Albanese, your moment of truth is now

Political luck has carried Albanese this far; only bold reform will define what comes next, writes Dr Michael Galvin.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN an Australian Prime Minister more enigmatic than Anthony Albanese?

Winston Churchill’s well-known words could have been written for Albo:

“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

On the one hand, he goes through periods when he seems particularly error-prone. Just in the last couple of months, he has responded to Bondi in a way that satisfied almost no one; he invited Israeli President Isaac Herzog – unapologetic Zionist and Gaza bomb autographer – to Australia (who then used his time in the country to double down on his anti-Palestinian rhetoric).

Albo also treated the Australian children of ISIS wives in Syria with callous disregard for their welfare. And just the last few days, he managed to annoy most thinking women in the country by calling Grace Tame “difficult”, a loaded term which nearly every woman understands is code for a misogynistic putdown (while most men wonder what all the fuss is about, perhaps because it is a negative word mainly used by men about women who annoy or threaten them in some way).

The olive branch of hypocrisy: Herzog’s tree and Australia's complicity

Behind the pageantry of Herzog’s visit, critics argue Australia is ignoring legal warnings and moral accountability over Israel’s conduct in Palestine.

And then, of course, there is the way our PM seems to want to abase himself to the Murdoch world. Opening their new Sky studios for them, all the while aware that these same Sky demagogues spend night after night despising and ridiculing him. The Grace Tame self-inflicted wound also happened while he was cosying up to this same Murdoch cabal in Melbourne.

The visuals were devastating for Albanese. No sooner had the word “difficult” come out of his mouth than he turned to the audience with a complicit smile on his face. Isn’t this how all of us here in this room really feel about Grace Tame, his smirk suggested. (So much for the nonsense he trotted out the following day, pleading compassion as his reason for the “difficult” epithet. Does he not realise that such disingenuousness damages him more than anyone?)

And yet, there is also a case to be made that Albo is one of the most canny politicians in Australian history. His 2025 landslide election victory – indeed, his whole improbable career – would seem to support such a view. And on dozens of metrics, his government is better for working people than the alternative.

Alan Austin’s brilliant articles in Independent Australia provide all the information you need to understand that the Albanese Government is better than the Coalition on so many levels. For example, this article.

And there are some people who think Albanese is a genius. For example, a propos the invitation to the President of Israel – which most observers would consider an egregious own goal – a friend tried to make the case that what Albo was really doing was playing three-dimensional chess while the rest of us were playing checkers. The reasoning went like this:

Despite appearances, Albanese’s real intention in inviting Herzog was to actually make the Zionist cause less popular and to increase opposition to the Gaza genocide. Strangely, as it turns out, this is actually what did end up happening.

In this three-dimensional scenario, Albo commands the big picture, while his South Australian lieutenant, Peter Malinauskas, kills Writers' Week but gives undreamt of publicity to author Randa Abdel Fattah and the genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, NSW lieutenant Chris Minns plays his part: roughing up a few peaceful Muslims praying in front of the Sydney Town Hall, thereby ensuring even more sympathy for those opposed to Herzog’s visit.

Albanese's victimisation of "ISIS brides" and innocent children is appalling

Despite languishing for years in an atrocious conditions, Australia's PM belligerently refuses to rightfully repatriate wives of ISIS fighters or their innocent children. James May comments.

Looked at like this, the Albanese/Malinauskas/Minns triumvirate play really was an instance of three-dimensional chess played brilliantly: Mission accomplished. Knowledge and support for Palestinians in Gaza go up; support for the Zionist regime in Israel stays steady, at best.

An interesting analysis, but I don’t believe it for a second. The simpler explanation is that Albo and his lieutenants made a series of catastrophic errors, the consequences of which had the opposite effect to what they intended. Social cohesion was not enhanced; it was damaged in very public ways.

While I don’t buy the canniest politician argument, one thing is certainly true: Albo is an extraordinarily lucky politician. His first opponent was the hapless Scott Morrison; Peter Dutton, his second opponent, was even more of a deadbeat. Now the One Nation/Liberals/National Party cage fight means he can more or less get away with doing what he likes in Canberra and no one takes much notice.

He is a lucky politician despite making lots of mistakes, finding it almost impossible to admit a mistake and disappointing those of us who thought he would be better.

But all is not lost.

The point of this article is not to bury Albanese. It is to encourage him to do something big and courageous while he has the time and the political capital to do it.

All sides of politics agree that intergenerational inequality is an issue that has become a crisis. Even Liberals can see that young adults, unable to afford to live in the middle-class suburbs they were brought up in as children, are a sign of something going seriously wrong in Australian society.

The state of a (not) independent Australia address

Fellow Independent Australians, it is with our greatest and most sincere regret that we must inform you that Australia is still not a fully and truly independent nation.

Whereas working-class baby boomers who got a university education while it was largely free could aspire to raise their own families in middle-class suburbs, their children and grandchildren are lucky if they can afford a house in the same working-class suburbs the boomers as kids moved out of decades ago. (Suburbs like St Peter's and Marrickville, Footscray and Coburg, Thebarton and Hindmarsh in Adelaide come to mind.)

Alan Kohler’s recent article on the role that tax policy plays in increasing intergenerational inequality should be required reading for everyone in Albanese’s office. Albanese must stop giving so many tax concessions to the capitalist class and use the savings to lower the income tax paid by all workers.

So, here is my solution if Albanese wants to do something significant and courageous:

Get rid of negative gearing and the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount on existing houses.
In 2024/2025, this would have improved the budget by approximately $13 billion. These two tax expenditures are regressive and distortionary tax expenditures.
Give all of this back in the form of tax decreases for all pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) workers and greater payments for those on social security.

Expressed this way, it will be an easy political argument to win: taking a luxury from a wealthy minority and giving it back to all workers and pensioners, most of whom have an affordability crisis.

Does Albanese have what it takes to do something transformational like this? Or is he too afraid to take on Murdoch and the defenders of tax breaks for the rich, who, led by Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson, will scream like scalded pigs?

The next Budget is only a few months away. We will soon find out.

Dr Michael Galvin is an adjunct fellow at Victoria University and a former media and communications academic at the University of South Australia.