On the other side of the world this week, the US president was not just leaving Ukraine to its fate, and appearing to side with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he was up-ending the post-World War II order built around US and Western European cooperation and security.
On this side of the world, the most common question government ministers seemed to be being asked was when the federal election would be called.
Beyond the normal posturing of a faux election campaign, there is something particularly strange about the fact the rapidly shifting, and deteriorating, global situation does not seem to be resonating with our political leaders and debate.
Peter Dutton certainly called out President Trump’s remarks as “dead wrong” after Trump attacked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” who could soon lose his country. But this was only after his earlier flattery of the US president as a “big thinker” in response to Trump’s calls for the US to take over Gaza, saying he brought “gravitas” to international affairs.
Not even this week’s next-level stage of Trump geopolitics on Ukraine, however, seems to have shifted us out of a space where our leaders convey any sense that they have given any deep or serious thought to the implications of what the president of our most powerful ally — and the one to which we have so aggressively hitched our star in recent years — is either saying or doing.
Finding the path on matters Trump
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continues to chart an ultra-cautious path on all matters Trump, sounding for all the world like a leader who wishes the whole nightmare would just go away.
“Well, what I’ve said is that I won’t give ongoing commentary on everything that Donald Trump says,” Albanese told Melbourne radio on Thursday.
“What I will do is say what Australia’s position is and it’s certainly unchanged. We regard the struggle of the Ukrainian people as being courageous. They are not only standing up for their national sovereignty, they are also standing up for the international rule of law. And Russia’s invasion was illegal. It’s been brutal. It’s had catastrophic consequences for the people of Ukraine, but also, it must be said, for the people of Russia.”
The “running commentary” response has worked to date. But the question of whether it can be confidently expected to do so even over the next few months — when we will eventually get to a federal polling day — is another matter.
This week, we have seen leaders in western Europe forced to move from fumbling cautious politeness to action as a result of the US president’s various pronouncements.
There’s no reason to think Australia’s national interests will not be directly challenged in a similar way, whether that is over economic or geo-strategic interests, or even over political fashion.
A worldwide shift to the hard right, as exemplified by Trump, might have given the Coalition some political encouragement. But as this shift has been turned into wilder and wilder pronouncements, with real world implications, that becomes a riskier proposition if the costs and uncertainty of such a shift resonate with voters.
Meanwhile, political debate is slow and parochial
The Australian political debate seems particularly slow and parochial by comparison with what is happening overseas.
The prime minister and his ministers move methodically through a list of one political problem to another ahead of the final calling of the poll, with policy solutions of very variable quality.
It moved to neutralise the issue of the so-called NZYQ cohort of convicted criminals who the High Court ruled could not be held in indefinite detention after their services were served by announcing an (unspecified) deal to move three of them to Nauru.
Albanese wrote to Tasmanian salmon industry leaders last weekend, vowing to “introduce” special legislation (unspecified or detailed) “to ensure appropriate environmental laws are in place to continue sustainable salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour”.
This as he noted that “it is clear to me the Environment Protection and Diversity Conservation Act… does not allow for a common sense solution on an acceptable timeline”.
That would be the federal government’s primary piece of environmental legislation he is talking about, and the one under which his environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, had ordered a review of aquaculture in the harbour.
So the PM wants legislation to override the government’s own legislation.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of either case, it smacks of the worst sort of pre-election expediency.
The government is desperate to win the seat of Braddon — which runs down Tasmania’s west coast and includes Macquarie Harbour and the neighbouring town of Strahan — from the Liberal Party.
But doing so also risks losing the seat of Franklin, held by one of his own ministers — Julie Collins — to an anti-salmon farming campaign being run by community independent Peter George.
There’s been lots of other strapping down the furniture going on in the past week or two, including matching the Coalition’s proposed ban on foreign investors in existing residential housing for two years, even though most analysts say it will have little effect on the market.
The government is bailing out both Rex Airlines and the Whyalla steelworks. There are legitimate arguments to be made for doing both in an era when we have become more aware of supply chain vulnerabilities and imperfect markets, and less brutal about the needs of private sector competition at all costs.
But equally, there have been lots of questions raised about the management of both these operations, and it’s not clear who might emerge to buy them. The structure of the Whyalla deal does not go as far as anticipating on-going government ownership but is structured to go much further than just keeping the doors open.
But it doesn’t hurt that the deal reinforces the prime minister’s broader political message about the importance of making things in Australia.
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Labor has a hard message to sell
Albanese projects supreme confidence about his chances of leading Labor into another term of government. He believes he has Dutton squarely in his sights on the cost of living issue. The Coalition’s blocking of a range of cost of living measures announced by the government, and its positioning as the frugal alternative that will get inflation — and interest rates — down faster, leaves the PM thinking the opposition leader is vulnerable on the issue.
But the reception to this week’s long-awaited announcement of a first interest rate cut shows just how hard a road that is for the government. Yes, rates are finally coming down but the sense of any relief being felt in people’s pockets is marginal, and trickles through slowly.
The declaration from RBA Governor Michelle Bullock that there won’t be any imminent further cuts only increases the likelihood of more cost of living spending measures being announced before polling day.
There’s a broader issue that the spectre of Trump — and his fellow populist travellers — leave hanging over Australian politics.
Like many left of centre parties, Labor here is caught often fighting the last war: to persuade voters that it is a steady pair of hands on policy, whether that is economic management or foreign policy.
“I believe in shaping change, but I’m not someone who wants to disrupt… I want to bring people with the government on that journey of change,” the PM said this week.
Similarly, Labor has a long held commitment to trying to manage and sustain the institutions of government that deliver public services, even when the global political stage is dominated by those who revel in blowing them up.
“It takes time you can’t change the whole country in one term, we’re functioning, we’re orderly,” Albanese also said.
That is a hard message to sell to voters who feel hard done by and that little in their world is either functioning, or orderly.
Laura Tingle is 7.30’s chief political correspondent.
