Even a busted Labor party two-bob watch can be right at least once a day. Sadly, that’s about the best spin I can put on Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles’s attack on PM Scott Morrison over borders.

Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles has accused Scott Morrison of putting the federation under enormous stress by “ceding his responsibilities” to the states in allowing them to unilaterally ­impose ad hoc COVID-19 border restrictions[…]

Mr Marles levelled criticism at the Prime Minister’s handling of the pandemic, declaring it was “patently ridiculous” to suggest the commonwealth had no say over state border restrictions.

Marles is absolutely correct on this – if nothing else. Despite clear Constitutional issues, including the authority of the Commonwealth in regards to quarantine, the Prime Minister has essentially sat back and allowed the state premiers to run amok, closing and opening borders willy-nilly. The Commonwealth declined to intervene even in the clearly impending disaster of Victoria’s hare-brained hotel quarantine scheme.

But – let’s not pretend that Anthony Albanese would have acted any differently.

Nor should we pretend that Marles, recently elevated in Albanese’s cabinet reshuffle to a “super-portfolio” of post Covid-19 national reconstruction, is absolutely pure of motive, here.

Marles is one of Labor’s more sensible heads, for sure, having previously backed the government’s tough border control measures and the recognition of service personnel involved, in the face of furious opposition from the left. But his criticism of Morrison’s failure to reign in state premiers is not without an ulterior motive.

“I think the premiers across the board have been doing a great job in managing their states and part of that inevitably means the way they’ve handled restrictions … but obviously there is a national dim­ension to this,” he said. “COVID is a national issue and the national government should be leading the nation. What we’ve seen with the Prime Minister is a complete abdication of his role here.”

Mr Marles said Mr Morrison’s decision to “leave the field” on ­issues such as borders had put the federation under enormous stress and healing the issue formed a key plank of his vision for national ­reconstruction.

Now we come to the real issue: Federal Labor is itching for the authority to impose its contribution to the post-COVID Great Reset.

He said he was excited to be in a role that would marry his long-standing passion for science with the development of a vision for what the Australian economy could look like going into the middle of the century.

“We have a moment to reimagine Australia, which is probably something we haven’t had since the end of World War II,” he said.

The Australian

To his credit, he didn’t actually say “Build Back Better”, but only a fool or a Labor voter could fail to see where this is going.

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Punk rock philosopher. Liberalist contrarian. Grumpy old bastard. I grew up in a generational-Labor-voting family. I kept the faith long after the political left had abandoned it. In the last decade...