Labor Couldn’t Ask for a Better Opposition
The Albanese government must be quietly thrilled with the state of the opposition right now. If they could script their ideal political foil, the current LNP Coalition would be it: unpopular, divided, and perpetually chasing culture-war rabbits down American-style holes.
The polls tell the story. Support for the LNP is sliding, and it isn’t hard to see why. Instead of presenting a coherent alternative vision for the country, they’ve spent the months since the May election arguing among themselves, flirting with a leadership spill, and auditioning policies that voters have already rejected.
Most Australians just want a government that deals with the cost of living, secures affordable housing, and manages foreign policy with a steady hand. What they’re getting from the opposition instead is a mixture of Trumpian talking points and a fixation on the kind of social wedge issues that might play well at CPAC but fall flat in the suburbia.
Take foreign policy, for instance. You’d be forgiven for thinking the LNP believes every Australian diplomatic move should pass a Mar-a-Lago litmus test. Their statements on China, Israel and Palestine’s independence often sound less like an independent party’s position and more like they’re waiting for cues from Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed. Australians may be pro-American in a broad sense, but they expect their politicians to put Canberra first – not Palm Beach, Florida or Washington.
The recent CPAC Australia conference was another window into the Coalition’s thinking. Rather than reflecting on why voters rejected them, the hard right treated the event like a pep rally for more of the same: more climate scepticism, more divisive rhetoric on immigration, more culture-war skirmishes. If this is the blueprint for winning back government, it’s hard to see how it gets them there.
Meanwhile, Labor barely has to lift a finger. Anthony Albanese’s team can simply point across the aisle and say, “See? This is the alternative.” It’s a gift for a government that has faced its own challenges on cost-of-living pressures, energy policy, and housing. Every time the LNP doubles down on policies that lost them the last election, Labor’s job gets easier.
The great irony is that there are moderate voices within the Coalition who could help drag the party back to electability – but they’re being drowned out. Instead, the leadership is locked in a battle with its own base, trying to appease a hard-right faction that is increasingly out of touch with the country.
Labor doesn’t need to demolish the opposition. The Coalition seems determined to do it themselves. For Albanese and his frontbench, the challenge now is simply to keep governing competently and not get in the way while the other side keeps sinking. At this rate, all Labor really needs to win the next election is popcorn.
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I am intrigued! Please tell me: who ARE these enigmatic “talented, moderate voices within the Coalition”???
Max, I made that bit up. It was added out of pity.
What do you expect when the opposition has never been anything more than over-privileged private school boys who have never worked a hard day in their life, I mean hard physical labour, not prancing and preening for PR shots, have never suffered loss, discrimination or disabling illness and have had nothing but resentment as their guiding principle?
That toxic shamble is all that they have ever known and marketed and that’s been since the 1970’s, which is the veneer across all of civil society on both sides of the house and IMHO labor have no right to sit back and coast with all the issues that we face as a nation, which is from their own collusion in unpalatable policy!
To wit, will cut and paste in full here my complete indignation regarding that matter:
“The fallout continues from the government cover up of a dangerous 20-year methane leak at the Darwin LNG export plant owned by Santos.
As reported by the ABC, the NT’s top environment regulator, Paul Vogel, approved the plant’s extension while also being paid by lobbyists for INPEX, a multinational gas company and part-owner of the gas project.
Now, Vogel has taken a side job at a mining company, which has also applied for mining licences on the NT’s ecologically sensitive Melville Island.
What we’re seeing isn’t just a one-off conflict of interest, it’s part of a revolving door between government and industry that puts corporate fossil fuel profits before environment, climate, and our community.
This is state capture, where regulators that are meant to protect the public interest instead serve the interests of the companies they’re supposed to oversee. It compromises integrity and erodes public trust.
As Environment Centre NT Executive Director Kirsty Howe put it, “This goes to the heart of public confidence in the regulation of some of the most damaging and polluting projects in the country.”
It’s no wonder we can’t have nice things like ambitious climate targets. There’s simply no room for ambition, and even less for accountability, while the Australian government keeps waving through new gas and coal projects.
Just today, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has made a speech deriding ‘eco-purists’ and urging Santos’ stalled gas project in NSW be fast-tracked.
Australia Institute research has for years exposed a systemic conflict of interest between gas and mining companies and the NT Government. Like revealing government appointments of gas and mining industry executives to important panels and commissions ¹ ² ³. Not to mention, our research uncovered that the NT Government has provided billions in subsidies for fracking companies and multinationals like Eni for decades.
Exposing conflicts of interest matters.
If there’s one small ray of sunshine in this sorry saga, it’s this – days after the methane leak scandal broke, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company pulled out of its $30 billion takeover bid for Santos. Perhaps they, like us, were left wondering what else Santos was hiding.
More soon.”
As the pundits say, it’s merely the tip of the iceberg and out of sight is not out of mind.
Now we have Hastie saying the Liberals could… ah, what the hell just read the article (which strangely enough I could find no mention of in Rupert or Nine, very strange that).
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/24/nampinjimpa-price-endorses-andrew-hastie-as-future-liberal-leader
Say hello to our new Little Donald, sans orange glow make up. Hm, how to say it…that’s it…the Libs (and Gnats) are utterly fucked if they keep this sort of crap going.
Max/Roswell
Food for thought!
The conservatives must be looking for a lifeline after a disastrous CPAC last weekend.
Whilst I wouldn’t call Andrew Hastie enigmatic it is quite evident that he is positioning himself to be the next Liberal leader. He is boosting his online presence and lifting his profile in the broader media.
Just the other day he called past coalition leaders ‘muppets’ for having allowed the car manufacturing industry to leave our shores right at the time when the EV era was about to change the way we drive : we could have been part of it he argues rather than allowing Vietnam and Malaysia to take our place as a medium sized manufacturers in this region. He has pointed to the fact that at one stage we made Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Ford General Motors (Holden) and others onshore in Australia and whilst that spread and those volumes would be inappropriate now, we not only lost an industry due to coalition bungling over subsidies, but we cut off a conduit for training engineering apprentices and fabricators in this country.
OK so Hastie isn’t saying that he would bring back a car industry but he is grabbing some headlines and getting the attention of many in the community. In the meantime silly Sussan is writing to Republican Congress people in Washington telling that her first ‘executive order’ should she attain office will be to reverse recognition of Palestine – who is advising her for heaven’s sake ?
I’m not a Liberal Party aficionado but I do believe we need a strong opposition in the two-party polity that we endure. I think it’s getting close to Hastie time and goodnight Sussie !
The ALP is not exactly completely in tune with the electorate, but at least they are listening and making some small effort to do some of what the majority of us want. But the LNP seems determined to drag everyone with them as they continue their zombie stagger further and further right. It’s a bizarre thing to watch.
GL, quite right.
I was worried for quite a while that Hastie might have enough brain cells to seize the leadership and do something with it, but that fear is receding.
When it comes to reading the room, these people are only capable of reading the party room.
They are incapable of reading the electorate.
Heather, thank you for a well-researched comment.
Heather; Thanks for your common sense comments. As for the Libs and Gnats, (love it GL!), they are still in the colonial era – this is now the New World.
Imagine this: at the end of WW2 Australia had the bones of a modern manufacturing industry having rapidly taken up the challenges of war machine production – especially trucks and aircraft. We had a labor force ready and production lines available for modification. When our troops came home production lines were closed ‘tho we decided to build FX Holdens. No one was looking to Asia – there was a huge opportunity to build small motors and engines for motor scooters & bikes (not cars) and agricultural machinery (small diggers not large tractors). However Menzies was a subservient Anglophile and was too arrogant to look to Asia for an economic opportunity. So USA rebuilt Japanese industries and Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha and Kawasaki took the opportunity. Since then almost every Australian technical and industrial innovation of commercial value has been sold off to overseas corporations because Australian financiers find their profits elsewhere. Mean while our manufacturing capability has been decimated. The rest is history.