Ah, minorities:
Anthony Albanese promised recognition of a Palestinian state as a first-term priority for an incoming Labor government, according to leaders of two of Australia’s largest Muslim organisations.
In an online meeting held in the weeks leading up to the May 2022 election, Albanese stopped short of guaranteeing senior leaders from the Australian National Imams Council, the Islamic Council of Victoria and a handful of other organisations that recognition of Palestine would happen in the first term of his government.Students protest over the war in Gaza.
But a clear undertaking was given by the then-opposition leader, and leaders from those organisations are now warning that failure to deliver on Palestinian recognition could cost Labor votes at the next election.
Let’s not forget that Albo also trashed Reconciliation with the ill-timed Voice referendum.
Either we must conclude that Albo is a deeply untrustworthy individual with zero political nous, and/or something else is going on.
My view is that it is both.
Albo would sell his mother for power; indeed, he has already whored her memory. But there is also something structural here as well.
As we enter Cold War 2.0 and the associated post-truth world—or is it the other way around—minority politics has lost its ballast.
Today’s world is an intensifying tension between a legacy globalised worldview and a re-emerging national consciousness.
As a result, it is impossible to believe any promises made by a culture warrior pollie because they are constantly mugged by the national interest.
And now, another kind of minority looms as this tension restructures local politics:
Anthony Albanese’s bid to ward off minority government is becoming harder by the month, with voter pessimism hitting new heights, support for Labor flatlining, and the government lagging the Coalition on the core concerns of economic management and national security.
The latest The Australian Financial Review/Freshwater Strategy poll shows the Coalition leading by 51 per cent to 49 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis for the second successive month. If repeated on election day, it would send Labor well into minority.
A Greens minority government is marooned within the emerging political tensions.
It could work OK if Albo compromised on the right stuff but all evidence suggests he won’t.
Albo will compromise on all the culture war drivel while protecting capital, which turns the Greesn into a kind of woke pariah.
The gas cartel, China, immigration, supermarkets, and everything else that should be reformed will be protected.
While the Greens will win on utterly irrelevant cultural war stuff like genital mobility.
It will be very easy to destabilise. and put the LNP in power for a decade.
