It felt like we were waiting for Cyclone Alfred to arrive for an unnatural amount of time.
And, even as its impact started to really be felt in the early hours of Friday morning, its progress towards the coast had slowed to a walking pace, even changed direction.
So too the pace and certainty of federal politics, though that had somehow lost direction earlier in the past fortnight.
After a week dominated by questions about Peter Dutton’s financial interests, it seemed the political establishment was starting to twirl on itself at the beginning of this week in certainty that the Prime Minister would call an election immediately after WA’s poll on Saturday.
The cyclone, its tardiness, but its increasing risks of damage with that tardiness, had ended that certainty by week’s end.
Natural disasters require politicians — along with everyone else — to try to lift themselves out of the political twirl and into more conspicuous leadership roles.
The Morrison disaster in the 2019-20 bushfires reinforced that point rather spectacularly.
Anthony Albanese has been on duty anticipating the cyclone all week and grumpily dismissing questions about what it might mean for election timing.
The government has been ostentatiously on the front foot ensuring that it has already got financial assistance options lined up and physical help from the ADF dispatched.
But the PM has also been happy to point out that it is times like this when our bureaucracy, our systems of government, come into their own.
Loading…
The politicisation of the public service
Speaking at the national situation room in Canberra on Friday morning, the PM said that this was “an example of the public service and what they do”.
“And the increased staff here are making a difference here in people’s lives. And I thank everyone for their diligence, for their commitment, for their professionalism and most importantly for their passion in what they’re doing”.
All undoubtedly true, but also particularly pointed, given that one of the few actual policies announced by the Coalition — despite the fact we are still only weeks away from an election — paints almost everything about the public service as bad.
Not only does Dutton claim he will be able to get lots of savings from cutting public service numbers, he also implicitly suggests public servants are a bunch of bludgers: transforming people who work from home into people who actually aren’t working at all via the odd rhetorical flourish.
“We’ve got a situation with the public service now”, Dutton told Sydney radio this week, “where as I move around the country, people who are working average jobs are working extra hours, in some cases working a second and third job because they can’t afford the bills that have stacked up for groceries, for insurance, for school fees, for their mortgage, etc., etc.”
“They’re paying more tax and the tax that they are paying, they want to know it’s being spent efficiently, and with our public servants in Canberra now, there are about 61 per cent of people who aren’t going to work, they’re working from home, and before COVID, it was just over 20 per cent. I want to make sure that we have a public service which is working for the taxpayers who pay their wages.”
‘Communities come together at a time like this’
The message from the PM this week has been one that has emphasised the role of all the people who work as public servants: in disaster management; in areas like Services Australia which will be crucial in providing help to people post-cyclone; to staff managing contingencies for aged care; to the Australian Defence Forces who started to be deployed on Friday.
He even thanked “all the local ABC staff keeping their communities informed”.
“When nature does its worst, Australians are at our best. We rally, we lift each other up, we look out for our neighbours, we look out for our local community. Communities come together at a time like this.”
A spat over the value of public servants and public duty would not exactly normally rate as a major policy difference between the political parties, if it were not for the overlay of what is happening in the United States at present with Donald Trump unleashing Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency on fundamental public services.
It would not matter so much if the Coalition hadn’t been echoing Trump playbook.
It would also not matter if there were lots of other Coalition policies to talk about.
And it wouldn’t matter, at the retail political level, if Dutton hadn’t been sprung leaving his own electorate in Queensland on Tuesday to attend a party fundraiser at the Sydney harbourside home of hospitality king Justin Hemmes.
Loading…
Stories as lethal as a loose bit of tin
Dutton did interviews the following day (before the fundraising story broke) which interviewers noted were coming from his home on a farm just outside Brisbane.
One radio interviewer asked Dutton whether he would be “sticking around”.
“You’ll be obviously out in [Dutton’s electorate of] Dickson. That’s an area that’s of great concern. Sandbagging and everything is all well and truly underway in Dickson?”, the opposition leader was asked on Brisbane radio.
“I think we should do whatever we can to help family and neighbours”, Dutton responded, without directly answering the question.
“I’ve got an elderly aunt who lives not too far away from us, so going to do some sandbagging at her place later on today, but I just think everyone needs to make sure, you know, trampolines in backyards and all the objects that could fly — a loose bit of tin somewhere, just do whatever you can to make sure that that doesn’t become a projectile that is aimed at your neighbour or at your own place.”
Stories like this can be as lethal as a loose bit of tin at times like these.
None of this is a great starting point from which to go to an election when there are expectations of significant damage likely to come in the next few days to an area of Australia that is home to 4 million people.
The opposition leader’s main attack on the government is that Albanese is “weak”. That’s a harder case to prosecute if events give the PM an opportunity to cast himself in a national leadership role.
But Albanese has also been repositioning himself on other issues in the past week in a way designed to counter the “weak” argument.
Loading
A pushback to Trump’s approach
Donald Trump and the global strategic and economic disruption he is causing, as well as what he is doing at home, casts a shadow over almost every aspect of politics here now.
Albanese pivoted on the issue of Australia’s approach to Ukraine in the face of the shocking scenes last Saturday (Australian time) from the White House of Trump and Vice President JD Vance dressing down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, suggesting Australia might send peacekeepers to Ukraine (a scenario which seems highly unlikely and over which military experts have raised questions).
But it was a signal at least that the Australian government was escalating the pushback against Trump’s approach.
Dutton, by contrast, was arguing that Australia should not be considering boots on the ground and that Ukraine should be a job for the Europeans who were now stepping up to the task.
“President Trump can claim credit for that,” the opposition leader said.
Many would agree that, whatever the theatre, Trump’s actions have indeed spurred the Europeans into action.
But the opposition leader was silent on Trump’s alignment with Russian President Vladamir Putin, saying instead that “to keep somebody like Putin at bay from traversing through Europe, we need to make sure that over the course of this decade and over the course of this century, that European countries are in the best position to defeat any act of aggression.”
Something Trump certainly doesn’t seem to be doing.
Now that it’s confirmed that we will have a May election rather than an April one, pundits are recalibrating for a political trajectory which will include a budget, another Reserve Bank board meeting, and more chaos from Washington DC with direct and indirect effects, potentially including tariffs on Australian goods.
For now, the economic story is better for the government than it has been in a long time: this week’s national accounts showed glimmers of good news, including the end of the per capita recession, and a cut in interest rates in the can.
But it looks like a wild ride ahead — both with the weather and Trump.
Laura Tingle is 7.30’s chief political correspondent.
