Politics

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, who some colleagues believe has not laid a glove on Chalmers, says everything will be revealed in due course. In the meantime, the clock is running down and all we are getting are general statements masquerading as serious policy.

As for the global order, Trump may in his own oafish way be telling us an inconvenient truth: there is no global order. Whenever I hear talk of a global order, it brings to mind something the neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar once said: ‘Order is nothing but friendship with chaos.’

It’s back to plan A for the prime minister after Tropical Cyclone Alfred swamped any thoughts of going to an April election. However, Labor is determined to see the extended timetable as more of an opportunity than a setback.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been waxing eloquent about his strategy to reclaim seats lost in the last election and to prevent the loss of more. Yet he has consistently failed to address any of the Coalition policy failings behind those losses – principally the issues of integrity in government, gender equality and the need for urgent and substantive climate action.

Federal cabinet concluded its wide-ranging discussion on the government’s electoral prospects on Monday with the consensus that the most opportune time for the prime minister to call the election would be this Sunday, for April 12. There was, however, one big caveat: the gathering menace of Cyclone Alfred.

This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reassured us he has complete faith in America’s security guarantee. That is not a big surprise. In recent years, as China has challenged the familiar and agreeable American-led order in Asia, both sides of politics have lazily assumed we could depend on the United States to defend that order.

A flurry of major announcements in the past two weeks, taking full advantage of incumbency, has provided the launching pad for Anthony Albanese to call the election within days.

A ‘crisis’ in democracy is the framing we’ve come to continually hear – often from the media, which has a tendency to escalate our legitimate fears at times when we most need a sober, reflective and constructive approach to grappling with what are very real threats to our social and democratic compact.

Clearly, it is time for all nations that value democracy to stand up strongly in support of Ukraine and against United States President Donald Trump. Europe needs to call him out and to give NATO some real backbone.

The prime minister’s performance in this campaign is crucial. Labor cannot afford a repeat of 2022, where the best days of the election were the ones when the Labor leader was isolating with Covid-19 and Jason Clare and other frontbenchers filled the void.