Last week the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, made his tenth appearance at the National Press Club as Labor leader. Peter Dutton hasn’t spoken there since 2021, when he was the minister for defence.
With Dutton and his backers pinning everything on a Trump-style strategy, minus the hair and red tie, Albo used his latest speech to paint himself as a serious, caring leader, with serious solutions to serious problems. But is Australia a serious country any more? And do people here care much about anything apart from themselves?
The core of Albanese’s speech was education, specifically the public variety, which he says will finally be properly funded, in the way David Gonski suggested it needed to be, 14 years ago. He also talked up infrastructure and health spending, child care, home-building, women’s equality and Australian made, all good old-fashioned Labor territory.
In his first serious election pitch for 2025, the PM said, ‘It’s a choice between our determination and optimism, or their fear and negativity.’
As he correctly pointed out, Peter Dutton didn’t even mention education in his recently trumpeted ‘Priorities of a Dutton Coalition Government’. How many decently educated people are likely to vote for nuclear reactors across Australia anyway?
But there were also significant gaps in Albo’s speech, including any mention of the climate and extinction crisis, the stalled Indigenous reconciliation process, gambling advertising reform, the Israel situation, and any reconsideration of AUKUS and the US relationship in the wake of the disastrous situation unfolding across the Pacific.
Dealing with things as they are
Journalists attempted to get some clarity on a number of these issues after the speech, but mostly failed to do so.
One question that cut through came from the veteran Michelle Grattan, who asked what Mr Albanese had learned during his first term that he would take to a second term.
‘You have to deal with things as they are, rather than as you want them to be,’ he said. ‘You deal with them whilst always keeping your eye on that horizon.’
The prime minister appears to have taken his own advice in recent months, with a renewed spring in his step and statements this year following the setbacks of the previous twelve months. Having his back to the wall may have brought out the best in him as a fighter, but in 2025 he faces many enemies apart from his favourite traditional opponents, the Greens and the Tories.
Albanese knows that the cost of living crisis has defeated incumbents across the world recently, with people disconnected from politics and economics tending to blame whoever is in office and other handy scapegoats for the rising price of everything, rather than the less visible profit-gouging corporations and global environmental meltdown actually driving the phenomenon.
His opponents are bankrolled by the wealthiest people in Australia, joined by well-funded international thinktanks, with the assistance of almost all social and traditional media, and no need for any of them to demonstrate actual workable policies, as long as discontent can be harvested and redirected.
As recent international history has shown, it’s much easier to stoke absurd and damaging culture wars than to actually solve anything.
Meanwhile in crazyland
Courtesy of Gina Rinehart’s stated wish for a local DOGE, Peter Dutton last week appointed CPAC’s favourite senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as the newly invented shadow minister for government efficiency.
Demonstrating his own ruthless efficiency, he simultaneously demonised the public service, which actually delivers services to Australians (unlike most politicians), while also rewarding Price for services rendered in the destruction of the Voice.
With the early departure of Simon Birmingham, one of the few vaguely moderate people left in his team, Dutton used his front bench shakeup to further prioritise fossil fuel and nuclear energy over renewables, by adding ‘energy affordability and reliability’ to fellow Queenslander Ted O’Brien’s shadow responsibilities. Sound familiar?
With American stupidity invading everything he does at speed, it’s hard to reconcile any of this with Dutton’s supposed patriotism, but keeping contradictory ideas alive simultaneously appears to be a vital skill for politicians in the 21st century.
All this with the handy backdrop of the annual 26 January furore, stoked by the culture warriors of the right and their army of spambots, which can be relied upon to bring out the worst racist impulses in the people of this country.
Albo didn’t fall for the trap at the Press Club, acknowledging it was ‘a hurtful day’ for many First Nations people, while also saying, ‘Sometimes I think that Peter Dutton every year has a fight with an imaginary friend over something that most Australians are just getting with – Australia Day.’
The prime minister is being forced to walk a tightrope on this and many other issues, while hoping that enough Australians share his central agenda, have confidence in his proposed solutions, and are able to avoid distractions long enough to get his government back over the line in 2025.
It’s quite an ask.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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