For most politicians, Mother’s Day is merely an annual chance to convince us that, despite appearances, they were birthed by another human and not mechanically assembled in a factional backroom. But for Anthony Albanese, the day holds more significance.
As the federal opposition leader shared on Twitter on Sunday, Mother’s Day 2002 was the day his mum “went to hospital and never came back”. Single mother Maryanne Albanese raised her son in public housing on a disability pension, unable to work due to crippling arthritis.
The Labor leader took a rare opportunity to share his moving personal history and articulate the values it imparted. “I know the difference that governments can make on people’s lives because I lived it,” he wrote. “Mum lived it.”
Alas, the advisers who vet Albo’s social media posts could not let an articulation of working-class pride slide without appending some cynical triangulation. “She taught me how to save,” he wrote. “And how to spend wisely — because every dollar had to count.”
The line echoed a speech Albanese delivered on Thursday, in which he invoked Kevin Rudd’s famous “economic conservative” slogan, reiterating a promise to keep government spending tight if he is elected PM. “Money was always tight at our place,” he said. “That’s why, when it comes to thinking about government spending, I am cautious.”
The speech was dropped to The Australian, in an apparent effort to signal Labor’s fiscal discipline. It comes after Albanese asked shadow cabinet members in February to attempt to offset all new spending proposals with cuts.
This fiscal frugality sees Albo sounding even more hawkish than Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who has pre-empted backbench and commentariat grumblings about the deficit by declaring it is no time for an austerity budget so soon after the coronavirus recession.
It also sets Australian Labor apart from progressive parties internationally. Joe Biden, for instance, has invoked his own history of hardship as a widowed parent — famously shunning transport perks and instead taking the train to the Obama White House — to justify a mammoth fiscal effort to repair America’s welfare system and infrastructure.
Where Biden employs his biography in pursuit of alleviating poverty, Albanese allowed his to rationalise penny-pinching. As Rick Morton has written, the way frugal habits induced by poverty “bend … the architecture of the mind” is hardly a virtue, especially when applied to public policy.
Albanese’s other main talking point in the lead-up to Tuesday’s budget has been the need to overcome wage stagnation. Yet the simultaneous emphasis on restrained government spending and wage growth is somewhat contradictory, given the former undermines the latter.
As Crikey has long noted, the public sector is an increasingly important driver of jobs and wages growth. But a “balanced budgets” framework could hamper its more heavily unionised workforce’s ability to negotiate pay rises, which would undercut consumer spending and stifle economic recovery.
Comparison with Biden’s approach is again telling, having recently appointed Vice-President Kamala Harris to lead a taskforce to revitalise unions and wage growth. The opening strategy of their four-point plan is to “lead by example” by being a “model employer” and procurer.
Their expansionary fiscal strategy reflects a growing consensus among economists, including Australian economists. The Parliamentary Budget Office recently released a report confirming Australia’s debt is “comfortably sustainable”.
Polling also suggests the Australian public agree deficit reduction is a low priority.
Why, then, is the ALP still projecting a “miserly bean-counter” image? As Richard Cooke wrote in The Monthly, many of Albanese’s baffling forays merely reflect grudges from lost Rudd-era fights (think Abbott’s “debt and deficit disaster” slogan), and “an appeal to the burghers of the financial world (especially the financial press) that reads ‘please take us seriously’”.
Whereas Biden’s advisers are learning from the mistakes of Obama, whose thankless pretence of fiscal responsibility hampered economic recovery, Team Albo is stuck in an uninspiring groundhog day.
The first lesson of political communication is to never use your opponent’s rhetorical frames. For Labor to achieve its admirable social priorities, it must jettison deficit hawkishness.
On Saturday, the ALP marked its 120th birthday. What better time to reclaim its history of expanding the welfare state and proudly proclaim these achievements? If Albanese wants to ensure “no one is left behind”, as his mother was by cutbacks to public services she relied on, he needs to unapologetically commit to funding them.
If the budget, debt and deficit mantras of the LNP and its media wing at AFR and News are now passé, it’s time for Labor to start setting out its big government vision again. Forget the money – sell the ideas. That’s what Gough did.
Albanese is no Gough. And the ALP is so scarred by years of abuse by the Coalition and the fact that voters disappointed with their performance have abandoned them that they’re now scared of their own shadow. They’re trying to become the smallest possible target and so they don’t dare to think big.
I agree with you, but don’t think Albo is the man to sell the message. There’s no fire in the belly to make voters, and/or media, sit up and take notice, Fine, hus mum did it tough, so did and are hundreds of others but the make sure their kids get everything they can possibly afford to give them — even when it means pretending you ate while cooking or that you really enjoy cheese and crackers for every meal.
He needs to be the father for this country, or someone does, but not the daggy dad crap, and get to the people if this country what they need right now, or move over and bring in someone who can and will.
I watched Shorten give his NDIS spiel at the National Press Club a fortnight ago and could not help compare his energy and animation with Albanese’s laconic approach. Palmer and Murdoch did this country a huge disservice when they killed off Shorten’s chances last time.
Ah geez, when Shorten looks animated in comparison, Albo’s really is a dead fish. Shorten had his chance and his lack of backbone gave it away.
If Labor was in power doing the exact spending – they would be crucified every single day by the LNP and their mainstream media mates. This article completely misses the point about economics and Australia. Whatever Labor does is bad. Whatever the LNP does is good. There’s one rule for Labor govts and another for these fake Christians.
The real story is that the LNP will flush nearly a trillion dollars down the drain by the time they leave office and the mainstream media will not once call them on it. Instead it will be a relentless attack on Labor for still being a registered political party and not a fading footnote of the 20th century.
I’m as bitter about the mainstream media bias as anyone – but the fact is, there are more complex reasons why Labor has been out of power federally for 20 of the last 25 years. Otherwise the same would apply at State level. Federally the Co-alition plays the fear and xenophobia cards – terrorists, China, refugees, FAANGS intruding on our privacy and killing local media, big new Labor taxes etc etc. State government is much more about services and neighbourhoods so people see through the lies. When Dutton said Victorians were scared to go out for dinner because of ethnic gangs, 95% of Melburnians laughed out loud at what an arse he’d made of himself, and Andrews won a landslide.
But Federal Labor has allowed the Coalition scares to have maximum emotional impact because Labor itself offers such an uninspiring and oppositional vision. That’s been reduced down since the Hawke/Keating years to a transactional electoral offer that defines voters constantly as ‘workers’ – by which it means waged employees – and policy priorities as a 1930s style tussle between workers and bosses (2019’s campaign slogan ‘A fair go’, and now ‘On your side’). Whitlam’s ‘Men and women of Australia’ was broad and epic, today’s ‘working families’ language is so pedestrian it calcifies your eardrums on contact.
Waged employees are an ever decreasing bucket of votes that excludes contractors, students, retirees, small business owners, artists, farmers, housekeepers etc etc etc – who are all ‘workers’ in some way or another. And the transactional, tussle stuff of better wages and conditions, is never gonna get anyone inspired. Sure hundreds of thousands are in dire precarious miserable economic situations but they alone won’t win you government. After 25 years of prosperity the largest slice of Australians are just as concerned about their identities (traditional and new), where they can live, the climate, education and health as they are about pay and working conditions. The crazy thing of course is that Labor has always been and still is way superior to the Coalition in its analysis and policy platform on this broader stuff – but it keeps confining its rhetoric to old style employee/employer power economics and failing to communicate the broader vision and inspiration effectively. Given the Murdoch propaganda machine, Labor probably has to get 60% of electors sympathetic to convert that into a 51% electoral win. Even more reason to take some risks with inspiration and communication.
It will continue while the legacy media oligopoly caters to rusted on audiences, fear of upsetting elites and runs protection for the LNP, and vice versa; simply corrupt but most Australians simply don’t care about the hollowed out political and media environment……
Biden often refers to creating well-paid “union” jobs. What a sad commentary that an Australian Labor leader is highly unlikely to use that second descriptor.
Oh, but we got bludgeoned with the “Debt and Deficit Disaster” line for 6 years when Labor were in office…..so why are we not supposed to care about it anymore?
Different government : same media, same double standards.
If he were a child today, Albo’s Mum would be on a ten plus year waiting list for social housing. How is that reality reflected in the slightest in Labor’s housing policy? We know the LNP don’t give a stuff, it seems Labor doesn’t either!