Comment

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.

With the Albanese government having moved so quickly and decisively on a number of major policy fronts since it was elected in May, next year is shaping up as one of consolidation, to demonstrate the substance of what has been achieved.

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.

Right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the informed science community was telling everyone that this was not influenza, we were, perhaps unconsciously, basing our approach on the assumption that the causative SARS-CoV-2 virus would tend to behave like the flu. Covid-19 was just another viral pneumonia, right?

David Littleproud is parliament’s leading aptronym. He does what his name says. Like a dentist called Stephanie Tooth or a plumber called Stephen Turd. Littleproud voted against marriage equality. He promises to ensure the Nationals will oppose the central recommendation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. He is intent on leaving behind even less than that with which he arrived.

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.

A recent poll suggested as many as two-thirds of Australians think the pandemic is over. This is far from true. A false impression has been created, as a result of poor messaging by governments and health officials and the progressive relaxation of key health protections.

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.