As I’ve been reporting, it’s all going south for Anthony Albanese and his government. It’s been that way since the turning-point of the October referendum loss. Poll after poll, the picture is getting clearer: nothing Albanese pulls out of his political hat – tax cuts, ‘cost of living relief’, cabinet reshuffle – is making the least difference.
In the lastest sign that Albanese is fast heading to be Australia’s first one-term government in nearly a century, the rats are starting to desert the ship. First to scuttle down the hawsers was the face of the failed referendum, former Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney. Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor scurried after. Whispers have it that many more senior MPs are poised to grab their pensions and run.
Now, King Rat himself has joined the stampede.
Former Labor leader Bill Shorten will announce his retirement from politics at a press conference in Canberra with the prime minister on Thursday.
Shorten is the model of a modern Labor politician, posing as a ‘working-class’ lad, despite being born the son of a maritime executive and an academic and attending ‘the best-connected school in Melbourne’. From there, he swanned along the usual Labor careerist path: arts-law degrees, cushy white-collar jobs in union offices and then straight into politics. Not to mention marrying up and up the social (and money) ladder.
Shorten made his career by shafting anyone he could, from the lowest-paid workers in the country, all the way to prime ministers. But it was to be a case of always the bloodstained bridesmaid – “Shifty Shorten” was so unpalatable to voters that he lost the supposedly un-losable 2016 election against Malcolm Turnbull.
When Shorten recently appeared to be fronting public appearances in place of Anthony Albanese, some wondered whether he was getting his bloodstained knife out, yet again. This time, though, the accomplished knifer seems to have been on the pointy end.
Shorten’s exit has been a topic of consistent speculation since Labor won government in 2022 but he has always insisted his focus is on reforming the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which he has championed since he was a junior minister in 2009.
Instead, he’s bailing out and leaving the rest of us to foot the $45 billion per year – and growing exponentially – cost, while he picks and chooses his cushy job-for-the-boys.
Soon after Labor was elected in May 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese informally sounded Shorten out about taking on the role of High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, but the former party leader knocked back the job.
But if Shorten still nursed hopes of clawing his way into the Lodge, he has apparently finally been disabused of that notion.
So, he’s taking a near-million-dollars-a-year sinecure, instead.
Bill Shorten said will be the vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra from February next year.
Anything rather than work for a living.
Another sign that Albanese knows he’s in deep trouble is his apparent readiness to dump the boutique nonsense of ‘climate targets’.
Anthony Albanese could delay unveiling his 2035 emissions reduction target beyond the government’s February deadline, with investors lowering their expectations of a pre-election announcement amid global uncertainty on climate ambition.
‘Climate change’ has never been a first-order concern for the average Australian or New Zealand voter. At most, it scrapes into the top 10, well below bread-and-butter stuff, like cost-of-living, education, healthcare and immigration. “Emissions reduction” is a boutique obsession for the idle rich in the well-off suburbs that vote Green and Teal.
Ordinary people live in the real world – and they’re increasingly fed up with the antics of “Airbus Albo”.
