Spectre of unconfirmed date looms over past fortnight as PM’s political theatre only fuels anticipationGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWas that really the last week of parliament before the election? Every person in Canberra, from senior cabinet ministers to junior staffers, has a different theory.MPs are acting as if they’re about to hit the election trail, with some giving farewell speeches. “See you in a few months if I don’t lose my seat”, one MP told me on Thursday night.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…Spectre of unconfirmed date looms over past fortnight as PM’s political theatre only fuels anticipationGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWas that really the last week of parliament before the election? Every person in Canberra, from senior cabinet ministers to junior staffers, has a different theory.MPs are acting as if they’re about to hit the election trail, with some giving farewell speeches. “See you in a few months if I don’t lose my seat”, one MP told me on Thursday night.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…
Was that really the last week of parliament before the election? Every person in Canberra, from senior cabinet ministers to junior staffers, has a different theory.
MPs are acting as if they’re about to hit the election trail, with some giving farewell speeches. “See you in a few months if I don’t lose my seat”, one MP told me on Thursday night.
Election speculation is our least favourite game in federal politics (bring on fixed terms) but the spectre of the as-yet unconfirmed date loomed large over all that happened the past fortnight in parliament.
Some political theatre from the prime minister only fuelled the anticipation.
The electoral reform bill was rammed through with little debate (if parliament is coming back for the next scheduled sitting week in March, why the sudden rush?). Did Anthony Albanese host some lower house crossbench MPs at the Lodge this week to curry favour with independents who could become kingmakers in a hung parliament?
Why did Labor MPs erupt in an explosion of laughter when veteran backbencher and scallywag Graham Perrett was booted from question time on Thursday, other than it was potentially his last in a long list of 94a ejections? And did Albanese himself cackle “on his last day”, or “on one of his last days”, when Perrett left the chamber with a grin on his face?
If these sound akin to arcane efforts to read tea leaves or divination stones to predict tomorrow’s weather, that’s not far wrong. But the fact is, many MPs are not expecting to come back and are keener to spend every waking second pounding pavement and knocking on doors to whip up votes.
Albanese himself was in good spirits by Thursday night, telling people he thought Labor had a strong fortnight, claiming the Coalition had struggled to sell their message. In a fortnight where Labor passed major agenda items on its Future Made in Australia plan, expanded childcare benefits and electoral reform, as well as tough laws on hate speech and antisemitism, Peter Dutton and the Coalition failed to land a major blow.
Dutton didn’t even take a swing on Thursday; potentially the last sitting day, potentially his last day in the opposition leader’s chair. And he didn’t even ask a question in question time. Labor constantly cackled about their side’s latest zinger on the opposition’s policy for tax-deductible lunches.
Earlier in the week, Dutton had tried to set an impossible bar for Albanese: arguing that securing world-leading exclusive exemptions from US tariffs for Australian steel and aluminium was the absolute minimum.
Dutton claimed because the former Coalition government in 2018 had secured such exemptions, Albanese must also.
Also not in Dutton’s claims was the fact that a so-called “voluntary undertaking” from the Morrison government in 2019 to limit aluminium exports was at the heart of the “verbal commitment” – which the Trump’s administration accuses Australia of breaking. The deal, struck over a dinner in Osaka, was key to Australia keeping the original exemptions during Trump’s first presidency, so it’s hard to criticise the former government much for this. But the Albanese government is not-so-subtly pointing the finger at the Coalition for agreeing to the deal which Trumpworld 2.0 says we’ve breached.
The tariffs come into force in March, by which time we may be in the thick of an election campaign.
The government will be sweating on achieving exemptions by then, even if high-level sources downplay any prospect of an imminent answer. Albanese on Friday zipped to Wollongong, telling workers “we’ve got your back, we support blue-collar jobs” at the region’s Port Kembla Bluescope steelworks.
It doesn’t appear Trump has flagged “great consideration” of tariff exemptions for any country besides Australia, meaning we’re starting at something of an advantage. It’s important to remember these are worldwide tariffs, so it’s far from the alternate reality posed by some on the right that it would be a grave damning of Albanese or Labor if we failed to get the only exemption in the world.
Which brings us neatly back to the election. When will it be?
Smart money in Canberra has long been on 12 April, or 17 May, both avoiding school holidays and the WA election. The April possibility also would render no need for more parliament, and scrub a few weeks of budget estimates – always tricky periods for a government.
One whisper that barrelled through Parliament House this week, however, was a sudden realisation that 12 April is the start of Passover, a major Jewish holiday. In a highly charged social environment that Australia finds itself in, does the government want to run even the slimmest risk of an opponent making the case that holding an election on this date would be disrespectful to the Jewish community?
Albanese, for his part, threaded another piece of red yarn on to the Pepe Silvia conspiracy corkboard that is the art of election speculation, raising the remote possibility of holding two elections.
“We could have a half-Senate election on September 27, any time before then. If there is a Senate and House of Reps election, it has to be before May 17,” he said.
Dragging it out for another seven months. The punters would love that.