Two years ago this week, Anthony Albanese stood before an adoring crowd in inner Sydney as the new Prime Minister of Australia.
Those two years feel a little like 22 years right now, as average Australians endure a cost-of-living crisis never seen before in my 69 years on the planet.
On that Saturday night on the May 21, 2022, Albanese was at his optimistic best, as you would be after enduring so many years in the wilderness of opposition.
The career Labor leftie had risen to the top of a party wrecked by his predecessors Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, with climate change and broken promises along with internal factional wars, seeing Tony Abbott take over as PM.
After Albo — as he loves to be called — won the 2022 election, his first words were about acknowledging the Indigenous land he was standing on and promising to deliver the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.
Cue loud cheering and shouts of “we love you, Albo.”
A jubilant Anthony Albanese with his partner Jodie Haydon on election night. Picture: Getty
That was his first major mistake, promising what would be an expensive, failed referendum to give Indigenous Australian’s a “voice” the rest of us weren’t offered.
The crowd inside the Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL on that night would have ticked Yes to the Voice, but 60 per cent of wider Australia went the other way and said No.
I decided this week on the anniversary of that win to go back and watch again his victory speech.
We can all look a little silly if people go back and look at things we have said in the past – me included – but as an incoming PM that victory speech sets the tone for your time at the top and you speak to the things that really matter to you as a person, not just a politician.
Look up the speech on You Tube like I did — it hasn’t aged well.
After his welcome to country, he said: “The Australian people tonight have voted for change.”
All elections where Government changes hands is a vote for change, surely.
He talked about being humbled and honoured and made the point he was the son of a single mum, living in council housing, who drew a disability pension to make ends meet. We can cut him some slack here for getting there from that background and I am sure that upbringing is at the core of his political beliefs.
At the six-minute mark of that speech, the new PM made a promise to all Australians to “have a positive, clear plan for a better country”.
The dream is turning sour for Anthony Albanese. Picture: Glenn Campbell
He promised no-one would be left behind and he said he wanted to bring Australia together by promoting opportunity and optimism not fear and division.
That was his second mistake. His Voice vote did create division and made people fear what Australia would look like if the concept got up.
It also assumed that people were voting Labor because they didn’t feel optimistic then. But in today’s context, I’m sure people at the beginning of 2022 were feeling a lot more optimistic than they do today.
A cost of living crisis and 13 mortgage rate rises tend to make you feel a little less happy with how the future looks.
At around the 10-minute mark he makes his third mistake and launches into climate change with the astonishing pledge that “together, we can end the climate wars”.
He promises to make Australia a “renewable energy superpower”.
Again, I make the point hindsight is a wonderful thing, but as we sit here two years later the climate wars have never been more intense with increasing numbers of Australians realising what Labor’s rush to renewables will mean in the short-term. Blackouts.
Regional and rural communities will be faced with millions of solar panels carpeting productive farmland, transmission lines will crisscross the country and the landscape will be dominated by giant imported wind turbines.
This is where reality hits the road in ending the climate wars and turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower as promised.
Then came a bunch of promises rattled off one after the other – to strengthen universal healthcare, protect universal superannuation, fix the crisis in aged care, fix universal childcare and create equal opportunity for women.
With two years gone does anyone think aged care isn’t still in crisis?
Has Canberra helped health care in the states, where hospitals routinely ramp ambulances and leave people waiting hours in emergency? I don’t think so.
Do you feel your superannuation is better or worse off and safe from future grabs from Canberra? Surely not.
Has equal opportunity for women improved under this Prime Minister? Well, as a male it’s hard to make that judgement, but I doubt it.
Another promise was a national anti-corruption commission to be established and that’s happened, but I’m not sure it’s done anything yet.
Our new prime minister, as is the tradition, went on thank his colleagues, staff, family and in his words – the true believers of the Australian Labor Party and the members of the “mighty trade union movement”.
Albanese may be learning economic reality usually mugs worthy political promises. Picture: AAP
You wonder whether any of our victorious prime ministers do what I did this week and that is go back and look at what in the first flush of victory you promised to do.
Clearly Mr Albanese hasn’t done that, delivering his own anniversary speech on Friday this week. How else can you explain his failure at a western Sydney Leaders Dialogue in a pre- release drop of the speech, where he doesn’t even mention the failed Voice referendum or even Indigenous people at all.
In that same speech he says he “feels the pain” of cost of living for Australians and what it’s like to struggle and strive. Really, this from someone who lives at The Lodge and Kirribilli House and doesn’t pay for electricity, gas, petrol or even groceries.
Herald Sun
Clearly Mr Albanese hasn’t done that, delivering his own anniversary speech on Friday this week. How else can you explain his failure at a western Sydney Leaders Dialogue in a pre- release drop of the speech, where he doesn’t even mention the failed Voice referendum or even Indigenous people at all.
In that same speech he says he “feels the pain” of cost of living for Australians and what it’s like to struggle and strive. Really, this from someone who lives at The Lodge and Kirribilli House and doesn’t pay for electricity, gas, petrol or even groceries.