Slow and steady may win the race, but the PM had better get a hurry on to leave a legacy worth remembering. Photo: Anthony Albanese Facebook.
How much time does Anthony Albanese think he’s got in the top job?
A lot, it seems.
With the Opposition in disarray, an impregnable majority in Parliament and Australians wary of any Trumpian populist notions if the May election is any indication, Albo and his advisers must believe that Labor will have at least three terms, more if they get it right.
It’s the long game. Keep it steady, reasonable, sensible, incremental, in a world gone gaga. The safe pair of hands.
That has to be it, doesn’t it? You know the plan.
But when does steadiness and caution start becoming drift?
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ backdown on super reform means two years wasted on a policy that was flawed from the start. Now there is going to be another year of consultation.
How long can the other big changes needed to budgetary policy and taxation, to roll back the unsustainable excesses of the Howard and Costello years, be put off?
Who will the young turn to as their hopes for a home are dashed by every new home-buyers scheme that only shifts that dream further out of reach, and it seems no one is really interested in doing anything about the stacked deck the country is playing with?
When will the government finalise its new environmental laws? Can it withstand the lobbyists and the News Corp megaphone?
What if the energy transition stalls for lack of will, the lights aren’t kept on and the climate consensus collapses?
What if waves of AI start washing away jobs?
And all the while the social media misinformation mill grinds on, the algorithms seek out the alienated, desperate and discontented, looking for someone to blame.
The successes of grievance politics in Europe and the US show that Australia could be just as vulnerable.
Albanese spent more time in Britain rallying against the extreme right there than he did at home, as if Aussies are endowed with innate common sense to inoculate them against racist, nativist ideology. We’re not.
The rate of immigration to this country is a serious issue that needs to be discussed factually, not left to the dog whistlers and blackshirts to exploit.
When someone like former Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie starts talking about Australians “feeling like strangers in our own home” and harking back to the 60s, the alarm bells should be ringing, not be seen as an opportunity to further divide the Opposition.
If anything, the PM needs to find common cause with the Opposition about defending the institutions and principles of modern Australia.
The worry is that there is less time than the PM realises to keep the nation looking forward, conserve the best of what we have and make the changes necessary for a more equitable future.
Labor’s business-like demeanour belies the dangerous times we live in and offers little inspiration.
The political climate can change quickly. Just ask the US Democrats, who ignored the plight of what should have been their own constituency.
With summer approaching, a cricket analogy is called for. The government needs to start scoring some serious runs.
It needs to start spending some of its vast political capital, not limit itself to the confines of its election promises, and govern with more urgency and advocacy.
It needs to be assertive in defending multiculturalism, rebuilding Indigenous policy post-Voice, and acting in the interests of the public good, rather than falling into mere managerialism.
Albanese may occupy the crease for a long time, but to what end? Just being there won’t be enough.
