Latest / The Front / What Albo 2.0 will do with his immense new power
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
- 0:06Speaker 1: It's Monday, May five, twenty twenty five. A newly empowered
- 0:13Speaker 1: Anthony Albanesi has brought Labor to a whopping ninety seats
- 0:16Speaker 1: in the House of Representatives. Labour's picked up seats in
- 0:19Speaker 1: the Senate to meaning it will no longer need to
- 0:22Speaker 1: negotiate with crossbenches and can get legislation through with the
- 0:26Speaker 1: support of the Greens. Only now there will be a
- 0:31Speaker 1: cabinet reshuffle and a new agenda. Business is worried there'll
- 0:35Speaker 1: be more industrial relations changes, the energy sector wants the
- 0:40Speaker 1: government to recommit to gas, and it seems working from
- 0:44Speaker 1: Home is here to stay. Peter Dutton is out of
- 0:52Speaker 1: Parliament and a devastated Liberal Party is searching for a
- 0:55Speaker 1: new leader and a new identity. Front Runners for the
- 0:59Speaker 1: leadership include Dude Angus Taylor, Susan Lee and Dantean. But
- 1:03Speaker 1: there'll be a reckoning on how the party wins back
- 1:06Speaker 1: voters who've gone to the teals today and every day.
- 1:12Speaker 1: The Australian has all the best coverage of federal, state
- 1:15Speaker 1: and local politics, and you can be the first to
- 1:17Speaker 1: know on all the big stories by joining ours subscribers
- 1:20Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot a U. Today The
- 1:26Speaker 1: Australian's Editor at Large, Paul Kelly on what Albow two
- 1:29Speaker 1: point zero means for all of us This morning, Anthony
- 1:41Speaker 1: Albanezi wakes up as the most powerful prime minister in generations.
- 1:46Speaker 1: My fellow Australians, he's broken all the so called rules
- 1:53Speaker 1: like first term prime ministers never increase their majority.
- 1:57Speaker 2: Serving as your prime minister is the greatest honor of
- 2:01Speaker 2: my life.
- 2:04Speaker 1: Like Australians would never forgive him for the disaster of the.
- 2:08Speaker 2: Voice, and I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land
- 2:12Speaker 2: on which we made and I pay my respects to
- 2:22Speaker 2: elders past, present and emerging today and every day.
- 2:31Speaker 1: Like Labor would be brutally punished for presiding over huge
- 2:34Speaker 1: cost of living increases.
- 2:37Speaker 3: Now, we didn't do well enough during this campaign. That
- 2:40Speaker 3: much is obvious tonight, and I accept full responsibility for that.
- 2:45Speaker 1: None of those predictions came true. Peter Dunton is out
- 2:48Speaker 1: of Parliament. The Coalition has been reduced to half as
- 2:51Speaker 1: many seats as Labor in Queensland alone, a state where
- 2:55Speaker 1: Labor has previously been written off, Labor won at least
- 2:58Speaker 1: six seats. The Greens have grown their primary vote but
- 3:02Speaker 1: lost seats, and the Teals have held and gained some ground.
- 3:09Speaker 1: Paul Kelly is The Australian's Editor at Large and Australia's
- 3:13Speaker 1: most revered political journalist. Paul, You've covered politics for more
- 3:17Speaker 1: than five decades. Where does this election sit.
- 3:21Speaker 4: This is the most extraordinary election I've seen in my
- 3:25Speaker 4: five decades. This is a turning point election for the country.
- 3:30Speaker 4: Nobody predicted the scale of this result. It's transformed Anthony
- 3:35Speaker 4: Albanezi into a prime Minister of immense authority and of
- 3:40Speaker 4: long standing significance. This Labor government will govern for a
- 3:45Speaker 4: long period of time and it's left the Liberal Party
- 3:50Speaker 4: in ruins. One of the questions, of course, is whether
- 3:53Speaker 4: the Liberal Party is actually capable of recovery. If it is,
- 3:58Speaker 4: that recovery will take many years.
- 4:02Speaker 1: At his victory speech in twenty twenty two, Albanezy introduced
- 4:06Speaker 1: the idea of a voice to Parliament, a policy that
- 4:08Speaker 1: ended in defeat and confusion. In twenty twenty five, he
- 4:12Speaker 1: didn't articulate any new policy ideas, but he did celebrate Medicare.
- 4:18Speaker 2: His kart's not Labor red or Liberal blue. It is
- 4:22Speaker 2: green and gold. It is a declaration of our national
- 4:28Speaker 2: values in our national colors.
- 4:32Speaker 1: And the trade union movement to.
- 4:34Speaker 2: The Labor Party's heart and soul, our rank and file
- 4:39Speaker 2: members and the mighty trade union movement of Australia. The
- 4:44Speaker 2: Labor Party will always stand up for jobs and people's
- 4:47Speaker 2: wages and conditions.
- 4:52Speaker 1: After the twenty twenty two election, Paul Labor enacted a
- 4:55Speaker 1: wave of IR reforms that it hadn't taken to the campaign,
- 5:00Speaker 1: things like the right to disconnect, which was a Greens idea.
- 5:03Speaker 1: Should we now expect another wave of IR reform.
- 5:07Speaker 4: I think the government of the Labor Party will come
- 5:10Speaker 4: under immense pressure from every progressive group in the country,
- 5:16Speaker 4: demanding money, policies and concessions, and my suspicion is that
- 5:23Speaker 4: Anthony Alberzi will respond to that with a lot of discretion,
- 5:28Speaker 4: caution and authority. What's happened in this campaign is the
- 5:32Speaker 4: country's moved to the left in economic, social and cultural terms.
- 5:37Speaker 4: But I think Albanzi will still want to govern from
- 5:41Speaker 4: what he sees as being the Labor center.
- 5:47Speaker 1: There was a lot of talk during the campaign that
- 5:49Speaker 1: this election would be about one issue cost of living?
- 5:53Speaker 1: Was that true in the end, Well, it was true.
- 5:56Speaker 4: The election was about cost of living, but this was
- 5:59Speaker 4: really to say, this was a really deceptive issue because
- 6:04Speaker 4: the Peter Dutton campaign was far too narrow. I mean
- 6:07Speaker 4: it almost got to the stage where the Liberal Party
- 6:09Speaker 4: stood for cheaper petrol. That's not good enough, that's not
- 6:12Speaker 4: good enough. The Liberal brand was lost. The sense of
- 6:16Speaker 4: what the Liberal Party represents, what the Liberal Party stands for,
- 6:20Speaker 4: was lost. It's one thing to say the issue is
- 6:23Speaker 4: cost of living. We've got to introduce concessions, cheaper petrol
- 6:28Speaker 4: and other changes in order to convince people we want
- 6:33Speaker 4: to look after them. But that only works if you've
- 6:37Speaker 4: got a strong political brand behind it. I think what
- 6:42Speaker 4: happened in this campaign is people didn't really know what
- 6:45Speaker 4: the Liberal Party stood for. The Liberal Party forgot totally
- 6:51Speaker 4: the advice from John Howard that it needs to be
- 6:54Speaker 4: a broad church. It wasn't. It ran on thin policies,
- 7:00Speaker 4: it contracted the entire debate. So I think strategically and
- 7:05Speaker 4: tactically the Liberal Party misjudged, and in particular Peter Dutton misjudged.
- 7:13Speaker 1: In the Senate. Labour's position has improved and it no
- 7:16Speaker 1: longer needs crossbench support. It can get legislation through with
- 7:20Speaker 1: the support of the Greens only. The Greens have lost
- 7:23Speaker 1: two seats in Queensland and leader Adam Bant had a
- 7:26Speaker 1: very tough fight in his seat of Melbourne, but their
- 7:29Speaker 1: primary vote increased and Band says they kicked out Peter Dutton.
- 7:36Speaker 1: Anthony Albanezi is now very dominant and his left faction
- 7:39Speaker 1: is dominant too. He gets to reshuffle the cabinet, of course,
- 7:43Speaker 1: and you'd think that people who were once leadership contenders
- 7:46Speaker 1: like Tanya Plibasik Jason Clair are going to have to
- 7:50Speaker 1: get used to a very new reality. Do you think
- 7:52Speaker 1: he's going to be brutal in reshaping that cabinet?
- 7:56Speaker 4: No, I don't. He will make some changes and the
- 7:59Speaker 4: order to make some change after this result, but I
- 8:02Speaker 4: think there will be a lot of stability. There will
- 8:05Speaker 4: be quite a commitment to the status quo in the
- 8:09Speaker 4: senior positions. After that, of course, there should be some change,
- 8:13Speaker 4: and I'm certain there will be some change.
- 8:20Speaker 1: Coming up. Where did the Liberals go from here? Up close,
- 8:36Speaker 1: Peter Dutton is smart and witty, a likable, family oriented
- 8:40Speaker 1: former cop and.
- 8:41Speaker 3: Dad and I said to the Prime minister that his
- 8:44Speaker 3: mum would be incredibly proud of his achievement tonight, and
- 8:47Speaker 3: he should be very proud of what he's achieved, thank you.
- 8:53Speaker 1: But in caricature, like in the work of The Australian's
- 8:56Speaker 1: own cartoonist Johannes Leek, he's Lurch Voldemort, a zombie, a
- 9:02Speaker 1: gray faced, hulking undertaker.
- 9:05Speaker 3: We've been defined by our opponent in this election, which
- 9:07Speaker 3: is not the true story of who we are. But
- 9:10Speaker 3: we'll rebuild from here. We'll do that because we know
- 9:13Speaker 3: our values, we know our beliefs and will always stick
- 9:17Speaker 3: to them.
- 9:20Speaker 1: Was it a mistake to choose Peter Dutton.
- 9:22Speaker 4: No, I don't think it was, because after the previous
- 9:25Speaker 4: election in twenty twenty two, when Josh Friedenberg lost his seat,
- 9:30Speaker 4: it became obvious that Peter Dutton was a senior Liberal
- 9:35Speaker 4: and I think the party did the right thing putting
- 9:38Speaker 4: him in. I think we've got to be very careful
- 9:40Speaker 4: about judgments in retrospect. I mean it looked for quite
- 9:45Speaker 4: a lot of the past term as though Peter Dutton
- 9:48Speaker 4: was doing pretty well. Peter Dutton made some really significant mistakes. Firstly,
- 9:56Speaker 4: I think he was trying to win on grievance. There
- 10:01Speaker 4: were seven quarters of negative GDP per capita. This was
- 10:06Speaker 4: the greatest fall in Australian living standards in half a century.
- 10:11Speaker 4: He thought the electorate was coming against Albanisi with baseball bats.
- 10:16Speaker 4: He misread that that was wrong. It wasn't that bad.
- 10:20Speaker 4: The second mistake he made was not to knuckle down
- 10:24Speaker 4: and produce substantial opposition policies at a much earlier stage.
- 10:30Speaker 4: He deferred the hard policy work and what that meant
- 10:33Speaker 4: was that when the campaign came they were underprepared, they
- 10:38Speaker 4: hadn't done the hard work, and they were brutally exposed
- 10:42Speaker 4: on that front during the course of the campaign.
- 10:45Speaker 1: The moderate wing of the Liberal Party has been outsourced
- 10:48Speaker 1: to the Teals. They now win seats that the Liberals
- 10:51Speaker 1: could once rely on. Does the party need to change
- 10:55Speaker 1: to try to win those people back, or do you
- 10:57Speaker 1: think there's a different way forward for the Liberal Party.
- 11:00Speaker 4: Now there's only one way forward for the Liberal Party,
- 11:05Speaker 4: and it's got to avoid any suggestion that there's a
- 11:09Speaker 4: silver bullet on either the right or the left. So
- 11:13Speaker 4: if they're a party conservatives saying the answer is to
- 11:17Speaker 4: put a lot of political water between the Liberals and
- 11:22Speaker 4: the Labor Party by moving further to the right and
- 11:24Speaker 4: becoming more conservative. That is a lecture of doom. On
- 11:29Speaker 4: the other hand, if there are progressive liberals saying what
- 11:33Speaker 4: we've got to do is we've got to move further
- 11:36Speaker 4: to the left and understand what's going on in terms
- 11:40Speaker 4: of cultural change, that is also the path of doom.
- 11:45Speaker 4: The only way forward is to run a broad church.
- 11:49Speaker 4: That is the John Howard philosophy. You've got to understand
- 11:52Speaker 4: how the country's changing, and that means the Liberal Party's
- 11:55Speaker 4: got to change. But it's got to change in terms
- 11:57Speaker 4: of a broad church being a party of both liberal
- 12:01Speaker 4: and conservative traditions, and it's got to reinterpret what the
- 12:05Speaker 4: broad Church means for the decade of the twenty twenties.
- 12:08Speaker 4: And in particular, that means it's got to address its
- 12:12Speaker 4: fundamental identity problems with this country. First of all, it's
- 12:17Speaker 4: a lack of support among the professional, corporate and managerial classes. Secondly,
- 12:24Speaker 4: it's problem with women. Thirdly, its problem with the under
- 12:28Speaker 4: forty vote. Fourthly, it's problem with multicultural Australia. Fifthly, its
- 12:33Speaker 4: problem with public servants. In other words, it's got to
- 12:38Speaker 4: rethink its identity from top to bottom.
- 12:43Speaker 1: The front runners are Angus Taylor, Dan Tien and Susan Lee.
- 12:47Speaker 1: Right now, for the Liberal leadership, that's a huge task
- 12:50Speaker 1: that you've just outlined. Do you think any of them
- 12:54Speaker 1: have what it takes to turn this party around.
- 12:57Speaker 4: We'll have to see. They've lost so many people for
- 13:00Speaker 4: one reason or another out of the parliament Josh Friedenberg
- 13:05Speaker 4: or Christian Porter, or Mantius Corman or Christopher Pine or
- 13:11Speaker 4: Greg Hunt or Scott Morrison or Malcolm Turnbull or Tony
- 13:17Speaker 4: Abbott and now Peter Dutton. I mean, you could just
- 13:21Speaker 4: think of what sort of front bench you could put
- 13:24Speaker 4: together with all the people that they've lost, and that
- 13:29Speaker 4: talent train is a real problem. So I think it's
- 13:33Speaker 4: going to be a very difficult, a very challenging and
- 13:37Speaker 4: a hard road back for the Liberal Party. Now Albanzey
- 13:41Speaker 4: knows that. I think the really interesting thing is whether
- 13:45Speaker 4: Albanese succumbs to Hubris. I don't think he will. I
- 13:50Speaker 4: think he's more in touch with the community than people think.
- 13:53Speaker 4: I think he's realistic, he doesn't have a huge ego
- 13:57Speaker 4: about himself, and I think he judgment is judgment about
- 14:02Speaker 4: government and stability and his capacity to read the Australian
- 14:06Speaker 4: Electric is pretty impressive.
- 14:18Speaker 1: Paul Kelly is The Australian's Editor at Large. You can
- 14:21Speaker 1: read his outstanding analysis and all the rest of the
- 14:24Speaker 1: news you need right now at the Australian dot com
- 14:27Speaker 1: dot au