Not since Alaska has the US won a nation so cheaply.

A friend joked to me recently that the best news Labor has had this week was being told that I was thinking that Anthony Albanese could very well lose next year’s election outright. The jibe at my forecasting record was fair comment, one I must endure – sometimes boast of – with all the fortitude I can muster.

But more important than profitless speculations about the election date and the likely outcome is whether people with a usual mind to vote Labor should do so next year – as a sort of encouragement award? Or because the alternative seems so dismal?

Does Albanese deserve re-election? Would more of the same be preferable to life under Peter Dutton? Or should Labor’s seeming incapacity to break through on the cost of living, its policy timidity, and its effective abandonment of what were once seen as fundamental Labor ideas and ideals suggest that its separation from the community can only grow?

Labor struggles with some of the legacies of pragmatic decisions made even before the election. Going along with AUKUS, for example, was decided by an inner coterie of party heavies in less than 48 hours after the American, British and Australian agreement was announced. It was decided without consultation with the rest of the front bench, parliamentary caucus or the wider party. It was obviously against the party’s grain, but the leaders feared, correctly, that Scott Morrison would use his coup to wedge Labor to the coalition’s advantage.

As some of his vehement Labor critics, such as Paul Keating and former foreign ministers, Gareth Evans and Bob Carr have said, going along with the proposal might have been reasonable political counter tactics at the time. It would do on the understanding that it would operate until after the election when an incoming Labor government could get a full range of independent advice. Morrison had felt no obligation to brief or consult Labor. He never did on big issues.

But once Labor was elected, it doubled down on AUKUS, without ever explaining its thinking processes. It hasn’t yet. It has appeared in the outcome more servile, more anxious to please and be flattered and more careless of Australian sovereignty than ever it had suggested in its pre-election indications. Perhaps that was because the background and instincts of Albanese and Richard Marles were never steeped in the area. Albanese and Marles may be good factional players, but neither is much respected as a policy wonk, let alone an intellectual or strategist. All it seems to have cost the Yanks was a little tummy tickling and some golf games. Not since Alaska has the US won a nation so cheaply.

British and American defence industry can rival Australia in delays, cost overruns and incompetent management. They, unlike Australia, can in any event abrogate the deal at will. No one knows how Albanese can insist the arrangements do not compromise Australian........

© Pearls and Irritations