2 May 2023

Timid Labor craves respectability at the expense of its ambition — and the nation's needs

| Ian Bushnell
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Anthony Albanese at the National Press Club

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: steady as she goes isn’t enough. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

Remind me. It was a Labor government voters elected last year, wasn’t it?

It’s just a bit puzzling because, of late, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between this lot and the last, apart from some obvious changes in tone and personnel.

It seems to have accepted that the clothes of credibility and responsibility are conservative blue.

READ ALSO Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil flags the end of Australia’s migration system as we know it

A government committee recommends boosting JobSeeker payments. No, says the Treasurer.

The government’s plan for a $10 billion investment fund – that means it will have to make money to do anything – to build 30,000 social and public homes over the next five years is shown to be inadequate for the task required to fix the housing crisis. Better than nothing, says the PM.

Gazillion-dollar nuclear subs? All the way with the USA, says the Defence Minister.

Stop the handouts to property investors? We don’t talk about that anymore.

Axe the Stage 3 tax cuts? That’s not our position.

OK, Albanese has inherited a shitty hand.

Chinese expansionism, post-pandemic deficits, soaring inflation and spiking rising interest rates aren’t fun.

But tell that to people on JobSeeker expected to get by on $50 a day.

Economists have argued for years that the payment is too low and actually prevents people from getting a job.

Even former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry joined the Greens, crossbenchers and most fair-minded people in urging the government not to turn its back on Australia’s most vulnerable.

PM Albanese has hurled the ultimate insult at the Greens, calling them illogical for saying the housing fund won’t do the job and asking for more.

What does he say to National Shelter, Anglicare, ACOSS and every other welfare organisation having to deal with the pain and suffering caused by a housing crisis long in the making that will only get worse without government intervention?

They say we need hundreds of thousands of social and affordable homes.

I know, where’s the money coming from?

Well, it’s all about choices.

The government can continue to hand out tax concessions to property investors that the Parliamentary Budget Office says will cost the government $157 billion in forgone revenue over the next decade.

It can provide $240 million for a stadium in Hobart, incidentally one of the hardest places in the nation to find affordable housing.

It can give Defence a blank cheque.

Is anyone not terrified at the eye-watering amounts being thrown at the military in coming years and what restrictions that will place on future budgets?

Yes, Labor is finding extra money for housing and health, but after years of neglect, just tweaking things will not be enough.

It seems like Labor is doing a bit here, a bit there, carefully calibrated to look like it is doing something without really rocking the boat.

Steady as she goes. Can’t have any headlines suggesting Labor is fiscally irresponsible – it will get them anyway – or not being prepared for that inevitable war with our biggest trading partner.

After nearly a decade in Opposition, Labor should know what needs to be done but orders policy reviews anyway.

The fact is there are going to be winners and losers – and it’s about time that those who have lost out most have a win.

By the way, it looks like we’re not so poor after all. The government is now expected to post its first budget surplus in 15 years, albeit a small one, as surging tax revenue from iron ore, coal and gas, and record numbers of people in work deliver Treasurer Jim Chalmers a financial windfall.

That’s an $80 billion big turnaround since the Coalition’s pre-election budget.

READ ALSO After months of waiting, there were few surprises in the Defence Strategic Review

Chalmers will want to bring home the bacon, but a positive Budget headline won’t make the inherited structural problems in the nation’s finances go away.

Or the housing, health and climate crises. Or an economy that is leaving too many behind.

Labor shouldn’t waste power for the sake of respectability defined by its opponents. Get on with it.

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Since the 1970s wages have decoupled from productivity. If they had kept pace we would see median wages around $150,000.
All of that money has gone to three interest groups who lobby politicians with their money. Hedge funds/investment firms, CEOs, corporate coffers offshore.
That money has been systematically squirreled from the people earning it, workers.
A lot of today’s issues can be traced back to this, declining health care and education, culture wars, rising inequality, ballooning debt, lowering quality of life, rising retirement ages.
We are suffering from the consequences of this and will live through the culmination of it.
It will take time to right the ship.
Remember as Kevin Rudd said. There are 4 powers in Australia… The CEOs of Rio an BHP, NewsCorp and the AIJAC.
NewsCorps influence is failing, we need to tax Rio and BHP into compliance of Australian interests.

HiddenDragon7:47 pm 01 May 23

“Timid Labor craves respectability….”

We’ll find out more next Tuesday night, but right now, what they seem to crave most is having their backsides on the Treasury benches for as long as possible while they burble along like a self-satisfied bunch of elected technocrats, with a hint, here and there, of Fabian socialism to keep the True Believers truly believing (as long they’re not too good at joining the dots).

At the heart of it seems to be a cynical calculation that Labor can stake out the middle ground while the Greens (or “the Greens political party” as Albanese, and one or two others, including Senator Gallagher, quaintly refer to them) fill the vacuum on the left, make a bit of noise now and again, and then reliably channel votes back to Labor through the preference system.

That will work until middle Australia gets over blaming “Scotty from Marketing” for everything they’re pissed off about and remove the rose coloured glasses when looking in Albanese’s direction. When that happens, things will likely get very ugly within Labor, the turn in public mood could be quite savage, and circumstances ripe for the sort of ugly populism we have hitherto only seen on our TV screens in overseas news reports.

Ian needs to take a Bex and have a good lie down. The staggering inconsistencies made up claims and illogical statements in this piece are beyond the word limit to go through in detail but to suggest that the steady, sensible, efficient approach of the current government is to invoke scorn is a beyond the pale. Having lived though the chaos of the previous government the Albanese government is doing remarkable job of repairing our damaged reputation, financial mayhem and filling the policy vacuum.
To suggest that they should go hard left and become the greens is absurd and demonstrates that our little Ian is so poorly informed about what the government is actually doing and importantly not doing to steer us through.
Two quick points – there is not going to be a war with China if we maintain a sensible deterrence posture and we do not have the land or available tradies to build the mythical hundreds of thousands of homes we apparently need (without any evidence to support the claims).
Take a breath and understand the limits of government.

Politics – the new game you cannot win. Think big, act big you are pilloried by the media for being reckless and spenders; keep to your election policies you are pilloried for being timid; move beyond your election policies you are pilloried for breaking promises and not having a mandate. You cannot win. Why? Because media demand a 24/7 constant news cycle. Take a bow, Australian media, look what you have helped create…

Albo is too busy associating with Kyle Sandilands and his “upstanding, law abiding” wedding guests

Capital Retro5:48 pm 01 May 23

Who is Kyle Sandilands?

I know one area of budget spending to save… Stop spending $$$ on a referendum for “the voice”

GrumpyGrandpa11:49 am 01 May 23

The author appears confused. Why does he expect Albo to implement The Greens’ policy?

Let’s face it, Albo wants a statue of himself to dwarf the Statue of Liberty

Stephen Saunders9:15 am 01 May 23

Horse, flogging, a dead. Can’t you read Albo’s No. 1 agenda? He went to India, debauching our qualifications. Now migration’s up to 400K (!).

He’s having a good larf. As the media dutifully disseminates the parody of Clare “Joan of Arc” O’Neil, heroically “fixing” migration.

Welcome to the next decade. Of stagnant wages, high unemployment, and housing-rental crisis. Once Albo escaped social housing, he raised the drawbridge behind him. Now he’s counting his fat rents.

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