Australia and the World Past and Present

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been an member of parliament since 1996.

He is a professional politician and has been involved in politics all of his adult life.

While he studied economics at university, he is not well-known for having a deep interest in the area.

He never sought out the Treasury portfolio nor the Finance portfolio. This was smart from a political point if view. If you take on the Treasury gig, you get blamed for every bump in the economy.

As a minister, he stayed away from economics. As Minister he oversaw Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. He wanted to be a good-time minister. He wanted lots ribbons to cut and lots of roads to build or upgrade. Being the Minister responsible for local government was no problem. The federal government doesn’t have too many headaches with the the third tier of the federation.

He established Infrastructure Australia (IA) as an independent statutory body, which advises government on infrastructure priorities.

IA has introduced a National Infrastructure Priority List.

Before 2008, project selection was often fragmented and politically driven. Infrastructure Australia created a nationally assessed Infrastructure Priority List, ranking projects and initiatives based on economic and social merit.

IA requires detailed cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and robust business cases before projects can receive a positive assessment. It has emphasised problem definition before solutions. This has pushed governments to define the infrastructure problems first, rather than jumping straight to building large assets. It encourages consideration of demand management, technology solutions and pricing reforms. There is often a consideration of non-capital solutions.

A negative IA assessment can create political and media pressure but it does not legally prevent construction.

Since its creation in 2008, IA has influenced project selection, but governments have not consistently funded only the highest-ranked projects.

So, the creation IA was a significant reform.

Albanese’s natural instinct is to try to get along with everybody. He doesn’t want to get anyone’s back up. Part of his success has been his ability to make less enemies than his colleagues.

When Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, she decided to keep Albanese on as Deputy Prime Minister. This attests to his ability to remain on people’s good side.

Albanese stood against Bill Shorten after the 2013 election but didn’t win the contest.

After the 2019 election, Albanese finally secured the leadership and went on win the 2022 election.

The key issue Albanese has faced during his prime ministership has been cost-of-living.

Albo is not a conviction politician. He is almost never prepared to go out on a limb. However, there was one exception. That was his decision to champion the Voice referendum, that would have inserted a Aboriginal representative body into the Australian constitution. And it didn’t workout for him. He had misjudged the mood of the country. For a referendum to be successful in Australia, you need a majority of the population in a majority of the states to vote for the change. No state or territory (with the exception of Canberra) voted for the change.

The Albanese government has proved keen to take measures to address climate change. This has generally taken the form of further extending climate targets.

His government introduced a social media ban for under 16s. This may end up being one of Albanese’s greatest achievements. Times have changed. Kids used to play outdoors. They used to ride their bikes up and down the streets. Now smartphones are everywhere. Social media is ubiquitous. For some time, there has been concern about the negative side of social media. It may be fueling negative self-image and bullying. The Albanese government’s social media ban for under 16s was a world-leading reform. It is the kind of policy that Labor loves. It is social policy reform and they get to tell a big slice of society how to live their lives. But the issue transcends the Labor Party. There are genuine issues with social media. And MPs of all persuasions want to safeguard the childhoods of young people.

The Albanese government has worked on improving relations with Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific and Asia. The Pacific in particular has seen a lot of work. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and other officials seemingly pop up at every key forum and dialogue in the islands. It is not as though the Morrison government had bad relationships with Pacific nations. He didn’t. But the current Labor government wants to be applauded by Pacific nations for what Labor believes is a more enlightened policy. China has been seeking to make diplomatic inroads in the region, trying to deepen connections, offer development projects, and at times trying to secure military access. This is a real issue for Australia given that in World War II the country was attacked via Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands like the Solomons. Labor’s policies on climate change are more palatable to the Pacific Islands, but it is interesting that some island nations still say that they don’t go far enough.

Albanese has overseen a normalisation of the relationship with China. Relations had deteriorated under Morrison. Morrison was prepared to call a spade a shovel. Scott Morrison advocated for an independent and review of COVID’s origins and responses, which would include scrutiny of how it began in China. He framed this push not as a political attack but as a global health necessity: Australia argued the world needed to understand how COVID‑19 originated and was transmitted to humans so that similar pandemics might be prevented in future. The Australian government supported motions at the World Health Assembly for such a review and urged other WHO members to back it. Morrison was open about security problems with China. And China didn’t appreciate it. The country retaliated economically. Albanese has followed a softly, softly approach with China. He is very reluctant to say anything that might get China’s back up. There is no real talk in public about China’s treatment of its minorities. And not much in private too. He wants to focus on the economic relationship.

The Alabanese government formally recognised a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called his Australian counterpart “weak”. The Australian Prime Minister has tried to walk the Israel-Palestine tightrope. It is a difficult task. The overriding sentiment within Labor sits with the Palestinians. Labor is always looking for oppressed groups to stand with and a oppressors to attack. Australian Jews have a long history in this country and have brought a positive contribution to this nation. Many of the great Australian philanthropists have been Jewish. Many Jews fled the horror of the Holocaust and travelled to the other side of the globe in order to escape that kind of hatred and persecution. After the events of October 7, pressure slowly built up inside Australia and life for Jews became more precarious. In Melbourne, there were incessant weekly demonstrations which painted Israel as an illegitimate state.

On 14 December 2024, Australia was rocked by the Bondi Beach shooting. And suddenly, the sentiment shifted. Albanese had to do something to repair the relationship with the Jewish community. We see this back and forth, trying to say something palatable to the the Muslim community and then trying to say something palatable to the Jewish community.

In the wake of the Bondi Beach shooting, he moved to alter gun laws. John Howard had already done much of the heavy lifting here. Albo also had a go at tightening up hate speech laws.

In 2025 the Prime Minister was reelected with an increased majority.

The housing crisis rolls on. It is very difficult for young people to enter the housing market.

In November 2024 he introduced a “help-to-buy scheme”. For first-time-buyers, the government would pay part of the price of a home. Albanese’s housing policy is driven more by politics than by economics.

In his second term he has moved to wipe of 20% of HECS debt.

He wanted to see wage theft criminalised. The bill was passed in December 2023.

His government brought in right to disconnect laws.

Under Albanese, the High Court ruled that the indefinite detention of asylum seekers was illegal. 148 people were let go, some of whom went on to commit crimes.

He has overseen high levels of immigration.

He loves international travel and meetings. He attended the Quad Security Dialogues where he met with Biden and Modi.

Albanese if from Labor’s Left faction. It is likely that as he has grown in prominence, he has moved towards a more centrist position.

Albo is the kind of guy or Prime Minister that you wouldn’t mind having a beer with at the pub. The pub is one of those quintessential Australian cultural backdrops. But it is not his natural environment – probably a good thing for a PM. The most successful Labor PM, at least from an electoral perspective, was Bob Hawke. He was knew his way around a bar. He was comfortable there. When he was drinking a beer, he wasn’t putting it on. It wasn’t a campaign stunt. Some wouldn’t have minded having a beer with Hawke. But it would have been a different experience than having one with Albo. A drink with Hawke would have been up at the bar with the whole establishment hanging on his every word, roaring at some risqué joke. A beer with Albo would be in a quiet corner, perhaps sipping a craft beer and discussing how the rabbitohs are going.

Albo – a man of the people? Well, many are people are prepared to vote for him. I think they are comfortable with him. He doesn’t generate strong emotions. Its kind of like a pot plant in the living room. Its hard to get to worked up about a pot plant.

He is relatively unoffensive. He doesn’t take strong positions. He doesn’t look for hot-button issues. He is wary of saying things that are controversial. He occupies a comfy, beige zone. He is not a conviction politician. He is a vanilla PM.