With the “Psycho” Morrison Government collapsing into ignominy, the AFR has done a lengthy profile of Albo and his first-term agenda:
Albanese has judged that the Australian public is in no mood for dramatic change. Voters are exhausted and weary after pandemic, floods and fires. “I’m not promising to change everything,” he says. “I’m very conscious of saying ‘here’s safe change, here are the changes I’ll make’.“
Labor’s new platform is incremental, cautious and largely silent on the hard detail of hot-button economic issues. “We’re not having a tax debate,” he says when I ask whether he still likes the idea of a Tobin tax (on international financial transactions), having floated such a balloon in 1999.
He promises to put infrastructure spending at the centre of his agenda using billions in “off-budget” investment vehicles, similar to how the NBN and Inland Rail are financed. As for tax and industrial relations reforms – two of the biggest drivers of lifting productivity and living standards – well, they’re almost nowhere to be seen.
Albanese says his critics often fail to recognise that strong policy doesn’t need to be divisive and controversial, before running through his first-term priorities: constitutional recognition of First Nations people, a federal anti-corruption commission, a “reconstruction fund” to boost industries and manufacturing, childcare, broadband, apprentices and creating an “Australia that joins with the rest of the world rather than is a problem in terms of our position on climate. That’s an exciting agenda,” he says.
Advertisement“I like him as a person,” Goyder says. “He always reaches out to me. He’s open. He listens. In the Australian vernacular, he’s a good bloke.“
Even business leaders with strong ties to the Coalition, such as Shepherd, say good things about Albanese: “I always found him approachable. He’s always been very straightforward and honest,” Shepherd says. “He did a good job in setting up Infrastructure Australia, which has been mimicked by most of the states. And he’s got passion for, and understanding of, the necessity of upgrading Australia’s infrastructure.”
…Albanese is promising legislation to entrench job security as a core focus of the Fair Work Commission and more powers to protect “gig-economy” workers. He also wants to ensure labour hire firms adhere to the concept of same job, same pay. But details remain scant.
“Business will have concerns when they look into Albo’s political history and how that translates into economic policy, industrial relations, how the economic policy is put together,” says Goyder. “Right now, that requires a bit more understanding prior to the election. If there’s a reservation in the business community, it’s what are the policies?“
Catherine Harris, founder of Harris Farm Markets and a self-confessed “classic swing voter” – although her son Lachlan advised Kevin Rudd – says she believes an Albanese government would work well on tricky issues such as so-called “wage theft”.
“He listens to what your problems might be,” she says. “One of the biggest things that people, particularly in retail, feel is around the complexity of the award system. You have big companies that are basically good companies suddenly discovering they’ve made underpayments. I don’t think it’s because they’re bad companies, it’s because the payments system is so complex. That’s something I feel completely comfortable talking to Albo about. He’s sincere from a business point of view and I think he’s more on our page than a lot of other politicians.“
…Albanese is also clearly eying off the use of “off budget” funding mechanisms that are becoming ever more popular with debt-riddled governments. This includes a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to boost regional economies and sovereign manufacturing and a $20 billion “powering-the-nation” plan to improve the use of renewable energy.
…“I think that the key is getting GDP up. And the biggest single driver, I think, will be the powering-the-nation policy. Not in itself. But because of what cheaper energy can do to drive advanced manufacturing. It’s all working together. You’ll have cheaper energy, leading to lower household bills; but more importantly, for business, it means hydrogen at the alumina refinery in Gladstone. It means solar power at the prawn farm.“
After three years of psychopolitics and a decade of Coalition corruption, that looks good to me. Australians are traumatised by psychopolitics and need time to heal.
The two trickiest questions are wages and energy.
On the former, it is not an issue of “wage theft”. It is mass immigration and the gutting of Australia’s labour market governance. That will need to be addressed if any wage gains are to be forthcoming for workers and productivity gains be restored. I still say Albo should pursue an immigrtion accord with business and unions that lifts and lowers the intake based upon agreed metrics such the output gap.
On energy, there is no really cheap power coming before somebody breaks the gas cartel. Labor mulled it under Shorten. Yet it is silent now.
Anyways, in my view, he’s going to win in the greatest landslide against an incumbent of our lifetimes so we’ll soon find out.
