Albanese is the new Howard. Prove me wrong

If younger generations can’t accumulate capital, don’t act surprised when they turn on capitalism

(AI image generated by Craiyon)

It was my great good fortune to have come of age in an Australia that extended to its children the freedom to dream those large, unfettered dreams. Yet my generation seems to be OK with tying down our own children, binding them up in a web of future debt.
Geraldine Brooks,  Boyer Lecture, 2011

Increasing the supply will just feather the nest of the lucky developers. There’s not a scintilla of evidence that more nice flats in close-in suburbs, many with views, will push prices down. The only thing that might do that is building slums in these areas, and no astute developer is going to do that when there is such a high premium to be made on a better-quality build… Don’t throw nature and heritage under a massive concrete pour that will only enrich developers and leave all the rest of us wondering: just where did our unique and lovely city go?
Geraldine Brooks, SMH (20/1/24)

Celebrated Australian writer Geraldine Brooks had been working for two years when she bought her first home, a house in the Sydney inner-city suburb of Balmain… [she now] epitomises the NIMBYism of landowners who oppose apartments that would force them to share their suburbs with more people. Opposing the 68-year-old Brooks are many Australians under 40, from the left and right, who missed out on a 400 per cent, 30-year property boom that transformed the distribution of wealth across Australia.
Aaron Patrick, AFR (29/1/24)

But when even with all of that [moving to the boondocks, settling for a unit, taking on a side hustle] it just no longer becomes feasible – that is read as a breach in the social contract. The deeper problem with that is that home ownership is a key element of community cohesion.
Mark McCrindle, SMH (29/1/24)

Despite the fact he’s the PM and I often write about political issues, I haven’t paid much attention to Albo. Shortly before the last federal election, I recalled my impressions of interviewing him a couple of times and noted, “I suspect Albo could turn out to be a Labor version of John Howard – an uncharismatic plodder who, after a long and often demoralising apprenticeship, becomes a surprisingly skilled, popular and long-serving prime minister.”      

But by the end of last year, I was starting to wonder if he was up to the job. In a Musing entitled ‘Is Albo sinking into ‘embattled’ territory?’, I noted it wasn’t unusual for Australian PMs to have shambolic first terms, but that Albo seemed to be struggling to stay on top of “events, dear boy, events”. Let alone start dealing with the legacy of four decades of neoliberal policy: insanely unaffordable housing, unsustainably high immigration levels, and a general sense of anomie bordering on burn-it-all-down nihilism.

Like all journalists, I’m often wrong but never in doubt. After recent events, I’ve swung back to thinking Albo is a quiet achiever who may just turn out to be the ALP’s Howard – an everyman type with a deep well of rat cunning.

Why Albo is the progressive Howard
I suspect younger Australians have little understanding of just how much humiliation, belittlement and mockery “Little Johnny Howard” had to endure before ascending, for the final time, to the Liberal Party leadership and then winning four elections. (Before finally losing one to a slightly less old-fashioned clone of himself).  

Whatever else he was, Howard was unquestionably a gifted and disciplined politician. He rightly prided himself on his connection to Middle Australia. Despite his long stint in power, he never surrendered to the temptations of arrogance or complacency. While he no doubt has a substantial ego (nobody who puts themselves forward to run a nation doesn’t have a substantial ego), he kept it on a tight leash. He was less diplomatic earlier in his political career, but while PM he treated others courteously and avoided unnecessarily antagonising them.

Of all the recent PMs – Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison, Albanese – I’d argue that Albo is the most Howardesque, both in terms of his CV and character. Both men grew up in broadly the same hard-scrabble, yet-to-be-gentrified Sydney neighbourhood, neither went to a fancy private school and both are Sydney University alums (Howard did law while Albo did economics). Both were political tragics from a young age, willing to serve out soul-crushingly interminable apprenticeships before being rewarded for their indefatigable self-confidence with the Top Job. Both had absent fathers – immediately in Albanese’s case; from his mid-teens in Howard’s. Both were dutiful sons to adored mothers. Albanese often points out he’s been underestimated all his life. Howard probably would have been tempted to make the same observation prior to 2/3/96.    

Wedges through the ages
Many things about Howard enraged the Left. But what really seemed to send them around the bend was his facility for wedge politics.

That term gets thrown around in many different contexts nowadays, but I’m using it in the sense of forcing your political opponents to adopt a position they believe is morally inescapable but which a majority of voters will object to.

The apotheosis of wedge politics in Australia was ‘the Tampa Affair’. Back in 2001, Howard positioned himself as tough on boat people (and tough on the causes of boat people) while ALP politicians felt compelled to make the we-don’t-like-people-smugglers-either-but-we-really-need-to-treat-desperate-people-decently-and-with-due-process argument. I’ll refer anyone who can’t immediately guess which posture voters found more appealing to the results of the 2001 federal election.

It seems Albo, who had a ringside seat for Howard’s wedging wizardry, learnt a thing or two from the Master.

Like everyone else, I’d long wondered how Albo was going spring free of the Stage Three tax cuts bear trap without losing a leg in the process. It’s early days, but it appears – not least from the anguished howls that have been emerging from Liberal Party politicians and News Corp columnists all week – Albo has not only freed himself from the cunningly laid snare but possibly also just guaranteed himself re-election.

There are precisely two cohorts who get upset about tax cuts for high-income earners getting wound back. They are:

1) High-income earners

2) People who believe – usually mistakenly – they will be high-income earners

A political party that appeals solely to high-income earners isn’t likely to get many votes. But when many voters are aspirational and believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires destined for better things, parties championing the interests of the well-to-do can be remarkably successful.     

It seems the GFC killed off ‘aspirationalism’, especially among the younger generations, in the UK and the US. It appears younger Australians held onto their faith in capitalism and dreams of homeownership a little longer. But like many of their British and American counterparts, lots of Australians under 40 – and, ahem, even some in their fifties (early fifties; just sayin’) – now believe the system is rigged in favour of the elderly and/or wealthy. Individuals much like Geraldine Brooks, who owns two desirable properties – one in Balmain and another in Martha’s Vineyard. (I’m guessing that when the houses she lives in were constructed, there were no Boomer NIMBYs around to mobilise against “massive concrete pours” destroying the “unique and lovely” village atmosphere.)

If the aspirational voter reigned supreme during the Howard/Blair/Bush years, I suspect we’ve entered an era where the ‘brutally realistic’ voter will increasingly be making the political weather. Let me sketch out what I perceive to be the core differences between the aspirational and the realist mindsets.   

Aspirational: If I strive hard enough, I can get a toehold on the property ladder.
Realist: The numbers just can’t be made to work. I can never afford a home. Even if my parents can help me with the deposit.

Aspirational: I too will be rich one day, so I certainly won’t be supporting any redistribution of wealth to the poors
Realist: I’m overeducated and underemployed and am busting a gut at a modestly paid job with no apparent prospect of getting ahead. So maybe we should spend less time obsessing about growing the pie and start paying more attention to how it’s getting sliced up?   

Aspirational: Those running our society are honourable people sincerely dedicated to furthering the public good
Realist: Those running our society are self-interested sociopaths who do no more than pay lip service to the concerns of the common man

If Albo had done what he’d just done during the aspirational era of Anglosphere politics, he might be in as much trouble as The Australian is currently trying to pretend he is in. As it is, I‘d wager big money a bare minimum of 51 per cent of the electorate think it’s entirely appropriate the well-heeled get slightly less so the battlers can get more. After all, it wasn’t that long ago people were banging saucepans for nurses and reflecting on what an indispensable role supermarket shelf stackers and cleaners played. Do you want to be the villain arguing that salt-of-the-earth paramedics, cops and firefighters should now receive less so tax lawyers, property developers and CMOs can get more?   

Inconveniently, if you’re a right-of-centre politician you almost certainly believe hierarchies are natural and that those who rise to the top of them deserve to be richly rewarded. (And that lesser mortals should be content with whatever modest comforts their betters see fit to provide them with.)

Of course, you realise it would be ‘courageous’ to state those views publicly. But your worldview will inevitably leak out in your convoluted, not very convincing responses whenever a journalist shoves a microphone in your face and demands to know, “What’s wrong with rejigging the tax cuts so everyday Aussies get more?” Given the quandary you find yourself in, you’ll probably have to start muttering darkly about bracket creep, as if lots of Australians are on the brink of earning a $200,000+ salary. Or screaming blue murder about Albo lying.

Lower-Middle Australia: a rising political force?
I don’t imagine the accusations of dishonesty will do much damage to Albo at the ballot box. I will again refer to the Master here. After being elected, Howard decreed his election promises could be divided into “core” and “non-core”. He then took a GST to an election, having previously insisted it was dead, buried and cremated. He reneged on his Kirribilli agreement to hand over the leadership to Costello. Indeed, Howard was so shifty his entire government came to be widely perceived as “mean and tricky” at one point.

Looseness with the truth never truly damaged Howard, who continues to top ‘Best PM ever’ popularity polls almost two decades after losing power. During one election, he was even shameless enough to campaign under the slogan “Who do you trust?”.

The subtext of the slogan was that while Howard could never be trusted to be entirely upfront, Middle Australians – especially Middle Australians of a certain age – could trust him to look after their interests. And look after their interests he most certainly did, particularly if they owned one or more properties.

With his rejigging of the Stage Three tax cuts, the Prime Minister has not only wrongfooted his ideological foes, he has also sent a message about whose side he’s really on. Given the term summons up images of relaxed and comfortable suburban homeowners, I hesitate to call this bloc of voters Middle Australia. Perhaps ‘Lower-Middle Australia’ is a better descriptor. These are the Australians who accept that they will never have to worry about paying the top income tax rate, and who increasingly fret about their financial futures.    

Howard often observes politics largely comes down to arithmetic. Albo might just have twigged that the proportion of Australian voters who fall into the Lower-Middle category has long been increasing. And that the proportion that falls into the home-owning, middle-to-high-income-earning category has long been decreasing.