“The Australian people have voted for change”, and they expect it
Will a new Labor respect its mandate and stand with the voters that gave it to them, or will it lose its way in a desert of compromise?
An eagerly awaited parliament opens this week, full of all the opening action that one could expect following the election of a new Labor government. As the winners and losers of the election shuffle off after the musical chairs of Australian politics, the revolving door still brings opportunity. The political class return to work, in one form or another, but as parliament begins, more eyes than usual await the beginning of a new parliamentary era under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The new ALP government joins a bunch of new independents, a supercharged Green senate and a whole lot of planned disruption from a Dutton led Coalition that primes itself for a term of guerrilla-warfare in opposition. Labor will get started on legislating climate targets deemed too drastic for the Coalition, mining and industry, too paltry for the Independents, Greens, the scientific community and the youth, but just right for the Business Council of Australia and apparently enough for the mandate that Labor keeps needing to remind itself it was elected with. On the eve of parliamentary sitting, with the chilling State of the Environment Report finally released, it already looks like things may not run smoothly with the non-negotiable 43 percent emissions reduction target, and the new government will have to justify what it wants to achieve in the House and in the home.
The Prime Minister came to the job as a small target and will no longer be seen as such. Challenges will come from the almost-hung-parliament-level of independent representation (perhaps the most measurable barometer on the stance of the voting public on key issues), by the minor parties who hold keys in the senate, and the ideologically driven Coalition, now trimmed of the moderate fat and the cornerstone blue ribbon seats that defined its identity since inception. With the beginning of a new parliamentary era, Albanese now sits on the largest political surface area in the country, but his conservative policy approach in opposition has left his outlook somewhat lacking. Now visible to all standing in the house as Prime Minister, with so many urgent challenges so fresh in the minds of so many, the starved Australian voting public expects a government who will lead upfront with the ingenuity expected of a modern center-left Australian government. And compromise if need be.
Peter Dutton returns to work after rising to the top of the pile following a definitively devastating election loss. He assumes the position he had always presumed, from back in the day when he toppled Turnbull and couldn’t get the numbers. He sees opportunity in the leadership role he has always fancied himself for, regardless of the critical health of the Coalition he leads. He will be looking to drag the Albanese Government, and the political discourse back into the existing quagmire he helped to define as leader of the House in the previous government.
The new opposition leader has risen to the job on the tail of a devastating loss for an LNP that has been purged of experience and policy literacy. Although Dutton is not the kind of man to see the fundamental components that have just been sucked out of the airlock, it won’t stop him trying to impose, with the help of a supportive corporate press, an emboldened conservative ideology into the halls of parliament on the back of what looks to be one of the most belligerent opposition configurations we have ever seen.
The challenge for Albanese in taking the reins after a decade of unprecedented government negligence, will be to restore what was there before, while discarding the previous mobs’ norms of ordinary malcontent and banal corruption that have been folded into political life. A new government has the luxury of blaming the previous one for the state of things, but it does not hold a license to be ignorant of the cultures and policies that may be in place that ought not to be. Things like disjointed and counterintuitive tax cuts for rich people, reluctant pseudo-support for essential casual workers, inhumane welfare for people breaking under the cost-of-living crisis, signing over massive carbon emitters like Scarborough unconditionally, and lip service to those left in offshore detention. The status quo has shifted and this government will fail to right the wrongs if its words do not translate to actions and it shows no concern to act in the best interest of those that saw it elected.
Rumors of ICACs with missing teeth, the lack of desire to back a Murdoch Royal Commission, carbon bombs being commissioned against the science, poor pandemic management, overzealous commitments to escalatory geopolitical actions against the national interest, are among some of the things voters do not wish to see from this new government. Their mandate does not come from a mediocre climate targets, child-care rebates, or an experienced front bench; it does even not come from the approval of the Business Council of Australia. It comes from the voters, who, via a bunch of grass-roots independents and a stack of minor party votes, repudiated the Coalition all the way back to Margaret Court’s church, and installed the ALP on a count that only just ticks over 76 seats. The mandate is for change.
Labor doesn’t come to power with all the trimmings as it may hope to think. It is watched by a politically astute population that has honed a keen eye for bullshit. There will be little chance for a new Australian government to assume the status-quo, not after the fires that turned into several floods, with the growing poor and disadvantaged suffering under the cost of living and a global pandemic, and the lack of opportunity for a young generation unable to find financial security the way that generations before have done. Too many compounding issues are impacting on large chunks of the population to continue barging ahead with concessions for the rich at the expense of safety nets of the poor, with the same line about ridiculous “clean coal”, and the same excuse for a lack of wage growth.
How this new government chooses to run the parliament will have a profound bearing on our democracy. How it chooses to correct the wrongs of the past, to address the problems of the present and implement the big ideas of the future, will determine our identity for a century. A Labor government that aspires with Australians, not without them, will be a government who has a mandate from the people that gave it a chance to lead. By working with its population, rather than against it as the previous government did, it will also come to understand the true national interest of the country it governs, and it will find the courage to implement the policies that can secure its future.
"one of the most belligerent opposition configurations we have ever seen."
Well said. Given the Libs only have 43 seats (and the Coalition 58) they'll have to be pretty belligerent just to make themselves heard above the fray.