Maybe I’m slow, but I’ve only just noticed this.
The story of a failed Albanese government continues to take shape. After some months of the Coalition doggedly pushing the ‘weak and incompetent’ line, the Murdoch papers have taken it up a notch. A chorus of News Corp columnists have declared that Albanese is now ‘our worst ever prime minister’. In recent editions of Brisbane’s Courier Mail (I know, but I live there now and there’s no choice), James Campbell, Kylie Lang and Mike Connors have all lined up dutifully to make that call.
It’s quite a call, even for the Murdoch pundits. Competition for that label has become a pretty crowded field in recent years. At least two of the last five prime ministers would once have been dead certs to qualify for this status. Nikki Sava has nominated Tony Abbott in the past, and around half of Australia probably held that view of Scott Morrison by the end. And, of course, we have had that depressing phenomenon I talked about in The Shrinking Nation — of successive Australian prime ministers ‘shrinking into the job’. Rudd, Gillard, Turnbull, all offered hope before delivering disappointment.
Albanese has provided his own particular variety of disappointment, however. Before he was elected, Albanese looked to have a bit of authenticity about him. Perhaps this looked especially convincing to an electorate weary of Morrison’s smarmy falsehoods and daggy dad impersonations. On the other hand, and more positively, Albanese was a genuine longtime Labor warrior, apparently comfortable with his lack of charisma, and (at the time!) relatively straightforward in what he had to say.
The trouble is, of course, that Albanese and/or his minders saw this authenticity as his killer attribute. Hence the continual recourse to the log cabin backstory of growing up in public housing, supported by the courage of his single mother, and the grounding of his empathy for ‘those less fortunate’ in personal experience. Inevitably, as he acquired the familiar veneer of the politician in power, and even as he and his staff continued to flog this narrative to death, that stuff wore pretty thin.
Over time, the public has noticed his habit of denying, delaying and deferring in response to moments of crisis, he has been caught in unnecessarily irritable exchanges with pesky journalists, and then there was his ‘don’t you know who I am?’ moment at the April 2024 rally against men’s violence in Canberra. Over time, there has been an emerging battle between his storied humility and the extrusion of hubris. Incrementally, the protective aura of authenticity has fallen away.
There is now little to protect Albanese’s government from judgement. Few could deny that his government has been the reverse of nimble, it has rarely read the room accurately, and the ‘slow and steady’ strategy meant to build the public’s trust has turned out to deliver exactly the opposite result.
Worse still for Labor’s traditional supporters whose legitimate expectations of a fairer, more compassionate, government have, at best, only partially been met. For all the talk about feeling the pain of ‘those doing it tough’, JobSeeker, disgracefully, remains untouched at the end of their first term of government.
The power of blunt force
Dutton, on the other hand, has constructed a different kind of authenticity. No soft edges there, not a hint of self-doubt. His dogged commitment to the Abbott strategy for blanket opposition, his determined aggression, and his default populism have gradually come to define him for the public. Politically, he might be something of a blunt instrument but even blunt instruments, when applied with enough force, can have an effect. The simplicity and consistency of his presentation, apparently, has the effect of making him look like he could be some kind of real deal. The ‘strong man’ the nation needs.
Paradoxically, the obstinate resistance to developing alternative policy positions actually reinforces that perception. For now, at least. Not only does it communicate his contempt for the incumbents, thus pleasing many, it also leaves nothing out there to make him vulnerable. No messing about with nit-picky detail. So far, that seems to be working — although it is hard to imagine this will continue once the election campaign gets under way. In that regard, if there is any serious investigation of the sci-fi fantasy around nuclear energy, it may not turn out to quite as effective a form of distraction as it seems currently.
I wouldn’t take much comfort in that possibility, however, if I was the current government.
Reports suggest that Labor still believes that Dutton is unelectable — just as they did, so disastrously, with Tony Abbott. They might be wrong, again. If Labor decides to frame the election around a personal contrast between Albanese and Dutton, rather than around significant differences in achievement, policy, or vision, then the odds could easily favour the contender.
Dutton’s is the version of authenticity which has been gradually given the ascendancy — both within the commentariat and with the public. There is reason to assume this will continue. For its part, Albanese’s version of authenticity, as it fades under the spotlight of a largely hostile mainstream media, is just looking like spin.
There must be more to the story of this government than that.
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