Comment

The more certain a 2021 election becomes, the less certain the leadership of the Labor Party appears. Though the next poll may be any time from August 2021 to May 2022, there’s a distinct election-year feeling in the air – and an open-season vibe in the opposition.

Last year, as the tertiary education sector reeled from the impacts of Covid-19, the University of Melbourne quietly agreed to pay millions in unpaid wages to casual teaching staff. Despite the size of the payout, the case received little attention … And, to the detriment of casuals in other universities around Australia, it did not set a legal precedent.

The iconic image is of Kenneth Hayne in an office with Josh Frydenberg. The former High Court justice is presenting the treasurer with the final report of his royal commission into banking. A photographer asks if the two men might shake hands. Hayne does not break eye contact with the table. He says, simply: “Nope.” Two years on, this grim photo opportunity is perhaps the most lasting outcome of the banking royal commission.

As America grappled with the coup at the Capitol, Australia began the year with a coo of its own as the whole nation found itself obsessed with the survival of a pigeon. To recap this classic tale of Nanny State v Freedom of Flight, a man named Kevin Celli-Bird – because there is no subtlety in this poorly written reality – found a pigeon in his backyard.

As Joe Biden prepared to take office as the 46th president of the United States, promising to ‘restore the soul of America’, his mission statement found an echo in Australia. The language was less portentous, and the crowd more mundane. But in a speech to the Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese found a local variation on the theme. According to Albanese, Trumpism had tarnished not only the former US administration, but the current Commonwealth government as well.

Most Australian politicians, particularly those in the two major parties, lack the political will to do what the majority support. Instead, they pander to conservative ideologies, driven by the morbid fear of criticism from a small but vocal minority. Australian politics is, for the most part, power without passion. And nowhere is this more stark than in Aboriginal affairs.

The quality that makes Scott Morrison uniquely equipped to lead Australia in 2021 is his preternatural inability to feel shame. There were hints of this early on – in the treasurer who held aloft a lump of coal in parliament, the Immigration minister with an almost absurd commitment to the phrase “on-water matters” – but since his elevation to the prime ministership, it has become the defining feature of his government.

“Thank you, Reverend Pastor Houston, for those prayers and your message about rich men walking upright through the eye of a needle, with or without a camel. Boys, remember the pastor’s encouraging words about how religion and real estate can work together in the name of our Lord.” 

As the year like no other draws to an end, the challenges and crises it presented have highlighted the nation’s strengths and dramatised its weaknesses. Facing up to these realities will be particularly daunting for our political leaders as they ready themselves for the next federal election.

Victoria, a state that had as many as 700 new daily Covid-19 cases at the peak of its second wave, has gone many weeks without community transmission of the virus. Yet it now seems the health system is at risk of being pushed further beyond capacity than ever before.