Last Friday, Anthony “Albo” Albanese made a speech. Since then, many public persons have reviewed its content, but have had little to say about its quality. This is a bit of a shame. Or, at least, it is a shame for me or any person like me whose interest in what centrist politicians have to say is diminished by the fact of having already heard them say it often. I am not curious to learn what I already know: this politician is very keen on (a) economic growth and (b) personally delivering that economic growth to the nation. I am now curious to learn if they expressed this artistically or well.
It is the view of The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy that this was an appeal not to the people of the Shellharbour Workers’ Club, but to the ALP itself, which must not be seen to smooch with the tiny trade union movement so publicly. As Murphy has it, Albanese is not driven chiefly by ambition, but the urge to save his party. I have no reason to suspect that this reporter does not know what’s what, and perhaps the guy did revive the stinking corpse of the Third Way with all the best intentions.
Can’t say as I care much, though. A clear account of what the purported leader of the Left says, and why he says it, is not a bit of what I fancy. I want to know if he found a new way to express the old projects. Did Albo give old games of Labor new pizazz? Did he find a fresh variation on the stale theme of growth? Did he make the people or the party feel like they’d been touched by neoliberalism for the very first time?
We surely know not to hope for novel policy from Australian politicians. The best we can expect is its novel expression. Unfortunately, our commentators most qualified to rate a speech from one to five are a bit measly with their stars. Unfortunately, I must read entire speeches myself to determine if they are, in fact, much chop.
I have read his speech. Albo gets a solid three for his work in the genre of market-friendly political bullshit. It is by no means comparable to the Hockey horror show of 2012, but it’s very shy of Robert Menzies. The “forgotten people” claptrap of 1942 is an article of creative genius. It is one from which Albo takes no little instruction. He does not tell the lie outright that we are a classless nation, but he does suggest that a little bit of tweaking could make it so. And he does not clearly identify, as Menzies did, the class this classless nation forgot. Menzies names the middle-class. Albanese just tips his hat at its remnants, “the beneficiaries of Gough Whitlam’s education reform” and “the first people in their families to go to university, work in the professions and non-unionised industries, or start their own business”.
For Albanese, those we “cannot afford to ignore” are boomers — moreover, boomers who don’t give a shit about their children. Surely “DJ Albo” is up to the work of flattering the forgotten, underemployed children of his chosen people. Could he not have said something, as he has before, about their wonderful music, or their innovative approach to craft beer?
But, the former darling of BuzzFeed did have one slam poet moment. Admire these rhythms: “Labor is not a grab bag of ugly neo cons, weak liberals and agrarian socialists fighting like cats in a bag.”
I do not recommend this speech to persons who wish to make sense of politics in its broadest, truest sense. You’d do just as well to re-read a Hillary Clinton campaign speech for an accurate account of the present: big business is great, and so is tolerance. Perhaps our most important work is tolerance of big business. Blah blah blah.
I do not recommend this speech to persons who do not dislike the young.
I do recommend this speech to persons curious to see a person endorse the views of Friedrich Hayek while also calling Friedrich Hayek a monster. We cannot afford to ignore such people! People who are not so much forgotten as they are almost fictional. Such as boomers who do not worry for the future of their kids.
Thanks Helen I love your views and the way you write. I too am so disappointed with the baby boomers emphasis we are the one who are the most privileged today. I have three children who are all underemployed in fact we are supporting two of them. I dislike the ‘A’ word (aspiration) as though this is the only barrier to doing well and getting ahead… bull if you cant play the game in the way that mainstream does then you are left out in the cold and disallusioned.
Such is the state of Australian politics is that this speech of Albo’s has been lauded by the left as inspirational, and by the right as a dread tap on the shoulder to Shorten.
It’s neither. It is pedestrian party politics in the extreme – if you will excuse the contradiction. It only looks like a revelation when compared to the likes of Abbott’s usual drivel. Such a low bar to get over, too.
No contradiction at all Nudie. It is quite possible to be an ordinary fundamentalist.
Albo is the great red hope of Labor, good grief, is that all there is. Trouble is he’s been an insider for all his political life; soooo he’s never going to be the maverick we all need.
Kudos to the headline writer. I’m sure the ambiguity in the headline was (rightly) intended.
Albanese’s speech does not ‘endorse Hayek’ but on the contrary rejects him in favour of safety nets, state intervention, public investment and expenditure (all of which Hayek and his disciples deplored). You may not agree with centrism, the ‘Third Way’ or the mixed economy, but they are not the same thing as the neo-liberalism of Hayek, Thatcher, Friedman and Reagan. Albanese is articulating a line of progressive thinking that goes back to Keynes and Roosevelt, and – mutatis mutandum – Whitlam, Hawke/Keating and, yes, Clinton. It may not be ‘the only game in town’ as Albo claims, but to conflate it with neo-liberalism is wilfully misleading.
It isn’t neoliberal it is in the tradition of *checks notes* Bill Clinton and New Labour
Roosevelt worked with unions. The only thing left of Keynes in the ALP is seen within Wayne Swan. Either way, a New Deal of full employment regime is not the prescription for the future. Because, capitalism changes. It has a crisis tendency, which post-Keynesian people concede, and asking for a return to a past is a nonsense.
But, this is what “Albo” of “the Left” is asking. Not even a return to supply-side thinking but just Hayek with a human face.
Hayek did recommend some welfare. So did Friedman, although he wanted it to be Universal Basic Income. (AKA negative income text.)
He may not be a neoliberal, but this is sure a neoliberal speech. Asking for more market friendliness in this age? Albo von Mises.
“More market friendliness in this age” is a good question to pose.
Now that we have decided what Albo’s speech wasn’t, what exactly is he up to?