Day one and it is reading the tea leaves all wrong at The Guardian:
Anthony Albanese is making a concerted play for the Labor leadership, declaring the party’s policy direction needs to change but signalling he would promote progressive values, as the count continues after Saturday night’s election.
…He signalled it would be back to the drawing board in a policy sense if he secured the party leadership, putting an obvious question mark over the most contentious revenue measures of the campaign – like dividend imputation and negative gearing.
There was also a hat tip to voters in outer metropolitan areas and the regions, places where Labor significantly underperformed on Saturday.
Albanese said Labor needed to articulate an agenda for economic growth, not just talk about how it was prepared to redistribute wealth – an implicit criticism of Shorten and Bowen’s campaign agenda.
Albanese said Labor needed to acknowledge it had now lost three elections in a row, and its supporters needed to be reassured that Saturday’s result would not be repeated at the next federal election.
Australia voted for change via One Nation and Clive Palmer. What it got was the same owing to preference flows.
Polls offer heavy support for negative gearing reform. Franking credits looks like a killer in retirement capitals like Queensland and Tasmania so should probably get the chop.
But the ALP will need much more to win QLD back. Quexit is about nationalism and Labor will need more of it: lower immigration, stronger US ties, less Chinese kow towing.
Social progressives are the last thing that the ALP needs now.
