Politics

Australia has now joined the United States in refusing to discuss the ANZUS Treaty, let alone claim it is the foundation of Australia’s security. What was once seen as a virtue is now considered a drawback.

Risks to the economy are mounting at such a rate that the challenge they present to our economic managers in 2023 may well overshadow even the shocks of the pandemic-related shutdowns and the global financial crisis.

There are so many issues in the ‘big and hard’ basket that Labor can’t afford to spend political capital on unforced fumbles like this week’s decision on inbound Chinese travellers.

It is eight months since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used his victory speech to promise his government would implement in full the Uluru Statement from the Heart. What has transpired since is less the dialogue he hoped for and more two separate monologues.

What we are seeing already is a government comfortable in the exercise of power and confident enough to risk losing a fight that it judges worth having. A Newspoll analysis of support for the past four incoming governments at the end of their first six months shows the Albanese government second only to Kevin Rudd’s in popularity.

This is not an issue of loyalty. Morrison showed none and has no right to expect any.

Just when Anthony Albanese was set to finish the most successful year of his political life with another win, he was struck down by Covid-19. The acting opposition leader, Sussan Ley, sent her best wishes but little sympathy. She called for the national cabinet meeting scheduled for Wednesday to go ahead virtually, reminding the prime minister that ‘hundreds of thousands of Australians’ with Covid-19 have continued to work while isolating.

The Australian Constitution dates from 1900 and although the product of referenda in the colonies and states, and beginning with the words ‘Whereas the people ... have agreed’ is in form an act of the British Parliament, a gracious gift to a distant child. In practice, it has proved almost impossible to amend. Only eight referendums have been carried, the last in 1977, all with bipartisan support.

The last sitting week of the federal parliament at the end of a momentous election year was overshadowed by a jarring intervention in the process to enshrine recognition of First Nations people in the constitution. The Nationals on Monday spectacularly announced they would oppose the Voice to Parliament referendum.

Opposition to the Voice to Parliament is beginning to emerge from Liberal Party ranks, and some of it is disturbingly ugly. Former Liberal prime minister John Howard said that it would be unwise and a political mistake for the Coalition parties to offer their MPs ‘a free vote’, or conscience stance, on the Albanese government’s proposed constitutional referendum on the Voice to Parliament.