No politician turns into a frontrunner, not to mention a major minister, with out success. Given how arduous politicians work, although, it’s no shock there’s a bent to minimize the position happenstance performs in two-party electoral races.
What John Howard demonstrated in 2001 is {that a} sensible, hardworking political chief can stretch their luck and, within the course of, prolong the lifetime of their authorities for a time period — or two. Howard backed his luck in 2001, dominated the political panorama till 2007, and forged a political and cultural shadow that also lingers. That’s why each nationwide chief since Howard departed is anticipated to duplicate his requirements — decreasing taxes, paying off money owed and delivering surpluses — whereas performing as America’s loyal deputy on the world stage.
Will Albanese have the luck to get out from below Howard’s shadow? The reply to that query may be discovered within the story of one other politician of nice success, Daniel Andrews.
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The former premier of Victoria retired undefeated in 2023, after three election victories and virtually 9 years in energy, nevertheless it’s nonetheless too early to calculate the income and losses of the federal government he led, not to mention the federal government Premier Jacinta Allan inherited. That’s as a result of the affect of the Andrews-Allan authorities’s decade-long infrastructure blitz — to not point out initiatives such because the landmark Yoorrook Justice Commission — gained’t be absolutely realised till nicely after the 2026 state election.
For occasion, will the $13.4 billion Metro Rail Tunnel — in tandem with the continued work to take away 110 degree crossings by 2030 — change the best way Melbourne lives and works, unlocking high-capacity practice companies and fast-tracking the event of a brand new suburb in Arden? Will the $26 billion North East Link challenge— connecting the Kennett authorities’s incomplete ring highway to the Eastern Freeway — cut back congestion, increase productiveness and financial exercise? Will the supply of the Suburban Rail Loop’s first $34 billion stage gradual Melbourne’s outward sprawl and switch Monash right into a nationwide hub for training, analysis and financial exercise? Will the $12 billion airport rail, just like the Suburban Rail Loop, flip Sunshine right into a regional hub for analysis and financial exercise? Will the $12 billion West Gate tunnel lower congestion and make Melbourne’s west extra productive and habitable?
Don’t look forward to finding thought-about solutions to questions comparable to these till the 2030s — not less than. As for Andrews, in a pleasant interview with Labor strategist Stephen Donnelly on the Socially Democratic podcast, he gave a usually bullish reply to the infrastructure query:
Getting shit finished issues. That was our tradition. That was our observe … Important work isn’t straightforward, and if these tasks have been straightforward they’d’ve been finished a long time in the past they usually wouldn’t be on the docket now. North East Link, as an example; we’ve obtained a hoop highway with a spot in it. Makes no sense in any respect. Right? That’s going to complete up being one of many greatest tasks within the state’s historical past, possibly even the nation’s historical past. It’s an enormous, large challenge. It’s not about ‘can it’s finished?’ It’s ‘what’s the choice?’ It must be finished. These issues must be constructed, in any other case, as we hurtle alongside to being Australia’s greatest metropolis, our high quality of life will likely be unrecognisable if we don’t get on and construct the transport infrastructure that we want. And it’s highway and rail, in addition to hospitals, faculties — all of that.
Andrews has some extent. Melbourne’s inhabitants has grown by 2 million since 2000 — in comparison with 1.2 million over the past inhabitants growth, between 1947 and 1971. This form of demographic explosion places companies and infrastructure below excessive duress. In the Fifties and Sixties, then premier Henry Bolte responded by boosting taxes and spending — driving Victoria’s debt as much as greater than 50% of gross state product. Victoria’s present infrastructure drive, along with large pandemic-related expenditure, is projected to take state debt as much as 25% of GSP by 2028, roughly half of the debt ranges Bolte incurred to cater to child boomers. “Getting shit finished” shouldn’t be low cost.
Andrews was fortunate to win energy in 2014. His success was threefold: fronting a political machine reinvigorated by native, digital marketing campaign ways imported from America; opposing a state authorities that sacked its chief and stalled on reform; and coming arduous on the heels of the Abbott authorities’s disastrous 2014 federal price range. Like Howard, Andrews made probably the most of his luck, main a hyperactive authorities that launched an unprecedented infrastructure blitz. The concentrate on infrastructure made sense: there was a must make up for many years of underspending and catch as much as a runaway inhabitants growth. In the method, he drew equal shares of curses and hosannas.
Overall, a lot of the reward and criticism of Andrews — who, like Kennett, incited adoration and hatred — is one-eyed, if not cross-eyed. Andrews was neither dictator nor saviour. Instead, he was a frontrunner of conviction who, at instances, was restricted by impatience. Of course, that impatience had advantage when it got here to the infrastructure blitz. It additionally helped fireplace Victoria’s mobilisation in response to the pandemic. Melbourne’s epic lockdowns — soundtracked by the live-streaming of Andrews’ every day media conferences, which he held for 121 days straight — confounded standard political knowledge. Andrews was alleged to be committing political harikari by locking Melbournians of their homes and residences. Why, then, was he reelected in a landslide instantly after the worst of the pandemic?
One method to decide Andrews’ 2022 election win is to see it as a vote of confidence in robust management. I’ve one other idea. Victorians didn’t just like the lockdowns — many have been traumatised by the isolation — they usually weren’t impressed by errors just like the botching of lodge quarantine, however they appreciated the truth that Andrews was direct and decisive and have been angered by the Morrison authorities’s perceived and actual makes an attempt to undermine Victoria’s public well being efforts. In brief, extra Victorians beloved than loathed Andrews, they usually didn’t belief the choice.
Coming scorching on the heels of the 2019-20 summer time of biblical bushfires, the pandemic additionally helped shift the political attitudes of many Australians. Voters — particularly these aged below 35 — noticed their world rushing in direction of a sequence of brick partitions comparable to local weather change, housing and power shortages, and generational inequality. During the pandemic, additionally they noticed the distinction an activist authorities might make.
Another byproduct of the pandemic is that extra Australians grew to become extra politically lively, and actively prevented the main political events. I noticed this shift when, through the first pandemic lockdowns, I began working with Pathways to Politics — a non-partisan program aiming to extend the ranks of feminine politicians in Australia. Since 2020, I’ve met lots of of potential politicians by way of Pathways, and roughly a 3rd of these good girls gained’t stand for a serious political occasion. Generally talking, they’ve misplaced persistence — if not religion — with the managerial fashion of politics that dominated the panorama as soon as the reform period ended. Perhaps that’s why Andrews was so in style with voters: he shared their impatience.
Parts of the media — particularly the Murdoch-owned segments — tried to painting Andrews’ impatience as authoritarianism. The actuality was extra nuanced. Andrews’ behaviour as premier mirrored his expertise. He was a minister within the Brumby authorities, which was thrown out of workplace due to a reluctance to fast-track funding in rail infrastructure. He then noticed Victorians throw out the one-term Napthine authorities for failing to behave quick sufficient on infrastructure. When Victorians turned to Andrews in 2014, he wasn’t about to make the identical mistake. He took a fast-forward strategy to authorities, pouring concrete and outsourcing social conundrums to royal commissions moderately than sweating on the slow-burn of coverage reform.
Politically, Andrews’ fast-forward strategy labored; he elevated Victorian Labor’s parliamentary numbers in each election. These successes bamboozled media commentators who assumed Australian governments ought to return to Howard fundamentalism after Covid and concentrate on decreasing debt, reducing taxes and privatising companies. Andrews’ critics in 2022, like Dutton’s marketing campaign would in 2025, took the previous with no consideration, failing to understand that the political panorama had modified. ABC journalists Richard Willingham and Raf Epstein mentioned the media’s cross-eyed protection of Andrews within the aftermath of his 2022 victory:
EPSTEIN: It could be very clear there was numerous hatred of Dan Andrews. The huge downside for the Liberal Party is it was amongst a small group of individuals.
WILLINGHAM: Well, numerous it was within the media. This was a every day, I’d say virtually unprecedented, sustained assault on the premier’s character from sure sections of the media
Brendan Donohoe, a veteran political journalist who ended his profession as a spin physician for the Andrews authorities, spoke to Donnelly’s podcast in regards to the behaviour of some journalists throughout Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns, and the way it broken the media’s public standing:
Journalists thought they’d grow to be a part of the story. So, I bear in mind saying to 1 journalist, he rang me and he mentioned, ‘I’m doing a narrative, you’re restarting flights.’ And I mentioned, ‘Well, that’s information to me.’ And he mentioned, ‘No, no, it’s taking place.’ I mentioned, ‘Well, , it’s an important story. What proof have you ever obtained?’ He mentioned, ‘I’ve obtained an electronic mail.’ I mentioned, ‘Ok.’ I mentioned, ‘I sit up for seeing a tear-out of the e-mail.’ Of course, the story got here out, no tear-out of an electronic mail. Sources say, sources say, sources say. It was full crap, completely crap … People began to get away with it. It didn’t matter what the integrity of the story was. ‘Sources say’ was sufficient … During these every day Dans [Covid media conferences], after we obtained over 100 in a row, as a result of they have been such a giant theatrical occasion with an enormous viewers, some journalists thought that in the event that they have been to make a reputation, they’d elevate their voice. They’d repeat the query 3 times about restrictions within the meat trade and whether or not it might have an effect on veal cutlets as a lot as lamb backstraps and whether or not it might power up the worth, stuff like that … And when somebody would are available, they’d have a digital camera on them, plus the traditional digital camera on the premier, you knew, nicely, that is simply finished for theatre.
What’s revealing about Donohoe’s anecdote is how out of contact some journalists have been. They stored prosecuting the case for an finish to restrictions although, as Donohoe went on to elucidate, greater than 60% of the voters supported public well being measures and — at a time earlier than Covid vaccines — lockdowns have been the surest method to minimise lack of life. “The media,” Donohoe mentioned, “they have been simply torn between ‘COVID doesn’t exist’ or ‘it’s very minimal’ or ‘you’re not doing sufficient to cease that one truck driver coming throughout the border of New South Wales. We’re all going to die’ … Of course, the reality was someplace within the center.”
I don’t suppose expertise is fully in charge for the dying of reality. After all, propaganda has been round for hundreds of years. The distinction now could be that digital applied sciences have industrialised the supply of propaganda. When you strip again the bells and whistles, applied sciences — along with the information they mine —are nothing greater than the buildup of the most effective and worst elements of human nature.
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The downside is that, legally and ethically, societies haven’t been given the time to resolve elementary questions round privateness, information possession and mental property. It’s no shock that — inside this authorized and moral vacuum — human information is being utilized in unregulated methods to socially engineer every thing from tradition to precise wars. Fundamentally, misinformation and disinformation are all about cultural cognition — the tendency for our perceptions of the dangers of societal risks, comparable to local weather change, to be formed extra by beliefs than proof.
This is the cultural and technological tide Albanese has been pushing in opposition to since 2019. To his credit score, he hasn’t flinched. Since taking up the Labor management after the disastrous 2019 election, his strategy has been quietly unyielding — constant and methodical, extra about exhibiting than telling. As prime minister, he has rebooted the federal authorities in his picture — regular, competent, risk-averse. On the worldwide stage, he has introduced himself as a steady-as-she-goes chief, capable of restore relations with China’s President Xi Jinping with out scary Trump. A sensible tactic, given the US is led by a person who governs extra like a pharaoh than a president. Slowly however certainly, Albanese is exorcising Howard’s political ghost.
Is a political exorcism sufficient? Of course not. To qualify as a progressive chief, Albanese must do rather more than simply maintain workplace lengthy sufficient to reprogram Australia’s political tradition. He must develop and implement insurance policies that can save a great nation from the political foolishness of the previous dozen years. After all, as Keating mentioned at the start of his 2002 Manning Clark lecture, “Out right here, on the sting of Asia, a good distance from main markets and pure groupings, concepts are all Australia has to protect itself from the cruel winds of world change.”
I believe Labor’s true believers would love Albanese to emulate Keating and pursue a form of politics as pure and excellent as a Breguet watch, or not less than observe the lead of his former flatmate, Daniel Andrews, and attempt to stretch his political luck by getting shit finished.
This is an edited extract from the 2025 introduction of Catch and Kill by Joel Deane.
