Politics

This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia played itself into the federal election campaign in a way we haven’t seen for 15 years. Whatever the impact of its 0.25 percentage point rate rise on Tuesday – the first in more than 10 years – it is certainly not a positive for the struggling Morrison government.

Here is one truth about this election: the Liberal Party is risking its future on a prime minister who likely doesn’t have one. After years of neglect, it should come as no surprise that many Liberal voters would be looking for an alternative.

Morrison can argue that Albanese has never held an economic portfolio and can’t recall key economic data. However, Morrison would have to concede that his opponent is better able to manage industrial relations, with a Bob Hawke-like capacity to pull employers and unions together for accord-style discussions and pathways forward.

Unfortunately for the prime minister, he himself is a known known, with a record over the past three years that he is having great difficulty defending or explaining. How sweet must be the memory of the blank page that he presented the last time he faced the voters.

My own view is that the Liberal Party in NSW is irredeemable and the federal Morrison government is unfit to hold office. The latter assessment is based specifically on the question of government integrity.

What a tragedy that the campaign is now ‘my scare is bigger than your scare’. We all have to fear that the more frustrated and desperate the major players get, the more they will resort to dirtier tactics and less substance in terms of what they would propose as a future for our nation.

At the end of week two of the campaign we are confronting the prospect of neither major party being able to govern in their own right, which says everything about how underwhelming voters see the choice on offer.

Australian politics should not be bogged in a time warp of short-term political advantage. We cannot afford a second decade of inertia … Leadership should be about connecting the dots in such a way as to provide guidance for a safe and better future.

Despite the efforts of the media to discredit the independents’ movement, attempting to tag them as ‘fake independents’ and otherwise minimising their coverage, there should be little doubt that many conservative members sitting in what they had thought were ‘safe’ seats are already recognising the strength of the contest.

A shock, a self-inflicted wound on day one of the six-week formal election campaign has put Anthony Albanese on the back foot. That has to be the biggest takeout of week one, making the next five even more fraught for the Labor leader as he tries to persuade voters to give him a go in the top job.