Two of the Albanese government’s biggest reforms came into the parliament this week. Between them they address issues none of Anthony Albanese’s predecessors, Labor or Liberal, have been able or willing to broach.
The first reform is to the taxation of discretionary trusts. It will help fix a severe unfairness in the system, so people on higher incomes contribute according to their ability to pay. This is the very essence of a progressive taxation system that has been slowly eroded over time, as reform has come to mean distributing wealth from lower income earners to the top wealth bracket in the name of rewarding aspiration.
The Coalition will vote against this reform, while the Greens are demanding fewer exemptions for their support.
The second reform is to domestic gas reservation policy, which finally gives priority to Australian domestic users over multinational gas exporters. It is projected to see an increase in supply here and hopes to lower prices.
In this case, the Coalition is inclined to support, while the Greens are ideologically opposed to anything that enhances gas utilisation.
Whether this activity calms the nervous Nellies in Labor’s party room, who have been taking their doubts to the media, is by no means certain. They are disconcerted that the government is being buffeted by stubborn inflation, rising interest rates and a slowing economy, and are wondering how they can survive as the public mood sours.
One anonymous backbencher is reported to be frustrated with Treasurer Jim Chalmers for sounding like “a used car salesman” on inflation and government spending. It was gun fodder for an opposition question in parliament.
At this stage of the electoral cycle, it is no surprise. As Newspoll found this week: after four-and-a-half years in office, the government is copping the blame for the economic situation, as voters look for answers that aren’t materialising, and relief doesn’t help as much as many feel it should.
Anthony Albanese, a 30-year veteran of the parliament, is far from surprised many of his colleagues are suffering from the midterm blues.
Their pain has been worsened by a mishandling of the credit and debit card surcharge ban. It was always meant as a transparency measure but was initially claimed as a cost-of-living saving by the prime minister. To make matters worse, the Australian Taxation Office has signalled it is banning credit card payments for tax liabilities.
The small business outcry was deafening, even though only 5 per cent of them use that payment method. Still, that’s 250,000 enterprises – large enough to make the din hard to ignore.
The appearance of the government at sixes and sevens, with the prime minister and treasurer forced to intervene to contain the damage, hung over Tuesday’s caucus meeting. The assurance Albanese offered was the same as at the previous two elections: he would be “kicking with the wind in the fourth quarter”.
Very damaging for the Liberal leader and his party is Frydenberg’s critique of Taylor’s authority and agenda. He says “people are saying that the Liberal Party needs to do better” and “clearly there is a need for us to change”.
Albanese’s confidence is based on the precedent that, as captain of the winning team previously, he has the uncanny knack of winning the toss.
In a major speech on Tuesday night, the treasurer spelt out Labor’s game plan, after warning that “hoping the far right goes away or implodes is not actually a strategy”.
Delivering the Bernie Fraser Oration, Chalmers warned progressives against “smug moral superiority” towards One Nation-inclined voters. He said the Albanese government’s approach is to acknowledge and act on the pressures people are under, “delivering better and more tangible outcomes for them and reforming the status quo in their interests”.
On ABC TV Albanese emphasised that Labor is not quite at the halfway mark and has another 18 months for events to unfold. He said in that time his government would be delivering on health, near-universal early childhood education and an improved skills base through free TAFE.
There is also growing confidence in the cabinet that Labor’s cuts to immigration numbers will blunt One Nation’s grievance-fuelled attacks.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke is encouraged by the fact businesses, especially agribusinesses and their representatives, such as the National Farmers’ Federation, are speaking out strongly against weakening the temporary migrant workforce.
Pauline Hanson, accepting for the first time an invitation to address the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Business Leaders’ Summit, assured them that her hardline policy will not hurt businesses.
The question now, however, is how hardline this policy is – as Hanson appeared to undermine her own net overseas migration ambitions.
She said the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility workers “will be coming in” and added “working holiday-makers will be allowed in the country” as well as the programs giving us “skills that we need”.
If this is a commitment, her promise to slash migration by 750,000 in three years strains credulity.
Polling released this week suggests One Nation may have peaked and is losing support, as the Hanson party faces increased scrutiny.
The most significant poll was the DemosAU MRP model. This mega poll of almost 10,000 voters shows a clear 4 per cent drop in support for One Nation since the previous May–July MRP.
The poll concludes: “The model shows Labor would claim majority government if an election were held today, while the Coalition would finish in second place, despite trailing One Nation on primaries.”
Hanson’s reputation for being a non-politician who never opportunistically changes her mind took a battering this week when the government introduced its gas reservation legislation.
Back in March, Hanson moved a Senate motion supporting a domestic gas reserve because it would “increase the supply of gas and lower the price of electricity directly”.
One Nation no longer backs any form of gas reservation policy. It quietly shelved its support after Senex, a $900 million domestic gas extraction company that is 49 per cent owned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, vehemently opposed the government’s plans in a multipronged campaign that included ministerial meetings.
The reason for the backtrack was, according to the party, a realisation that the policy risked killing domestic Australian gas companies.
Luck is a fortune for Albanese. This week, out of the blue and nothing to do with the prime minister’s smarts, former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg began an intense media campaign to launch his new memoir, A Grateful Son, which had every appearance of also relaunching his career as a senior Liberal politician.
The government peppered its answers in Question Time with references to Frydenberg’s political agenda, as spelt out in the book, and his clear ambition to run for parliament and become Liberal leader and prime minister.
Barnaby Joyce told reporters as he entered Parliament House: “Josh is popping up like an illegal smoke shop, very bad for Angus Taylor’s health.”
“Let’s cut the BS, mate,” the One Nation MP said. “We can all see through this.”
When Angus Taylor demanded Albanese sack his treasurer rather than just undermining him, Albanese was able to scoff. Pointing across the despatch box at Taylor, he said the “bloke who is in danger of being sacked you have sitting right there”.
A sheet of Frydenberg quotes from his book and many media appearances was thoughtfully circulated by the government to the Press Gallery.
Very damaging for the Liberal leader and his party is Frydenberg’s critique of Taylor’s authority and agenda. He says “people are saying that the Liberal Party needs to do better” and “clearly there is a need for us to change”.
At the weekend, Taylor was the first Liberal leader to attend the radical Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he disowned and apologised for the Morrison–Frydenberg government’s pandemic spending, immigration numbers and net zero commitment.
The Coalition, Taylor told the conference, is “once again conviction-led and unashamedly on the right”.
Frydenberg writes: “There is no goat-track back to government through the regional and outer suburban seats alone … We must bridge the divide and win votes in the cities, and among younger members of the electorate.”
Monique Ryan, the independent who defeated Frydenberg in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, said “nothing has changed” and her community has no reason to go back to him.
One moderate Liberal said Tim Wilson has shown, by winning back Goldstein, the teals can be beaten, “but it’s not a lay-down misère”.
The government relishes Frydenberg’s return because it is a concrete reminder of his unflattering fiscal legacy.
“A lot of our work in the four-and-a-half years we’ve been in office is to clean up the mess that Josh Frydenberg left behind,” Chalmers told parliament. He nominated larger debt and deficit, with no savings in Frydenberg’s final budget.
If Albanese has luck, Taylor seems to have none. He lost one of his more able colleagues this week, when Jonno Duniam gave his valedictory before his retirement at the end of the sitting fortnight.
Duniam was used by Taylor to the very end, playing key opposition roles not only in formulating immigration policy but also as the deputy chair of the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
Duniam, though a conservative, has an inclusive tone and worked effectively on the committee to come up with a bipartisan letter to the prime minister outlining the sort of regulatory framework needed.
Though he was generous to his parliamentary colleagues, privately he’s had enough and wonders what the future holds for the party.
He’s not alone in that.