For a bloke that so few Australians actually voted for, Anthony Albanese sure has tickets on himself all of a sudden.
Remember, twice as many Australians voted against as for Labor at the election. The party recorded its lowest primary vote in 100 years — nearly in its entire history. In fact, Labor has only recorded lower votes twice in 122 years of Federation.
For all that, though, Albanese has apparently decided that he has the mandate of mandates. He wants, he says, to “change the way politics operates in this country”. He’s already flagged two far-reaching constitutional changes that would forever alter the most fundamental principles of our democracy.
And he’s only just getting started.
But it’s not just politics that the new PM wants to change – he wants to change the media as well. Diary hears that Albanese has told confidantes that he was “appalled” by the behaviour of a press pack that became increasingly vocal during the campaign to try to catch him out.
This, remember, from the candidate who simply walked away from the podium multiple times rather than answer basic questions about his own policies. Who refused, point-blank, to answer questions from ordinary voters, and threatened to throw a tanty and ban the media from his own campaign.
We’re also told that, emboldened by his win, he’s now on a one-man crusade to improve the “civility” of discourse in press conferences under his leadership. And if that means journalists who yell or interrupt him are actively demoted down the pecking order of those allowed to ask him questions, so be it.
The Australian
In other words, shut up, don’t ask difficult questions, or you’ll be banned. At this rate, the only people Albanese will be talking to will be the ABC.
The last time a Labor PM was this arrogant, at least he had the votes to warrant it. Fully one-quarter more Australians voted for Kevin Rudd’s government than Albanese’s. But Rudd’s egomania was his undoing — bundled out of office by his own colleagues and relegated to “miserable ghost” status ever since.
Rudd never faced anything like the challenges Albanese will have to measure up to.
Within weeks of coming into office, the country has been hit by an energy crisis that is rapidly undoing Albanese’s vow to “end the climate wars”. Even the Teals are backflipping on their blanket opposition to fossil fuels, demanding that the government intervene to reserve currently exported natural gas for domestic use.
It’s almost as if they’re admitting that “cheap, reliable renewables” are anything but.
Add to that spiralling cost of living, and an aggressive China blatantly testing the new government’s mettle.
Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell and Defence secretary Greg Moriarty lodged furious protests with their People’s Liberation Army counterparts after the Chinese aircraft buzzed the Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon, launching flares and “chaff” countermeasures […]
Former air force chief Leo Davies said the incident, in international airspace over the South China Sea, was “as aggressive as I have heard of”.
Chinese government media campaigned hard for a Labor win, and Chinese-linked entities poured literal shopping bags of cash into Labor coffers. Defense Minister Richard Marles raised eyebrows with the number of his secret visits to China in opposition, and for clearing his major speeches with the Chinese embassy.
Euan Graham, a senior Asia Pacific security fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said the conduct of the Chinese jet had introduced a “next-level layer of stupidity and riskiness” into the tensions between the countries.
Dr Graham said the incident, and those involving the Canadian aircraft, suggested a co-ordinated policy rather than the “stupidity of an air crew of a local commander”.
“In Australia’s case, I think the new government is being tested. We have seen it in the Pacific, and I think this is part of the same picture, in my view,” he said. “What China wants to do is to put some doubt between the US and its major allies.
The Australian
Beijing is seeing if they got what they paid for — and what they can get away with, now.