Well thought out and stated. I certainly feel betrayed by him and I'm not even a member of the ALP. He is a real threat to any pretensions we have had that Australia is a democracy!
I was at Marrickville Town Hall that evening, 23 June 2022, when Albo appeared to the party faithful and supporters after his first election victory. Ah, how we anticipated great things from the man. And how the crowd were right behind him as he undertook to create great reform. Starting with the Voice, and who knows where we would finish? Perhaps even a republic?
I took had hopes for Albanese when his first announcement on being elected was the Voice. But he dropped that like a hot potato as soon as the Coalition opposed it. He was nowhere to be seen or heard opposing the Advance campaign.
I used to have to turn off the news every time PM Scott Morrison was interviewed. I now do that every time I hear Albanese speak. Betrayal is too soft a description.
I think I've said before, it surprises me how many people say that to me, that they just can't watch him anymore. Maybe it happens to all leaders one way or another but it seems particularly true of AA and tied to a sense of disappointment.
A more astute politician would have known the Voice was a lost cause without at least Liberal party support. As soon as the Spud said he wouldn't support it he should have put it on hold.
The loss created a huge amount of despair for First nations people and their Gubba/Wadjela supporters.
The loss of the Voice did something similar to what the defeat of the Republic did for Howard: it consolidated and validated an alternative view that was never as popular as those defeats implied. A more astute politician is exactly what we need, but you don't become that sort of astute inside the system.
Cosying up to an establishment that will dump him like a hot potato to make way for an LNP or even a ON if it gives capital a better rate of profit while simultaneously undermining the left? It’s madness.
From a political perspective, It’s applying short-termist thinking while claiming to take the long-term view. He may be chuckling at ALP dominance as a consequence of the clown show that is the LNP, but the fragmentation of the Right is a poisoned chalice.
Ha, yes, but if people don't think they are destroying the boat but rather getting their own surfboard to ride, they might be willing to do it. Maga is basically that sort of surfer.
Mal, I notice a story in the papers today about a ON surge and Labor perhaps going into minority govt at the next election, which I think is still getting a bit ahead of the evidence (polls only count for so much). But I do think we are near to crossing a line where the idea that ON is a rabble is less of issue than it might've once been. If we do indeed cross that line, nearly all bets are off. As I've said before, "This, in turn, resonates with another factor: that the magic of the two-party system—largely built on a particular idea of stability—has evaporated and people no longer feel threatened by it."
Everything Albanese does seems designed to contain progressive forces. His only commitment is to the status quo, to prevent any real change in the structure and ways of government. Preservation of the ruling corporate class is paramount. It’s why we all feel like we’re suffocating, breathing the same stale politics in and out until we expire for lack of any prospect of fresh, imaginative thought. We’re a putrid polity.
Agree completely, Tony, and this features a bit in the forthcoming book. But I also think it driven by the party mindset: that may even be at the root of it. The party must be preserved at all costs even if that means fundamentally changing what the party is/was, as per your description. This is why he was/is never going to embrace a progressive minority govt.
Yes Tim. Centre-left “reforming” parties everywhere seem to be in the same position: desperately hanging on to their identities and diminishing influence as global finance and suffering, disillusioned voters instil dread and paralysis. They think that staying small and compliant will save them. Instead, it just leaves them governing out of fear, rather than out of desire to challenge and change a corrosive system.
The similarities to Mark Latham (also someone I admired at one time, mainly because he was the only one to oppose halving the CGT rate) are becoming more obvious every day.
God, I hadn't really thought about that comparison. I wonder how deep the similarities go? Latham clearly ended up having issues on a whole other level. (But I think you've said you can imagine AA ending up in One Nation too?)
He's not centrist, he's right-wing. A centrist would not invite Herzog for a visit - a centrist would demand justice for the victims of genocide. A centrist would make sure that Robodebt could not happen again - it's not "left-wing" to ask that the Public Service not hound vulnerable people into suicide. A "centrist" would cherish the community independents as a once-in-a-lifetime gift, not kick them as soon as the election was over.
He's not "left" at all in any meaningful sense, and getting miffed at a single interviewer is not the argument I was making. Interesting you think he is gaining in confidence and I can see what you mean, but it doesn't look like confidence to me.
He thinks he's got the Zionist lobby supporting him - but that's only till the next election - when they'll be backing their natural allies - LNP/PHON!
The deeper problem isn’t Albanese’s temperament, or even this or that tactical call. It’s that the party machine increasingly treats the movement that gave it moral force as a risk to be contained.
That can pass for discipline. It can even win elections. But at some point, the machine eats the movement, then wonders why the politics around it has gone feral.
Good point, and it feeds through to pre-selection practices and the like. It was sucha big feature of 80s and 90s media coverage that Hawke and Keating were kicking the arse of the party left and activist wings and "bringing them under control". And here we are.
I have never met Albo, but followed his curious person, initially as a boy pretending to be a man amongst women and failing to make a serious impact. He clearly had a high belief in his capabilities, but failed to impress others.
When he suddenly turned up as a politician, I was surprised, and I can only assume that he was the only person prepared to take those positions he has recently been given.
I can't imagine how we are going to get out of this mess.
At the age of eighty nine I am not going to try to do anything about it!
I might've said this before, but Margaret Simon's bio of Tanya Plibersek actually has a lot to say about AA and, per your comments, Peter, it is very revealing of him.
I actually now find Albanese insufferable because he is such a traitor to the original Labour cause. The ultimate hypocrite.
With conservative PMs you always knew where their priorities lay, although there will be a special place in hell for John Winston Howard.
Labour's hatred of the Greens is part of their cosying up to capital. However I saw an article this morning stating 4x as many UK Labour voters went to the greens compared to Reform. Wonder what albanese's advisers make of that?
was having a quiet night watching my St George being flogged again, after having a shocker of a day with termite damage and my builder and now you invite me to consider how Albo is not what did he say "governing for all Australians" not the rich not the multinationals not the Murdochs not caring about the World or its people, not climate pollution not the furkin future of this beautiful Country nor its ingenious peoples and their undeniable love of country and how to care for her.
Anyway thanks for you and your piece by sorry who was ?it Weir spot on
Commiserations about the Dragons, Gary. I don't really follow it closely anymore, but they are still my team. I still have the Australian guernsey Ian Walsh gave my Dad, back in the day. Eleven in a row; can you believe it?
Dear Albo,
No matter how much you suck up to Rupert, he's never going to pick you.
Lucy always pulls the football away, Charlie Brown.
Well thought out and stated. I certainly feel betrayed by him and I'm not even a member of the ALP. He is a real threat to any pretensions we have had that Australia is a democracy!
The next election is going to be really....something
I was at Marrickville Town Hall that evening, 23 June 2022, when Albo appeared to the party faithful and supporters after his first election victory. Ah, how we anticipated great things from the man. And how the crowd were right behind him as he undertook to create great reform. Starting with the Voice, and who knows where we would finish? Perhaps even a republic?
And how disappointed have we been since then?
I wish he could read, and understand, this, Mercurial.
And by "this", I mean your comment, not my article (in case that wasn't clear).
It was clear. I'm sure there were many others at that event who now feel let down.
But what can we do about it? Vote Greens and direct our preference to Labor? I've been doing that for decades.
I took had hopes for Albanese when his first announcement on being elected was the Voice. But he dropped that like a hot potato as soon as the Coalition opposed it. He was nowhere to be seen or heard opposing the Advance campaign.
I used to have to turn off the news every time PM Scott Morrison was interviewed. I now do that every time I hear Albanese speak. Betrayal is too soft a description.
I think I've said before, it surprises me how many people say that to me, that they just can't watch him anymore. Maybe it happens to all leaders one way or another but it seems particularly true of AA and tied to a sense of disappointment.
A more astute politician would have known the Voice was a lost cause without at least Liberal party support. As soon as the Spud said he wouldn't support it he should have put it on hold.
The loss created a huge amount of despair for First nations people and their Gubba/Wadjela supporters.
The loss of the Voice did something similar to what the defeat of the Republic did for Howard: it consolidated and validated an alternative view that was never as popular as those defeats implied. A more astute politician is exactly what we need, but you don't become that sort of astute inside the system.
Thanks again Tim, you sum it up so well. The exact point when the soul leaves his body - so true.
I just don’t get it.
Cosying up to an establishment that will dump him like a hot potato to make way for an LNP or even a ON if it gives capital a better rate of profit while simultaneously undermining the left? It’s madness.
From a political perspective, It’s applying short-termist thinking while claiming to take the long-term view. He may be chuckling at ALP dominance as a consequence of the clown show that is the LNP, but the fragmentation of the Right is a poisoned chalice.
It's chopping up the ship for boiler fuel. You get so far and then there's no ship left.
Ha, yes, but if people don't think they are destroying the boat but rather getting their own surfboard to ride, they might be willing to do it. Maga is basically that sort of surfer.
Mal, I notice a story in the papers today about a ON surge and Labor perhaps going into minority govt at the next election, which I think is still getting a bit ahead of the evidence (polls only count for so much). But I do think we are near to crossing a line where the idea that ON is a rabble is less of issue than it might've once been. If we do indeed cross that line, nearly all bets are off. As I've said before, "This, in turn, resonates with another factor: that the magic of the two-party system—largely built on a particular idea of stability—has evaporated and people no longer feel threatened by it."
Everything Albanese does seems designed to contain progressive forces. His only commitment is to the status quo, to prevent any real change in the structure and ways of government. Preservation of the ruling corporate class is paramount. It’s why we all feel like we’re suffocating, breathing the same stale politics in and out until we expire for lack of any prospect of fresh, imaginative thought. We’re a putrid polity.
Agree completely, Tony, and this features a bit in the forthcoming book. But I also think it driven by the party mindset: that may even be at the root of it. The party must be preserved at all costs even if that means fundamentally changing what the party is/was, as per your description. This is why he was/is never going to embrace a progressive minority govt.
Yes Tim. Centre-left “reforming” parties everywhere seem to be in the same position: desperately hanging on to their identities and diminishing influence as global finance and suffering, disillusioned voters instil dread and paralysis. They think that staying small and compliant will save them. Instead, it just leaves them governing out of fear, rather than out of desire to challenge and change a corrosive system.
And I’m really looking forward to the book!
Thanks, Tony.
The similarities to Mark Latham (also someone I admired at one time, mainly because he was the only one to oppose halving the CGT rate) are becoming more obvious every day.
God, I hadn't really thought about that comparison. I wonder how deep the similarities go? Latham clearly ended up having issues on a whole other level. (But I think you've said you can imagine AA ending up in One Nation too?)
Yes - you are being too sensitive.
If you were repeatedly and rudely asked questions by smug radio presenters, you'd be a tad miffed too.
So he's not as Left as you'd like. He's a centrist leader, getting a little more confidence. Let the man cook.
He's not centrist, he's right-wing. A centrist would not invite Herzog for a visit - a centrist would demand justice for the victims of genocide. A centrist would make sure that Robodebt could not happen again - it's not "left-wing" to ask that the Public Service not hound vulnerable people into suicide. A "centrist" would cherish the community independents as a once-in-a-lifetime gift, not kick them as soon as the election was over.
I see what you mean. I suspect the danger from Islamic extremists is far greater than from Jewish ones.
Not in the long term.
He's not "left" at all in any meaningful sense, and getting miffed at a single interviewer is not the argument I was making. Interesting you think he is gaining in confidence and I can see what you mean, but it doesn't look like confidence to me.
He thinks he's got the Zionist lobby supporting him - but that's only till the next election - when they'll be backing their natural allies - LNP/PHON!
The deeper problem isn’t Albanese’s temperament, or even this or that tactical call. It’s that the party machine increasingly treats the movement that gave it moral force as a risk to be contained.
That can pass for discipline. It can even win elections. But at some point, the machine eats the movement, then wonders why the politics around it has gone feral.
Good point, and it feeds through to pre-selection practices and the like. It was sucha big feature of 80s and 90s media coverage that Hawke and Keating were kicking the arse of the party left and activist wings and "bringing them under control". And here we are.
I have never met Albo, but followed his curious person, initially as a boy pretending to be a man amongst women and failing to make a serious impact. He clearly had a high belief in his capabilities, but failed to impress others.
When he suddenly turned up as a politician, I was surprised, and I can only assume that he was the only person prepared to take those positions he has recently been given.
I can't imagine how we are going to get out of this mess.
At the age of eighty nine I am not going to try to do anything about it!
I might've said this before, but Margaret Simon's bio of Tanya Plibersek actually has a lot to say about AA and, per your comments, Peter, it is very revealing of him.
I wonder when he is going to wake up.
Thanks again TD. Another thoughtful article.
I actually now find Albanese insufferable because he is such a traitor to the original Labour cause. The ultimate hypocrite.
With conservative PMs you always knew where their priorities lay, although there will be a special place in hell for John Winston Howard.
Labour's hatred of the Greens is part of their cosying up to capital. However I saw an article this morning stating 4x as many UK Labour voters went to the greens compared to Reform. Wonder what albanese's advisers make of that?
I suspect it will just make them double down on their attacks here and congratulate themselves on the fact that such attacks seem to be working. Sigh.
Bloody hell Tim
was having a quiet night watching my St George being flogged again, after having a shocker of a day with termite damage and my builder and now you invite me to consider how Albo is not what did he say "governing for all Australians" not the rich not the multinationals not the Murdochs not caring about the World or its people, not climate pollution not the furkin future of this beautiful Country nor its ingenious peoples and their undeniable love of country and how to care for her.
Anyway thanks for you and your piece by sorry who was ?it Weir spot on
Love and Peace to all
Rollo
Commiserations about the Dragons, Gary. I don't really follow it closely anymore, but they are still my team. I still have the Australian guernsey Ian Walsh gave my Dad, back in the day. Eleven in a row; can you believe it?
And now Labor.