other parties are operating that they think Albanese has tapped into something broader going on.

At the election, voters clung to the centre. Slow-and-steady Labor did well, the Greens and the increasingly right-wing Liberal Party were punished. In response, the Liberals, Nationals and Greens have all chosen leaders closer to the centre than some of the alternatives.

But there is another distinction that is interesting to consider, one suggested to me by a comment from Fran Kelly when I spoke with her and Michelle Grattan for The Radio National Hour last week. All of these leaders – Sussan Ley, David Littleproud and Larissa Waters – are strong characters, but none is as ostentatiously combative as those they defeated.

And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you could read this as a compliment to Anthony Albanese. Albanese, too, is unshowy in his public presentation: not brash, aggressive or attention-grabbing. You could easily say a similar thing of each of the rivals he now faces.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley. Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong

This is a matter of personality or persona – but it’s more than that too. In opposition, Albanese was openly strategic about wanting to pick his fights carefully, supporting the Morrison government on much (though not all) of its pandemic management. He has taken that approach into government. If the other leaders follow him in this, we have an interesting prospect after the past few years: will this be a parliament of leaders who carefully select their fights? Who believe there is as much political mileage in being co-operative as there is in dragging opponents down?

Watching Sussan Ley’s first press conference as leader, this seemed a real possibility. Ley is historically significant, as the first female leader of the Liberal Party and its first leader from a regional seat in decades. Her press conference was significant, too, in the context of the past few years, reminding us it is possible to offer a conservative view of the world without it being accompanied by aggression or scorn.

Ley will not be able to avoid every fight – most immediately with the Nationals and within her own party. She may already have waded into one when she “noted pointedly” (in the words of academic and journalist Mark Kenny) Robert Menzies’ choice to name the party “Liberal” rather than “conservative”. As George Brandis has explained in these pages, Menzies years later wrote this came in part from his view that it should be a “progressive party, willing to make experiments”. Ley’s reference was a reminder, brave if potentially unwise, that choices over strategic direction are also always choices about a political party’s soul.

Labor also has its internal battles, as this last fortnight demonstrated. So far, they have the advantage of being relatively clean and quick (though time will tell).

If the centre of politics begins to shift, where will the battles spring up? The last campaign seems to have settled some matters. Workers can expect to have the right to work from home at least some of the time. The Liberals are unlikely to fight anything in health. Contesting renewables will become increasingly difficult as investment increases. Wages can rise without the inflation bogeyman being invoked each time.

A day after his election victory in 2022, Albanese said he wanted to “change the country and change the way that politics operates in this country”. On the former, it will take a while to be sure – but the arguments Labor has won so far suggest he’s on his way. Like the battle over the interaction of wages and inflation, this is one of those long-term debates; it will take years for the truth to be clear. On changing the way politics operates in this country, though, the other leaders who now face him suggest Albanese may already have succeeded – at least for a while.

Sean Kelly is a regular columnist. He is an author and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.