Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will leave Australia for Tokyo this afternoon, accompanied by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, to meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, US President Joe Biden — with whom Albanese has already spoken by phone — and Indian PM Narendra Modi in his first Quad meeting. Albanese was sworn in as prime minister this morning.
The timing of the Quad meeting hard on the heels of an election loomed as problematic in the event of a lack of a clear-cut victory. But Albanese has used the meeting to brush aside questions about waiting for a determination of his minority or majority status and seized the reins as quickly as possible, with an interim ministry sworn in of Wong, Richard Marles, Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher.
Labor remains on 72 seats but is ahead in Bennelong, Deakin, Lyons, Macnamara and Richmond. It is also still a chance in Brisbane if it can overtake the Greens on primaries, and Andrew Constance is not yet safe for the Liberals in Gilmore. There’s a feeling within Labor ranks that they’ll secure a majority, but not before the massive number of postal votes has been counted in the days to come.
Albanese has been publicly unfazed by the failure so far to secure 76 seats, declaring victory late on Saturday night with a strong speech outlining his goals on the Uluru Statement, climate action, a federal ICAC and gender equality, and taking a victory lap of his electorate yesterday before this morning’s swearing-in at Yarralumla.
The timing of the Quad meeting couldn’t, in fact, have been better for Albanese, giving him a reason to move quickly and a chance to engage with a key regional forum, as well as an ideologically sympathetic US president, while in Australia we’re still working out who will be in Parliament and who’ll miss out.
The swearing-in of Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher also provides an opportunity for Labor to start shaping its economic narrative. The new government faces serious fiscal and economic issues: a huge deficit and net debt, surging inflation, rising electricity prices and rising interest rates, along with intense pressure to rapidly demonstrate greater climate ambition.
Having campaigned hard on cost-of-living issues, Labor will find they’ll be quickly held to account for any perceived inaction.
Let’s think big and not get buried in the prosaic numbness of deficits, interest rates etc. The configuration of the Reps and the Senate means we can remove all barriers to rapid investment in renewables, storage and hydrogen and create the sort of economic growth that makes all that boring stuff manageable, even irrelevant. The politics of negativity and division ended Saturday night. Let’s now get on with what at least ⅔ of Australians (and even some who inexplicably voted Tory) know needs to happen.
There seems to be a fixation on whether Labor reaches a majority. It’s academic. This is not a hung parliament. There is no one else who can even approach forming a govt. A lot is made of the Coalition. But it is exactly that. It’s a collection of small parties which pretend to have wide representation. They don’t. The biggest party in the conglomerate is the LNP (Qld) which looks to have about 21 seats. The NSW Liberal Party has about 10 seats, the Victorian Liberal Party even less. These are all state parties and there is no overarching authority to intervene in each other’s affairs (unlike the ALP) so when Morrison was screwing people over regarding preselection he did so through his leadership of the NSW branch. The Nats who were so proud at not losing any seats have no representation at any level – local, state or federally in Tasmania, ACT or NT. They have more reps at a state level in WA (that’s not saying much) but less federally. Dutton, logically as the leader of the largest faction (LNP QLD) should lead the opposition. But he leads a faction of 21 seats. It makes Labor’s seat numbers of around 70 seem enormous. Whether Labor needs to ask 4 or 5 Xbenchers to guarantee supply seems specious. They’ll get it. There’s no one else. Unless the Libs are thinking they can form an alliance with the people who took their seats because they complained they weren’t doing enough with them. And who reject the policies that the Teals ran on. Don’t think so.
Agree! The Teals ran on a platform which opposed the Libs and much inline with both the Greens and Labor
The Qld LNP is weird. They go to the people as one party but some mysterous;y become Libs and some Nats when they fly into Canberra.
Albo and Wong will return sadder and wiser, having been told by the CIA who is actually in charge around here. Swimming in champagne on Saturday, packed in ice on Monday. New bases, anyone?
In addition, the Ambassador for Ukraine in Australia is ‘looking forward’ to the new PM accepting Zelensky’s invitation to visit Kiev and discuss the urgent necessity for Australia to supply sh*t loads of our coal, as Ukraine is currently experiencing ‘supply’ issues.
Let’s see how that all works out with the new crossbenchers….
As the French say “Tous les matins du monde”. All the mornings of the world. As the first rays of sunlight heralds a new day and anything seems possible. Before it all goes to merde.
Am I alone in finding the image of a seated G-G with elected pollies standing disturbing? Why not both seated? Or if the oath has to be taken standing, why does the G-G need to be seated?
According to news reports, the new Prime Minister and Ministers did not take the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen of Australia, they took an affirmation instead. .
I certainly hope this is true. A great step forward.
The GG is the representation of the Sovereign. You don’t sit in the presence of the Sovereign unless they too are sitting (and you are invited to). So the GG is sitting so they can sit down to sign. It’s long standing convention that you stand to take an oath or an affirmation.
You may not like all this crown/royalty/monarchy stuff but most countries with a President follow the same protocol.
My point remains that the G-G elects to stay seated and requires the pollies to stand.
The GG represents the head of state. The GG is appointing the ministers. The GG is their superior, which is how the GG has the authority to make them ministers and they do not. It would be the same if this was a republic, the GG would instead be a president (presumably) but would still be superior to those being appointed as ministers.
There are plenty of similar situations where the one who is in charge stays seated. And obviously the HoS or the representative of the HoS is in charge, that’s what it means to be HoS.
So I really cannot follow what it is you find disturbing. Do you also find it disturbing when everyone in court has to stand when a judge enters and stay standing until the judge allows them to sit? Or if a supervisor stays seated when talking to staff? Or a headteacher talking to students? Are you opposed to all manifestations of different status?
Do you want to watch him leaping up and down like a jack-in-the-box as each one approaches to sign?