I do not expect that there would be an outbreak of existential angst, despair, or deep public sullenness, even among committed Labor voters, if Anthony Albanese were to fail to win the next election.
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Traditional supporters, even true believers, would be sad and shake their heads. But they would not consider the outcome as their fault, a consequence of their failure to keep the faith, or desertion to the coalition, or even of party disunity and internal sabotage.
They will instead blame Albanese himself, for conscious acts of self-harm. For leading a party afraid to govern, irresolute in the face of political risk, paralysed about doing good, and seeming to want to cynically imitate the worst features and policies of the Morrison government. To base policies around their susceptibility to criticism from Peter Dutton or the Reserve Bank.
Albanese's advisers and minders, and some of his journalistic cheer squad, are now putting it about that the Prime Minister has recently woken up after a year of daze that seemed to begin about the time of the Voice referendum. He now realises, it is said, that there must be an election within the next nine months, and has begun to focus his thoughts, and concentrate on the things that matter. Things that don't (policies on Aboriginal affairs would be a good example) are being jettisoned, either entirely or for the next year.
Mass rehearsals will prepare ministers and the caucus about discipline and avoiding panic, and the need to continue an austerity regime because the one big issue will be the cost of living. The main job, apparently, involves reining in public expenditure considered to be inflationary by the Reserve Bank, the money markets, and the columnists at The Australian and the Financial Review. Subsidies to the hydrocarbon industry, for nuclear submarine fantasies, propping up the mainstream media moguls, and tax cuts for business will not be thought to contribute to the cost of living. Contrarywise expenditure on health, education and welfare, on improving the public housing supply, or the environment, or doing anything serious about climate change, or the environment will be seen as wasteful and unaffordable.
The fear will be that Labor will not want to be bold, lest it suffer the fate of Labor under Bill Shorten for having policies of imagination, appealing to the heart, the soul and the emotions. For Albanese and his inner circle, now is not the time. He cannot use the self-indulgence of a James Scullin, winning government on the eve of the Great Depression, the careless days of a John Curtin or Ben Chifley, taking over in the crisis days of World War II, a Gough Whitlam during an oil crisis, or a Bob Hawke or Paul Keating, finding themselves only with the project of remaking the economy. Nor even a Kevin Rudd coping with a global financial crisis. Governing is not so easy these days, particularly if one lacks the courage and conviction to question old verities, to research, establish........