Politics

Turning on its head a famous line from the English poet T. S. Eliot, it is no exaggeration to say 2022 is ending not with a whimper but a bang for the Albanese government. The much-derided small-target leader has set a frenetic pace in the first six months of his tenure in power and is set to deliver substantially on the undertakings he took to the Australian people.

First, he was Daniel Andrews, then Dan Andrews and then, simply, Dan. The shortening of his name has been inverse to his growing stature and now the man who was patronised for his beige obscurity and tubby frame when he became opposition leader 12 years ago is on the cusp of a third term as Victoria’s premier.

As the fourth-richest country in the world – on average – we should all be more concerned about a recent study showing that more than one in eight people live below the poverty line in Australia. The ACOSS/UNSW Sydney data counted as many as 3.3 million, including 760,000 children, living in poverty in 2019-20, as the pandemic began.

Anthony Albanese’s handshake with Xi Jinping was more than a reset in relations between Australia and China; it was confirmation that the dynamics of domestic politics here have changed. The spectre of the ‘yellow peril’, particularly dog-whistled over the past three years, has lost its potency.

The latest COP27 is the first United Nations climate gathering in nearly five years from which Australia hasn’t emerged as a diminished global power. In recent years, it has become par for the course that such gatherings result in stories of Australia siding with the likes of Russia and Saudi Arabia to block progress.

As the weeks roll by, it’s becoming easier to believe that the inflation task is slipping away from the government and central bank authorities. Inflation numbers have already exceeded predictions, even after seven consecutive increases in the cash rate.

The big uptick in one metric in Australia was obvious this week. Political productivity in Canberra is booming. So many issues were substantively pursued by the Albanese government, on so many fronts, it was hard to keep up.

What is the strategic benefit of being able to operate off the Chinese coast? How do nuclear-powered submarines improve Australia’s security? And are there better options for the nation’s defence? The answers to the first two questions are: ‘There is none’ and ‘They don’t.’ The third answer is: ‘Yes, there are indeed better options.’

It’s a disturbing feature of our leadership over the past several years that major policy challenges have been allowed to drift, despite all evidence of their magnitude and urgency. This drift has been an important factor in the loss of trust in government, and in the dominance of issues such as integrity, transparency and accountability in the most recent federal election. In practical policy terms, these unaddressed problems have become so big that they will require dramatic policy responses, which may prove difficult to deliver.

The Albanese government spent the past week coming to grips with theory versus reality in government. The vast gap between the budget handed down by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the media’s reporting of it is still being processed by government MPs. Labor’s first budget was a restrained affair: fiscally responsible while fulfilling some specific election promises, and squarely directed at fixing the mess left by the Morrison government. What could possibly go wrong?