“A morality play of a young boy’s coming of age; and his sudden and unexpected rise from the lower to that of the leisure class.” (Charles Dickens: Great Expectations).
Kevin Rudd was a prissy little prick. Probably still is. Those pursed lips of his as he gave the rest of us the benefit of hearing from the smartest bloke in the room showed what a sanctimonious prat he could be. But the micro-managing egomaniac did do the country a huge service by ridding us of John Howard’s grim regime, though plainly the feral-browed Igor Mortis was well past his use by date, so it wasn’t such a hard sell.
Similarly, not being Scott Morrison was Albo’s big advantage in the 2022 election. It was the Drover’s Dog scenario.
After a near decade of Tory theft and thuggery, when your opponent is a malignant tuber who sleeps with a Joh Bjelke-Petersen inflatable doll and tumesces at Trump’s normalisation of nasty there really is no reason to just steam clean the curtains and vacuum the carpet. You have significant political capital to expend and every reason to do so.
Competent BAU managerialism from federal Labor governments should (but won’t) bury the tired Tory shibboleth of better economic management:
👉 Two sequential surplus budgets after nine LNP deficit budgets and record $trillion+ of debt.
👉 Unemployment 4.0% – the lowest average unemployment in 50 years.
👉 Inflation 2.3% which has eased from 7.8% in December 2022.
👉 The IMF ranked Australia’s as the third-strongest budget in the G20 in 2024.
👉 Wages 3.5%.
👉 ASX – record high household wealth.
👉 Record high $4 trillion in superannuation.
👉 One of the highest per capita GDP countries in the world.
But where’s Albo’s grand vision, the bold moves, the sweeping reforms?
“Dutton leads a pack of duds, his policies an embarrassing confection of innumeracy and MAGA Down Under cut-and-pastes. Labor should be setting itself up for an extended period in government. Instead, Albanese is quietly leading it to defeat.” (Bernard Keane, Crikey).
How is it that der Gruppenfritter is closing the gap in the preferred PM poll, which stands at 44:41? How can Albo get outplayed by an aggro thug of bovine intellect who oozes bad juju from every pore on his shiny, bald bonce, who is as appealing as a sleep-over at Lizzie Borden’s house, who was outsmarted by that absurd fabulist FauxMo at the overthrow of Malcolm Turnbull?
Naive, timid, risk averse? Albo went “small target” in ways that avoided the Potato’s wedges (🙄) but alienated progressive supporters. Defaulting to Tory Lite (“we’re less shit than them”) is not the most inspirational of rallying cries to redress the LNP mess nor is it an incentive to achieve great things.
Rebalancing the economy toward the interests of workers and consumers and away from big business, committing to directly and aggressively protecting voter interests in an economy controlled by large corporations and uncompetitive markets¹ seems like nature’s way for a Labor government. Yet redistributive measures – restricting negative gearing deductions and implementing capital gains reforms taken to the 2019 election were discarded through fear of more of the blowback from those who never vote Labor anyway.
But imagine where we’d be, after years of kakistocracy, if we hadn’t voted out the Tory cabal. Ongoing secrecy, persecution of whistleblowers, climate vandalism, ceding our sovereignty under AUKUS, looking the other way on the Gaza genocide, Murdoch’s fabricators running rampant, Robodebt and Paladin swept under the carpet. Wait! What?
A toothless NACC, gargling Lachlan Murdoch’s balls, yet more new gas and coal, scuttling a proposed federal environment protection agency, tut-tutting mass murder by the Zionist’s death squads aka the IDF, the squibbing on gambling advertising and electoral funding… hardly the stuff of a comprehensive reform agenda from a vigorous and virtuous transformative government.
An indolent Coalition left a backlog of easy-fixless problems yet some worthy goals were scored. The government steered through a substantial lift in the minimum wage, increased the childcare subsidy for low-income earners, enabled trade unions to negotiate multi-employer pay deals, and implemented some of the recommendations of the aged care royal commission².
There has been some boldness. A 2030 carbon emissions reduction target of 43 per cent is a start on the road to net zero. The ambition to establish Oz as a renewable energy superpower is visionary, but a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament, truth-telling and treaty assumed a general magnanimity we obviously do not possess.
A council-housed, only child of a single, pensioner mother, the lefty, Tory-fighting DJ Albo may have lost some street cred by chumming up with the odious Allen Joyce, bending the knee to Lachy Murdoch and rubbing shoulders with the celebrities and self-regarding captains of industry in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge but it was the Voice that was the tipping point for Albo’s fortunes.
Albo’s handling of the Voice as his signature ambition showed a naivety on his part that belies the savvy of a political careerist who rose as a lefty to become PM (Albanese is one of only two Labor leaders since 1967 to have come from the Left faction).
Referendums need bi-partisanship to succeed. Spud never had any intention other than to oppose this one. He’s a head-kicker, a divider and a racist. He picks fights as a habit, he sows dissent and hate and fear. None of this is a secret yet Albo somehow believed Spud could be brought to support an altruistic, unifying gesture that goes against every hateful, cynical, exploitative reflex that is burned into his blackened soul. He inflamed emotion and prejudice – lies and invention being no hindrance. He accused Albo of being distracted by “the woke”, and used the failure of the referendum to brand Albo as weak. FFS, Albo – you did not see this coming?
I had no great expectations of Kevin Rudd. When his mendacious revenge on Julia Gillard handed the PMship to the ludicrous Tony Strop Abbott it just confirmed that he was the disappointment that he was always going to be. Here’s hoping Albo recovers his mojo. The thought of The Thug as default PM causes my bowels to loosen.
¹Some paraphrasing of Crikey’s Bernard Keane happened here
²Jenny Hocking. Pearls & Irritations
This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer
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the answer is not difficult:
the media is driven by ratings which need controversy
albo and labor ignores this requirement.
Unless Albo moves, you will need a plug.
Like you said, Grumpy, 2022 was a ‘drover’s dog’ situation and Albo just tiptoed in. Since then amid urgent reforms, he’s been keeping his powder dry and watching / learning the latest ‘oppositional subjugation’ methods of beguilements in the rapidly changing geo-strategics, and the home-front manoeuvres of der Spud, the LNP and their Murdochracy.
As usual, Oz politics low-brow decider will be a ‘Where’s Wally’s Wallet’ affair.
Whilst the voters are conned and shickered by the Murdochracy, that’s not so unusual leading in towards an election. Given the hype-up narrative of the commentariate is shallowly fixated on the RBA decision (Feb), it’ll likely be a great decider on his emphasis and volume leading into the election.
Dutts and his LNP will be screeching but dull, as usual, appealing to the dull, who were actually disenfranchised by the erstwhile LNP.