It’s long forgotten now, but Anthony Albanese arrived in federal politics in 1996 after a campaign some commentators didn’t think he could win.
While Grayndler was an otherwise safe Labor seat, aircraft noise was the big issue in Sydney’s inner west and the young Labor activist was up against a candidate from the No Aircraft Noise party. Tim Gartrell ran the 1996 campaign, and because Albanese likes concentric circles, he coaxed Gartrell back to run his office when he took the opposition leadership.
My purpose this weekend isn’t to revisit ancient history, but to situate us in a moment in time. That year, the tide went out on the Hawke-Keating government.
People tend to think of Albanese as a veteran of the Rudd-Gillard era, and of course he is. But his sensibility and political identity was formed in the Hawke-Keating period. As a politician, Albanese has more in common with someone like Kim Beazley than Kevin Rudd. Rudd was technocratic, Gillard was detail orientated and managerial, and Albanese is big picture empath.
Albanese took me back to his formative period in Makassar this week when he invoked one of Hawke’s conventions. The prime minister declined to answer questions about the Reserve Bank’s decision to increase the cash rate by 50 basis points, citing Hawke’s rule about not answering questions on domestic matters while travelling overseas.
If you watch politics closely, you’ll know Albanese has been setting up various feedback loops, echoes and homages to Hawke on his path to the prime ministership. In these opening weeks of his prime ministership, Albanese is also drawing on Labor songlines from the 1980s and 1990s to tell the story of the country he leads – from stressing the importance of domestic consensus, to the shibboleth that Australia seeks its security in Asia as part of a shared region.
Just before he invoked the Hawke convention in Makassar, I watched the new prime minister deliver a speech in a packed lecture theatre at Hasanuddin University. Faculty, alumni and current students had gathered to listen to the first Australian prime minister ever to visit the city.
I’ve said before Albanese feels as much as he calculates – a Hawke trait. As he walked past me into the lecture room on Wednesday, the warmth of the welcome hit Albanese in the solar plexus. I saw that warmth pick him up and convey him to the podium and the words that had been prepared for the occasion.
The remarks included all the proper jargon, the bloodless diplomatic locutions about the enduring value of “people to people links”. But bit by bit, the prime minister’s story came alive. Albanese narrated the centuries-old relationships between Makassan seafarers and the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land.
He told his Indonesian audience that each December the Yolngu people would look to the sea, “waiting for the horizon to fill with the sails of Makassan vessels”. He said these journeys were now immortalised in northern Australia in rock art and on bark – Makassan “sails forever full with the wind that brought them across the sea”.
Albanese pointed out the fishers from Sulawesi were the first Muslims to visit Australia, “writing the first chapter in the story of all that Muslim people have contributed to our nation”. He then called on Ed Husic, the industry minister, to stand and present himself to the present-day Makassans in the room – many of whom had been educated in Australia. Albanese pointed out Husic held the Koran as he was sworn in by the governor general in Canberra. The room let out a collective “ah” and necks craned to see Husic, the first Muslim to serve in an Australian cabinet.
The point of Albanese’s homily was regions are built on cumulative stories and connective tissue. Albanese wanted to connect young Makassans studying in a lush tropical campus in the Sulawesi region to the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, and to a Muslim minister whose parents had fled Bosnia and to an Australian prime minister who had taken the time to travel east from Jakarta and meet them.
Embedded in the word pictures were the values of a prime ministership: the elevation of First Nations stories, respect and inclusion of minorities, and a sense of shared stakes in dangerous and uncertain times – a message crafted both for domestic and external consumption.
You might be tempted to see this as recently acquired statecraft from a politician more known for his persistent urban infrastructure enthusiasms, but if we track back to 1996 – where I set out this weekend – and look at Albanese’s first speech to parliament, you’ll find these words. “Multiculturalism provides Australia with a unique opportunity to be a microcosm of the world — to show that cultural diversity and respect can lead to a more peaceful, equitable and fulfilling life for all.”
“Of course, the continuation of the process of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians is a precondition for this vision. Defending and extending multiculturalism and reconciliation with Indigenous Australians will be one of my primary concerns as a member of parliament.” As it turns out this particular member of parliament persisted until he became prime minister, where he now gets an opportunity to live those values; to live in that country, and lead it.
The most striking thing about Albanese’s values projection this week, apart from the continuity of his message and the intertextuality, was how serenely the pitch was unfurled.
Right now, in practical terms, the new government is in chaos. Travelling from opposition to government isn’t a hop, skip and jump. It’s a revolution. Administratively, it’s bedlam. These folks are only just now gaining access to their new offices, to their officials, to new phones and communications devices. They are still working through detailed briefings. They are recruiting staff. Campaigns and the immediate aftermath are communal events. There have been significant outbreaks of Covid and flu.
But the newcomers are sprinting out hard regardless, including mounting this week’s trip to Indonesia which, diplomatically speaking, was a full court press – a prime minister, three ministers, a business delegation and a two-city program pulled together in under a week and rolled out in a country that famously rolls on its own time and tide.
Total barking madness. But in the middle of that melee, Albanese achieved some strategic stillness before he bolted home, convened his cabinet, then received Jacinda Ardern in Sydney by week’s end.
The really useful thing about travelling overseas with prime ministers is you can bear witness during times when they are removed from the relentlessness and ceaseless conflict of domestic politics. This decluttering can lead to moments of lucidity, both for them in terms of the articulation of the core objectives, and for travelling reporters. But of course these environments are both real and artificial.
Albanese invoked the Hawke convention in Makassar for all the reasons I’ve outlined and also because he didn’t want to be dragged out of the zone he was in. Back at home, it was all trouble. No fiscal room to move. Rising interest rates. Rising energy prices. Pundits musing openly about the prospects of a return to the stagflation of the 1970s.
Little wonder then that the new Labor prime minister is summoning the spirit of Hawke to bless his government. But I suspect Albanese fully understands prime ministerships are defined as much by events as personal aspirations.
Rudd had to battle the global financial crisis before that government lost the plot and wasted the mandate they were given, and another progressive prime minister brought Labor back to government in Canberra after a long period in opposition only to be confronted by spiralling inflation and an oil shock that sent the west into a recession. His name was Gough Whitlam.
