Albo Just Can’t Back a Winner

A positive public reputation takes a long, diligent time to build, but can be destroyed in an instant. A bad reputation is all-but entrenched: kick a puppy once and nobody will ever forget it. Anthony Albanese might as well have booted Toto up the jacksie on the steps of parliament, given how entrenched negative public perception of his leadership (or lack of it) has become.

Nothing Albo does is working for him. Tax cuts, wage rises, handouts and all the traditional pork-barreling stuff is falling into open pockets and on closed ears.

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers couldn’t sell water to a dying man in the desert.

From this week, wage rises, tax cuts and energy subsidies are all going to put more money in people’s pockets.

Yet since the budget, Labor’s primary vote has gone only one way – down.

Because no matter how much Albo and Zippy brag about their economic performance, Australians are stubbornly believing their lyin’ eyes every time they go to the supermarket or open their power bill.

Then there’s interest rates.

Publicly, the Treasurer is on a positive spin over his cost-of-living relief. Privately, however, he will be sweating bricks for the next six weeks, gripped by fear over what the central bank may or may not do in August.

This is now looming as the central test for Chalmers and the government – both economically and politically.

Economically, at best the government can hope for interest rates to stay on hold. Not that that will do much for the government’s fortunes: the more Zippy brags about taming inflation, the more Australians will wonder why interest rates aren’t going down.

If interest rates keep going up, Labor is toast.

Politically, the government is weak, divided and failing to set the moral tone at one of the most critical junctions in Australian society since WWII. The sight of open, and increasingly violent, anti-Semitism marching in the streets and occupying the university campuses is ringing alarm bells across middle Australia and the government is complacent at best, complicit at worst.

There comes a point in negative public perception where nothing can shift it. Scott Morrison reached that point before the last election – Albanese has hit it, too.

Even his Achilles’ heel, the “Airbus Albo” tag, is fast-set. It doesn’t matter, now, whether Albanese does or doesn’t take up the opportunity for another overseas jaunt. He’s damned either way.

The Prime Minister rejected an invitation from NATO’s 75th anniversary summit to meet with world leaders, despite the North Atlantic military alliance’s push to strengthen cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners.

For once, Albanese had a legitimate excuse: the global security system is in a perilous state, nowhere more so than with regard to NATO. While Australia is not a NATO member, it enjoys a privileged “partner status” along with the other “Pacific Four” nations of Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. Leaders of all four nations are invited to this year’s Washington Summit. It could be a crucial meeting for Australia’s immediate future security.

But Albo won’t be going, despite diligently attended in 2022 and 2023. Neither will his foreign minister.

In Mr Albanese’s absence, Defence Minister Richard Marles will instead travel to the United States to attend.

Senator [Simon Birmingham] said it was the the duty of the nation’s leader to attend the meeting.

“Unless Anthony Albanese has a very good reason not to be attending the NATO summit then this is frankly a dereliction of duty by the prime minister,” Senator Birmingham said.

The Australian

Damned if he does; damned if he doesn’t: Albo can’t pick a winner, either way.

It’s a deadly situation for the government – and perilous for the nation.