Half-time for the Albanese government
It’s now just over 18 months since the 2022 election, so we are halfway through the the Albanese government’s term. At this point, it looks highly unlikely that the government will be returned with an outright majority, whenever the next election is held. So, it’s worth thinking about the government’s strategy, why it has apparently failed and whether it ever had a chance of success.
Even before the 2019 election Albanese was positioning himself to challenge Shorten from the right if Labor did badly in the Longman by-election. That didn’t happen and Labor went into the election with all the opinion polls pointing to a narrow win. When the result turned out to be a narrow loss, the political class took that as an emphatic rejection of Shorten’s ambitious program rather than the result of contingent factors (Shorten’s lack of likeability, Bob Brown’s disastrous convoy to Queensland, a lousy campaign etc).
Having dumped the 2019 platform, Albanese adopted a strategy based on the idea that Labor could spend its first term demonstrating its competence in managing and tweaking the policies inherited from the LNP, modified with a handful of signature initiatives: the Voice, the Housing Australia Future Fund, and a Federal ICAC (if there were any others, I’m not aware of them). Success implementation of this strategy would, it was hoped, build popular support for more progressive (though not radical) policies in Labor’s second term.
The second part of this strategy has failed comprehensively. The Voice referendum was always a long shot, but Albanese’s mishandling of it ensured a crushing defeat. The fraudulent nature of HAFF made it an easy target for the Greens, who forced Labor to massively enlarged it. The issue of rental affordability now belongs to the Greens even more than before.
Federal ICAC has happened, but it was always going to be a damp squib. Contrary to the hopes of some Labor supporters, we aren’t likely to see Morrison or his ministers in ICAC’s sights, although they were discredited by the Robodebt Royal Commission. More importantly, while avoiding (so far) the excesses of ministers like Stuart Robert, Labor hasn’t significantly improved on the LNP in terms of transparency or probity - Nathan Albanese’s Chairman’s Lounge membership being a small but telling example for the vast majority of us who fly economy and buy overpriced airport food.
By contrast with the lack of significant new Labor policies, we’ve seen a steady stream of reviews of LNP policy on higher education, infrastructure, migration and the NDIS. There have been changes to the previous government’s policies on industrial relations and climate change, where the ferocity of opposition from the Murdoch press and the mining sector has obscured the modesty of the actual policies.
The government and its sympathisers in the media, notably Katharine Murphy and Michelle Grattan, feel that they aren’t getting enough credit for this activity which they see, in Grattan’s words as a ‘tsunami’ of policy, while the media generally is distracted by scandals over detainees. Similarly, they point to a bunch of small-bore measures seen as addressing the ‘cost of living’ problem, and say that doing anything more would make inflation worse.
But this is Parliamentary Triangle bubble thinking at its worst. Reviewing and adjusting existing policies is important and keeps ministers and public servants busy, but it doesn’t give voters any reason to re-elect a government, even if it has a somewhat more competent team. It’s no surprise that the public and the media are more interested in scandals, real or imaginary.
The framing of a decline in real wages as a ‘cost of living’ problem is inherently reactionary and has led the government to support the explicit Reserve Bank policy of holding wages down as a way to reduce inflation. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t done anything to alleviate the actual situation of wage-earners dealing with falling real incomes.
Even worse, by maintaining the previous government’s tax policies, Labor has chosen to deliver the regressive components - axing the Low and Middle Income Earners tax offset and the Stage 3 tax cuts, while Morrison retains the credit for the more progressive Stages 1 and 2.
Coming back to the calendar, the government will be going into election mode after the 2024-25 Budget. That doesn’t leave much time for policy initiatives that aren’t already well in train. The only real chance for a policy reset is a big change to the Stage 3 tax cuts. I don’t think that will be enough to save Labor’s majority but it would provide a basis for a genuine contest with Dutton, which I think he would lose. Without a new tax policy, the question isn’t whether Labor will retain a majority but whether it will get a second term at all.
There are two fascinating policy decisions coming up for the Albanese government: vehicle efficiency standards and gambling advertising. I find them fascinating not because of how significant they are for the future of the country, but for what they say about the Albanese government.
In both cases Labor has passed up the opportunity to decisively take progressive, low cost action. Instead, they have promised action soon, presumably while dithering frantically in the background. We’ve seen what Albanese is capable of when he’s decisive and certain (the Voice Referendum, Stage 3 tax cuts, HAFF), so it will be very revealing how he behaves when he doesn’t have a predetermined position.
Another reason I find these decisions fascinating is because they share traits which reflect the rot in our democracy. They are near-unanimously supported by experts and supported by the majority of voters but they challenge noisy, organised vested interests who wield significant political power or political donor power.
Finally, what gambling advertising and vehicle efficiency standards have in common with the other issues mentioned above is they will once again test Labor’s ability to fight battles on their terms. They lost control of the conversation on the Voice and HAFF to the right and left respectively. If they end up fighting these two battles in terms of lost weekends, towing capacity and sporting clubs with no goal posts, there’s no hope for any progressive action on any front without significant change (ie. minority government and a new leader).
As a first term government, the ALP has largely disappointed their support fringe. While being careful to please the union movement, the ALP government has done little to improve the real wages and livings standards of middle income earners. This is where the ALP got a lot of votes at the last election. It’s meanness and budget austerity is not going down well in the suburbs and is toxic in regional Australia. Even 18 months out, the ALP look like a one term government. Their poor performances in parliament over the last sitting period was the nail in the coffin of their re-election hopes. It did not help that the ALP has now alienated the muslim communities and some green groups. This ALP government is now a train wreck. Of course it may get a bail out like the ALP got back in 1993. But the LNP would have to do something pretty stupid to hand the election to the ALP.
What can the ALP do to give itself half a chance?
Get rid of the Treasurer for a start. Charmers has never been up to the job of outsmarting Treasury boffins. They have run rings around him and bluffed him out of taking any concrete macroeconomic reforms. The new Reserve Bank governor has also just pulled the wool over his eyes. That’s two strikes against the Treasurer. One more failure and he must be dumped. But he won’t be alone on the backbench as an ex minister. After 18 months the ones not coping on the front bench are being exposed. There are a few notable ones. The environment minister is coasting and failing to deliver. The immigration minister is out of his depth.The sports minister is hiding. Some of the junior ministers are not performing. All this reflects badly on the prime minister. Not only was he strangely quiet about the atrocities committed in the West Bank by the IDF; but Albanese also clings to a delusion that the electorate will reward him for running budget deficits when real GDP is falling. This makes one wonder about his political judgement. If he is not a canny politician then he will soon be an ex PM.