The prime minister has hopefully enjoyed his first five days in the job. It will never be this easy again, but it’s been the ideal start. A meeting with key regional allies and the US president, a big outreach to the Pacific, a return to glowing reviews. All the problems are ones created by his opponents, who are busy arguing among themselves about why they lost so badly.
The change of press gallery tone is remarkable. Dismissed for much of the past three years, his small-target strategy derided, Albanese couldn’t win — or so most political journalists had decided. Few really knew how hated Scott Morrison really was. In fact, stuck in Canberra for most of the past two years, political journalists had little idea of what most voters were thinking.
The first signs came when the Queensland and Western Australian governments cashed in electorally on pandemic lockdowns to the astonishment of the Canberra press gallery which had accepted the Liberal narrative that freedom-loving Aussie voters were champing at the bit to escape lockdowns.
Throughout, Albanese stuck to his plan to make Morrison the issue, and he succeeded.
With barely a shrug, the gallery has reversed itself and Albanese is our new suburban statesman, comfortable on the world stage, agreeing with French President Emmanuel Macron to turn the page on Franco-Australian relations, suggesting China start dropping sanctions if it wants to improve relations, planning a regional visit.
Penny Wong’s transition to Foreign Affairs Minister — and already a far higher profile one than the woman she replaced — has also been seamless. (Overlooked is that Australia has had a female foreign affairs minister since 2013 and will continue to do so.)
But foreign affairs is the easy bit. All new governments roll their eyes and theatrically declare that things are much worse than they were led to believe about the budget, and Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher are undertaking that ritual with enthusiasm right now.
But the problems are all in plain sight: a vast debt, a high-inflation economy — even higher after yesterday’s Australian Energy Regulator ruling — with rising interest rates, but with growth likely to taper off dramatically next year, especially if China continues to underperform. Higher interest rates and slower growth might take some of the pressure out of the job market, and demands for more foreign workers, but at the moment it seems no area of the economy, from aged care to hospitality to waste collection to grocery supply chains, is free from the challenge of COVID-related absenteeism.
That specific issue will — hopefully — go away, but now that we’ve had a taste of what the economy is like if you can’t get foreign workers, it’s time we took the challenge of labour supply seriously. Currently responsibility for workforce issues is split between industrial relations, immigration, education and sector specific policymaking areas (agriculture, health, aged care).
As the developed world and China continue to age and need more and more foreign workers, the problems we face now will become increasingly common. It’s great news for young workers from less developed economies, but a big challenge for policymaking here.
And just one of many on the domestic front.
Albanese might end up looking back fondly on his first frenetic week.
The obvious place to start is the backend of the MMT economic cycle at which point we are clearly now at. The govt needs to remove any surplus junk or otherwise deferrable spending it can that does not impact low income people.
An immediate stop to all private school building activity that is non essential is a low hanging fruit and the Teals who mostly state they strongly believe in classic liberal economics should be out there selling such as good economic policy.
And on it goes.
All govt departments – federal state local – should be tasked with finding any current spending in the pipeline that can be canceled or deferred. If the govt acted quickly and with precision they could probably get ahead of the RBA by calming the economy sufficiently to slow the pace of rate rises – this would be win for Labor like few others and will help bury the rubbish about Labor being bad for the economy.
Rather than “…need more and more foreign workers…” of which you speak, how about a really radical idea?
Pay Australian workers more in accordance with their basic needs!
Be prepared to withstand the stampede if, suddenly, there were the prospect of truly essential workers – aged, home & child care, cleaners, hospital orderlies, seasonal workers especially horticultural and, dare one suggest, shelf stackers being paid properly.
They might then be able to, gasp, make do with just a single job and spend time with their own families instead of being skivvies exploited by the better off.
Think what the (putative) U/E rate would then be.
There are huge challenges for Albanese and the Labor team. However there are highly qualified people in finance in Labor with Chalmers, Andrew Leigh, the new member in Parramatta and Katy Gallagher – all for a start. This gives me solid confidence in their actions and I know they are not there to rort and line their pockets
This sentence says it all:
‘Few really knew how hated Scott Morrison really was. In fact, stuck in Canberra for most of the past two years, political journalists had little idea of what most voters were thinking.‘
Suggests how out of touch, centralised, hollowed out and monocultural Australian political media is when acting as an LNP policy and/or agitprop communications outlet for direct ‘informing’ of society when suboptimal regional and/or diverse media including policy analysis vs. Canberra & capital city soap operas.
I’d like to challenge that “not enough workers” thing. It smacks of business not liking to compete for workers with decent wages and conditions – for “decent” read enough money that they don’t have to shit themselves over an unexpected expense. Economists spruik the laws of supply and demand governing wages among other things. Well the time has come for the workers to be paid in more than poverty. The pandemic exposed the lie about essential workers being financially valued – it was shocking how many essential workers were the lowest paid. FYI I know where’s an immediate rise of approximately 6% in workers – drop the vaccine mandates. Gosh our governments are so dumb sometimes.