Can Labor step out of the small target shadow and become a real government?

With five minutes left on its first term in office, the Albanese government has finally announced something that looks like the kind of policy it was elected to enact.

Unlike RayGun, the PM has been expected to deliver and has failed to do so. (Source:Instagram/raygun_aus)

With five minutes left on its first term in office, the Albanese government has finally announced something that looks like the kind of policy it was elected to enact. Unable to yet carry the messaging of its hard fought gains to curb inflation to a population haemorrhaging household incomes in multiple areas, wedged between half a trillion dollars of AUKUS that seems to be evaporating in their hands under a incomprehensible trump administration in Washington, and missing the target with its underage social media ban – Labor’s $8.5 billion ‘free doctor plan’ was the win it desperately needed only months out from an election.

Only a week earlier, in Whyalla, South Australia, Albanese gave arguably his most effective speech in government. In a rousing display of passion, speaking on a rescue package that would save the South Australian steel industry from going into administration, the PM highlighted that ‘seventy-five percent of Australia’s structural steel is made right here’, and emotionally addressed the vital importance of the sector as a lifeblood to many Australians.

Labor’s recent undertakings have left the Coalition muted. The opposition, hemmed in by a nuclear policy that radiates impracticability, a vapid and uninspiring promise to repeal, revoke, cut and remove piecemeal Labor-flavoured policies like public servant roles and public spending, and a disturbing willingness to proselytise the interests of Netanyahu’s Israel, has had no choice but to fully back Labor’s Whyalla rescue package and Medicare announcement, claiming in its customary dishonest disarray that it had been working on it for ‘some time’.

An entire generation has been born in an era where foreign owned mining leviathans plunder our mineral wealth, taking our gas for free and selling it back to us. We have all witnessed foreign nations being handed chunks of our sovereignty for essentially nothing in return. Australian people are waiting for answers on profiteering banks who have sold predatory loans to dead people, and want justice in anti-corruption procedures that were supposed to be transparent and toothy on things like robots that hounded people on government assistance to their sad and avoidable deaths. Labor was elected to address these issues, but real answers never seemed to eventuate. With time fast running out on their first term, Labor’s Medicare announcement is the first thing that has looked like a good policy for a long time.

In a vacuum, any sign of life is exciting and precious. For over a decade Canberra has been a barren and idea-less void for most Australians, and for many, it was hoped Labor would break the decades-old bubble in Canberra that has perpetuated an economy that sees dinky old weatherboards in Sydney go for four-point-something-million dollars, over ten thousand people a month go homeless, and perpetuated a status quo where a carton of the last remaining eggs costs up to $12 dollars at the supermarket. And on all those counts, our political class has failed to make any identifiable difference. For a population starving for leadership (and affordable nutrition), the Medicare announcement is manna from heaven to an electorate that cant remember any government doing anything but ask them to essentially fend for themselves in a neoliberal hellscape.

With its majority, and a public demand for bold decision making in the national and public interest, Labor could have successfully announced a national housing commission aimed to build millions of public houses with locally trained tradespeople and workers, easily declared a war to curb in super-profiteering, effortlessly initiated a wildly popular inquiry into corporate media concentration, rationally installed a national regulator to cap the price of essential items, utilities and necessities - it even could have admirably painted a bold vision to nationalise our foreign owned mines and build value add economies around refining and producing our raw materials. Such was the appetite for change from the beleaguered Australian public. Bloody hell, in the void of political courage in Canberra, people would have accepted some plain old reasonable tax reform, or a National Anti Corruption Commission that worked like it said on the packet.

While spruiking his Medicare policy announcement, Albanese offered an interesting line that stood out among the presentation, "We don't want our health system to be more American. We don't need to copy the ideologies of any nation. We only want our health system to be more Australian." In Whyalla, he proudly explained the need to produce Australian steel in the national interest to a receptive audience. Perhaps the focus groups might come back with some interesting findings about the power of speaking in the national interest. Maybe the polling consultants might discover that Australians are proud of Australian things like Medicare, essential jobs in key industries, and language from our government that speaks to the unique things that separate us from other countries and elevates us as a people.

Labor’s $8.5 billion announcement for Medicare is a much needed win for Anthony Albanese (Source: X)

The government was given an opportunity in 2022 that it has failed to capitalise on in government. Grafting a victory with the lowest primary vote in its history, buffeted by a wave of teals, boosted by a Coalition in disarray, and ultimately carried over the line by a mandate to establish an anti-corruption commission, Labor could have undertaken a period of generational reform, on things from a sovereign wealth fund to negative gearing, with the blessing of the wider Australian public. To see it in such a precarious position in the polls is an indictment on the ‘small target’ philosophy Labor has clung to since Shorten’s defeat in 2019, and a repudiation of the vapid individuals that have risen to the top of the party decision-making by championing it. A Dutton government stands as a potential blight on this country: a hodge-podge, ideological abomination of a political entity slapped together in its leaders image. The post-Morrison coalition has demolished the blue-ribbon section of its broad church, and all that remains are the slim pickings and bad attitudes of a neo-Coalition that should be repudiated for everything it strands for. And if it wasn’t for being do disappointing in its own right, Labor’s election lead wouldn’t be so dangerously narrow, so close to an election.

Labor’s stagnation that has seen it neck and neck with one of the most talentless and unlikable iterations of the Coalition ever seen, and its PM fighting for his life against one of the most uninspiring, uncharismatic, and valueless LNP leaders in history. By choosing to breathe life into former coalition policies like tax cuts and AUKUS, formulating policy out of fear of reprisal rather than courage, and blindly diplomatically, economically and militarily supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza, Albanese’s, Labor has failed to set itself apart from the Coalition, or earn its keep with an electorate that put it into government asking for something better, and currently sits lower on some polls than the Coalition on two party preferred polling because they have failed to deliver enough of alternative to their major party rival. It’s going to take more than a shot in the arm to Medicare to convince Australians that Labor is clearly the better of the major parties this election, and after Whyalla and Medicare, Labor may now know where to find what it needs to win – but will it be bold enough to go out own its own and take the risk?

While Labor finally start to offer things that look like tangible policies, the Coalition has only managed to offer free lunches for bosses, unnecessary nuclear power, and support for ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. While Albanese gets a much needed win with the Medicare policy, Dutton looks increasingly devoid of ideas and starts to look rigid and unfriendly in his delivery. The current close polling may concertina out to a lead with Labor’s Medicare announcement, and party strategists may fancy their chances against the wooden and unlikable Dutton in an election campaign. But due to factors external and self-inflicted, many elements are against the Albanese government in the upcoming election, and jumping out of the small target shadow it has hidden in from opposition into power, and becoming a nationally-focused government that works in the sovereign interest of Australia in a rapidly changing world, could be the best chance it has of survival.