Politics

Going into the last sitting week before the referendum on a Voice to Parliament, Anthony Albanese was desperate to have something positive to talk about, to assure Australians he was paying attention to their immediate concerns.

The word ‘woke’ has taken on too much negative connotation in our political debate. It has become a derisive term to disparage and effectively dismiss virtually any position that doesn’t accord with the extreme conservative, hardline right agenda.

Somehow Anthony Albanese is being blamed for the catastrophic failure of governance by the Qantas board and its long-time chief executive. The behaviour of Qantas since Alan Joyce became boss almost 15 years ago is marked by arrogance and anti-competitive bullying.

By any measure this week marks the official countdown to a significant moment in the history of the Australian Federation and its foundation on the dispossession of the original owners of the land.

When Tanya Plibersek was collared on the sidelines of last weekend’s conference, her assessment of how the government sees itself was particularly interesting. She fobbed off criticism that the old party of passionate firebrands from the left had become a conservative shadow of its former self.

Labor Party national conferences – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has seen a few. He’s been going to them all his life. His attendance at this week’s three-day conference in Brisbane, which concludes today, will be as familiar as putting on an old jumper.

It wasn’t so much the exuberance of the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures in Arnhem Land that set the tone of federal politics this week, as the troubling economic data on the evening news.

It is with mounting despair that I note several mega threats to our planet and to humanity seem to be simultaneously gathering considerable momentum, yet governments and policy authorities are simply ignoring the severity and urgency of the challenges.

For a while, late on Monday afternoon in the house of representatives, you could be forgiven for thinking the Peter Dutton-led opposition had finally cast itself adrift from Scott Morrison.

When I became leader of the opposition there was endless advice by some of the ‘old guard’ about how I should operate. The basic principle was that you should see no good in the other side, not in the people nor in their policy prescriptions – they are your opposition, your enemy. They should be attacked at each and every opportunity. This sat particularly uneasily with me.