The last time I saw Anthony Albanese on the main stage of a Labor launch was in the dying days of the Rudd government when he was the deputy prime minister.
That funereal outing in 2013 mourned the lost opportunity of a government completely destroyed by the insanity of the Rudd/Gillard civil war, the aggressive hyper partisanship of Tony Abbott, and powerful institutional forces that wanted to see the back of the most progressive Labor government since Whitlam.
Back then, in 2013, Albanese was staring defeat in the face and struggling to contain his emotions. On Sunday, in Perth, Albanese brimmed with emotion as well, but now he was the Labor leader, daring to hope.
Labor is daring to hope that Scott Morrison can be beaten. Labor doesn’t know whether the PM can be toppled because the buffer the Coalition created for itself back in 2019 might save him.
At the federal level, Labor is more used to losing than winning. People are worried Albanese could serve up a fatal error in the closing days of the campaign that dashes the 2022 dream. That threat is present. But as the campaign enters the final stretch Labor is daring to hope.
Albanese presented to voters on Sunday as a political leader who wasn’t born thinking he was owed the prime ministership. He’s not a powerful orator; he lacks the velvety intonation and the X factor. He didn’t seek to dominate the room; he sought connections in it, looking for faces, reactions, cues.
He was modelling a different style of leadership – a style not that familiar to Australians after a succession of power players in Canberra. Albanese doesn’t exhibit any of the hallmarks of toxic masculinity. Rather than a set jaw, there’s an incline of the head, a gesture of listening – a physical glance at humility.
Albanese’s pitch to voters on Sunday was twofold.
You’ve had enough of Morrison. You’ve figured him out. If you stick with him and his endless politicking and pork barrelling, Australia will be clubbed by the future, and you know it.
Vote for Morrison and you’ll be stuck with stretched government services the Coalition won’t commit to fixing. You’ll be stuck with the climate wars that never end, and you’ll be stuck with your flat wages and your rising prices and an economy that doesn’t work for you.
That was pitch one: you know Morrison is out of tricks, out of time and out of luck, so it’s time to vote him out. This election is a choice “between shaping the future or being shaped by it”.
Pitch two was about the role of government. On that score, Albanese argues Labor knows how to plan, Labor knows how to build the policy architecture of the future, Labor knows about the caring and essential services economy that kept us alive over the past couple of years, and cares enough to make it stronger.
Labor cares enough to take an equity stake in a house you can’t afford to buy to give you a shot of moving past renting. Labor cares enough about women to give them a shot at pay equity. Government, in this pitch, is presented as a partnership with people.
Labor thinks Australians after three years of natural disasters and a pandemic are open to the idea of government being present for people. Morrison thinks that’s a miscalculation, a misread of the mood, and what Australia is up for is for governments to move back and let people write their own destinies.
One of these judgments will be correct. We’ll find out in three weeks.
