Albanese's cautious approach risks a repeat of Turnbull's wasted majority. He must find a middle path
Anthony Albanese had a chance on Tuesday to expand the scope of his second-term agenda, following his thumping election win on May 3, and lay out a more ambitious reform plan.
It was a chance he very deliberately chose not to take.
Mindful of the uncertain international environment; a looming meeting with US President Donald Trump (the source of much of this uncertainty); the risks of exceeding his mandate so soon after the election; and conscious of the need to begin to rebuild faith in government, institutions and even the media, Albanese stuck to his narrowly defined path.
In his first major speech to the National Press Club since the election, Albanese hewed closely to the policy script he took to the election campaign – cheaper childcare, making Australia a renewable energy superpower, developing advanced manufacturing, and expanding Medicare bulk-billing.
There was a concession of a sort, in the form of a roundtable meeting in August that will bring together business, unions and government to discuss the government's growth and productivity agenda – an acknowledgement, at the very least, that major business groups are not exactly thrilled with the government's industrial relations changes, to see wages rising faster than inflation, and that (of course) they desire a cut to the company tax rate.
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There was also an acknowledgement that Australia may well have to spend more on defence in the years to come, but Albanese made clear – as he has been saying privately for weeks – that he would not simply set an arbitrary target for defence spending as a proportion of GDP, but rather that 'we will always provide for capability that's needed'.
But these are uncertain times. The Reserve Bank of Australia used the word 'uncertain' 21 times in the minutes of their most recent board meeting, compared to just twice seven months ago, on the day Trump was elected.
Labor true believers hoping Albanese would unleash his inner Paul Keating in this second term, emboldened by a 94-seat stranglehold on the House and a progressive majority in the Senate, will have been left disappointed.
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