Comment

When Tim Fischer called High Court judges ‘pissants’ in the ’90s, after they recognised native title and overturned terra nullius, he created the rare spectacle of a government minister excoriating a member of the judiciary in the media … This year, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Lia Finocchiaro, publicly dismissed a damning coronial report into yet another Black death in custody.

It has been a difficult two years for Australia. This much is clear. The values we hold dear and the ties that have for generations bound our community of communities have been tested like never before. These challenges are not unique to Australia. We see the same fracturing in societies across our like-minded allies in Europe.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers summed up pretty well where Australia finds itself in a week of significant round tables in Canberra and Washington and a deepening humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. The treasurer said the Albanese government was seeking ‘to build consensus’. He was referring to the need to bring all sectors of the economy together on reforms to kickstart growth and recognise that self-interested fragmentation is a recipe for failure.

From the beach, you can see the flames burning on the oil and gas rigs that ring the northern part of Ningaloo Reef. Tim Winton calls them “sinister flares”. Like the bulk carriers shipping coal through the Great Barrier Reef, their foreboding is almost too crude, a clumsy symbolism for an outcome that is already obvious.

In 2022, then environment minister Tanya Plibersek made a bold promise to the Australian public. It was a promise that had never been made before: there would be no new extinctions while the Albanese government was in power … Fatefully, one animal that many Australians had never heard of made the priority list. It was the Maugean skate, now much better known, which resides in the tannin-stained waters of a wild and remote harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.

It’s pretty simple really: success in a liberal democracy like Australia comes when a political leader is able to bring a majority of the population on board with their agenda and responses to a crisis. Anthony Albanese, who entered parliament in the 1996 election that saw the Liberals’ John Howard win in a landslide, has proved himself an astute student of the Machiavellian arts as practiced by opponents and allies over the intervening years.

Alongside a hundred thousand others, I have just been entranced by Oasis. Two hours ago these people were strangers. Now they are my people. I am not English, but tonight I am an Englishman.

Anthony Albanese’s choice of imagery at the Northern Territory’s Garma Festival was apt: the culture wars are a dry gully. That parched earth epitomises much about the case he went on to make for Indigenous empowerment.

It is important to give credit where genuine credit is due, by recognising the success of the Albanese government’s patient, professional and focused diplomacy, mostly conducted behind closed doors.

Pretaped testimony allows victim-survivors to give evidence much earlier on, enabling them to move on with their lives and focus on their wellbeing. Seeking justice should be a healing path, and prerecorded testimony aims to safeguard against the reopening of wounds.