Jack Waterford | Albanese has time and space to address his own problems | Eastern Riverina Chronicle

easternriverinachronicle.com.au · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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The Coalition leadership changes and tumults have given Anthony Albanese a potential boon that few of his predecessors, Labor or Liberal, have ever enjoyed. Subscribe now for unlimited access. or signup to continue readingAll articles from our websiteThe digital version of Today's PaperAll other in your areaOver the next six months voters will reassess him from scratch. That's primarily because he is now facing, in Angus Taylor, an opponent from nowhere desperately trying to invent a persona that does not much fit the character he has, and a party likewise trying to squeeze itself into an ever-narrowing space.Albanese's character and reputation have been largely based so far on his performance against Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley, each, in his or her own way, part of a Coalition history that the current leadership team would like voters to forget.Strictly, Angus Taylor, a senior frontbencher and recognised future leader for each of these former leaders, ought to be seen as a part of that history, but he has left few fingerprints for many to remember.The Coalition's recent antics have given Anthony Albanese a rare boon. Pictures AAPHis policy contribution was minor, and unmemorable, even when he was energy minister, shadow treasurer or defence minister. He has left no legacies, other than slapstick presentational blunders, poor skills at prevarication and evidence of abiding vanity.He is said to be a philosophical leader of his tribe - and on that account alone a person of greater potential for his party than the hapless Sussan Ley. No speech he has made in Parliament has ever galvanised or shifted a debate over policy or programs. No insight has changed the way others, even his supporters, see the status quo. But few of his colleagues, and even fewer among the public could remember an original idea for which he has argued, a memorable phrase he has used in debate, or a perfectly characteristic ideal, purpose or end for which he could be said to stand and do no other. He is perhaps the marketer's dream: the blank canvas to be presented as having an attractive but confected and entirely plastic persona.He cannot succeed with that. In short order, his first task is to introduce himself to voters, and to explain what the Coalition he now leads now stands for. He must invent for himself a past and sell the idea that he has long been on a crusade to benefit his nation, its population and his side of politics around policies and programs that are in their best interests. Although he can hardly ignore the scale of popular rejection that the last election and the latest opinion polls show, he must demonstrate why the decline is now over and the revival starts now. He must do that while facing derision from the Labor Party and the contempt of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, which claims that he has tried to steal policies closely associated with her, and that he lacks the ability and courage to carry them out. On the evidence, many disillusioned former Coalition voters suspect she is right.But Angus Taylor is not the only leader that voters will be looking at anew. Anthony Albanese may have been in politics for a long time. He may have been prime minister for longer than any of his predecessors since Bob Hawke 40 years ago. He may have been re-elected in a landslide of a scale not seen for 60 years. He must, by any account, be regarded as a success, a wily and skilful politician, and one with a strong feel for what the public wants.Voters won't look at Taylor without looking at Albo all over againYet he has been prime minister during a period in which many of the public have become turned off by politics and, particularly, by both major political parties. It is by no means only his fault, but he must wear his share of the blame. Once upon a time, about 90 per cent of voters gave their first preference votes to either the Labor Party or one of the coalitions. Last time, about only one in two voters gave their first preference to either. On all the polling evidence, the mainstream parties will score an even smaller percentage at the next election. Voters have chosen alternatives and independents of both the left and the right. In recent times, the Liberal Party has lost voters to moderates such as the teals and community parties, focused on climate change action, integrity reforms and human rights, and to One Nation, a populist party of grievance blaming their woes on immigration, multiculturalism and wokeness.The last election and recent opinion polls show that Albanese is the clearly preferred candidate against the Liberal Party, and probably the Nationals. Labor is getting the preferences of the Greens and some independents, however much Labor campaigns against them almost as strongly as it does against the Coalition. But Labor, like the Coalition, is bleeding first preference votes, and, over the years, Labor's first preference vote has usually been a declining proportion of its two-party preferred vote. It does not appear, to say the least, that Albanese's style and personality have been a factor that has been slowing this trend, however successful Albanese has been in being preferred to the Coalition.Polls and commentaries suggest why. Voters generally, but particularly voters who prefer Labor to the Coalition, think that Labor has been timid in government. They have criticised its small ambition and its failure to push change hard enough. The criticism is stronger now that Labor seems to have an overwhelming mandate. The size of the majority may also be a reward of sorts for not going mad in government, or going too far, but the size of the swing and the nature of the campaign shows that the election was primarily a rejection of Dutton's personality rather than Labor getting a tick for its record.Despite the best efforts of the Murdoch and, increasingly, the Nine media, Labor's standing does not seem to have been much affected by the Bondi massacre, or by Albanese's initial flailing about the nature of the inquiry he should hold. Nor strictly did Albanese's own standing with voters seem to change much. But it was quite clear that it shook his confidence, and that it shook the confidence of many of his supporters, including intimates. The hit was to his judgment, and not, as it has usually been, to his caution, his refusal to be rushed or to give in to mere public pressure, or to extend to outsiders any sort of explanation of what he had been doing or thinking.This time around, he caved in to public pressure about having a royal commission into the tragedy, even after he was aware that the steady drumbeat of regular calls for such an inquiry was being organised and orchestrated by the likes of Josh Frydenberg, the former Liberal treasurer. He was right to hold a royal commission. It was an error of judgment not to have announced it almost immediately after the events, as everyone, including the security agencies plainly expected. But Albanese has made that sort of political error before and resisted all pressure to reverse his position. This time he responded, to cues given him by The Australian, in full hysterical mode, seeming to think it might topple him over the issue.A disastrous Christmas, full of serious political misjudgementsDirectly blamed by some for the shootings, on the basis that he had neglected to act quickly enough to deal with complaints of an upsurge of anti-Semitism, he was soon apologising profusely for his tin ear. He made repeated apologies, taking the criticism as read. There was certainly evidence enough of a dramatic upsurge of criticism of the actions of the Israeli state over its actions in Gaza, but very little evidence that, for most Australians, it had led to a conflation of the actions of the Jewish state with prejudice against individual Jews because of their religion or ethnicity. Most seemed to understand the difference.The government swiftly enacted laws criminalising incitement to racial hatred, and typically made a mash of it - even if they was saved from the full consequences of its errors of judgment by the antics of the opposition and its split. That the legislation contained serious infringements of the right to freedom of speech has since become obvious by the ham-fisted actions of the Australian Federal Police in attempting to seize satirical cartoons portraying Trump and various others, including Benjamin Netanyahu, as Nazi soldiers.Perhaps Albanese cannot be blamed for the overreactions of NSW Premier Chris Minns, or the predictable actions of the NSW Police, though he certainly should have anticipated the problems that the reflex actions stopping demonstrations would cause. One of the legacies of the war on Gaza is that the rights of all Australians to express their opinions, to assemble and to protest government action, including by marching is now considerably reduced. And Albanese himself at times seems to give the impression that he thinks the right to hold a demonstration is a privilege within the gift of a commissioner of police or a Supreme Court judge, rather than a constitutional freedom.Albanese further compounded his misjudgments by inviting Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Australia. Ostensibly this was to comfort the entirely innocent victims of the Bondi massacre and to express solidarity over an attack that has all the hallmarks of an attack on Jews because they were Jews.But Herzog made no bones about his being on a propaganda mission selling the actions of the Israeli state and conflating any criticisms of its actions over Gaza with anti-Semitism. This may have impressed some disposed to see things that way.But it did not increase social harmony, nor did it serve to lower the temperature on matters about which many Australians were already sharply divided. Under Albanese, it seems, it is only critics of Israel who need to calm down.Israel's conduct will remain as a major issue for all Australians, and the present judgment is no longe