LABOR ‘BLEEDING SUPPORT’
The week starts in familiar fashion for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the latest Newspoll making rather grim reading for Labor.
(All polling is to be taken with a healthy dose of scepticism of course, but) The Australian and AAP are leading this morning with the fact polling suggests the Coalition is ahead 51-49 on a two-party-preferred basis.
The Australian states: “A majority of voters for the first time expect the Coalition to win the next federal election, with Anthony Albanese sliding to the lowest approval levels since becoming prime minister amid a fall in support for Labor”.
The paper reckons its polling “reveals a significant shift in voter sentiment against Mr Albanese over the summer break”. The AAP, which headlines its report “Labor bleeding support, hung parliament likely: poll”, says the latest Newspoll represents a 3.1% swing against the Albanese government since 2022 and if repeated on election day “could mean a hung parliament and Labor governing with support from independents”. In other words — nothing new.
The newswire states Albanese’s approval rating has plummeted to its lowest level since he became prime minister, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton closing the gap in the preferred PM poll, which stands at 44-41.
Labor’s primary vote has apparently also dropped two points to 31% since last month, while the Coalition remains at 39%. Regarding that “majority of voters expect a Coalition win” claim, the polling has 53% of voters polled suggesting a Coalition win versus 47% predicting a Labor victory.
Yesterday Albanese was keen to respond to Dutton’s claim the PM was “obsessed with culture wars”.
Speaking in Canberra on Australia Day, the PM was told of Dutton’s comments the day before and responded laughing: “Sorry? Peter Dutton said that? You must be verballing him, seriously. He seriously said that?”
A reporter told Albanese that Dutton has said under a Coalition government Australians would no longer be ashamed of Australia Day.
Albanese said in response: “I’m here on Australia Day and it’s a pity Peter Dutton isn’t here … I look towards what unites Australians at every opportunity. There’s no opportunity where Peter Dutton isn’t looking for ‘here’s the wedge or where’s the division’”.
The PM attended a citizenship ceremony at Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra on Sunday morning as part of Australia Day 2025 celebrations. As well as his surprise at Dutton’s comments, he said at his doorstop interview: “I think what we’ve seen here this morning is the theme — reflect, respect and celebrate — carried out in practice. This was a respectful ceremony. We shared this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth. And earlier this morning, myself and the governor-general met with Ngunnawal elders. It was a very important, respective ceremony. And here, we acknowledge the fullness and richness of our history.
“But what unites us as Australians is our common commitment, whether we are a part of the oldest continuous living culture on Earth, or whether we’re people who are becoming citizens today, we all share that vision as Australians of a fair country, a country in which people can fulfil their opportunity, make a better life than themselves and their families.”
Elsewhere around the country thousands of people attended Invasion Day rallies, backing calls to abolish or change the date of Australia Day, the ABC reports.
Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather told the broadcaster: “I think for a lot of people today is a day of mourning, and it’s not a day of celebration, especially for First Nations peoples”.
Guardian Australia said calls to “change the date” were actually “less of a theme this year than in years past”. Leah House, community leader and descendant of one of the original tent embassy pioneers, told the site: “I feel like we’re mobilising a lot more and not getting caught up in these distractions. At the end of the day we’ve got bigger issues than a date. Our people are dying in this system, in these institutions. Changing the date is not going to change that.”
Some publications made no reference to Australia Day at the top of their sites, such as The Australian Financial Review. The paper instead leads on the predictions the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ quarterly consumer price index update for December on Wednesday will come in below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s forecast, meaning the chance of an interest rate cut next month is apparently “live”.
Finally, at the Australian Open, Jannik Sinner beat Alexander Zverev in straight sets in the men’s singles final yesterday. As Zverev prepared to speak on the court after the game, a spectator audibly yelled out at him. “The spectator’s cry was in reference to a pair of ex-partners who have previously accused the German of abuse,” the ABC reports.
TRUMP: ‘CLEAN OUT’ GAZA
Onboard Air Force One on Sunday, US President Donald Trump called Gaza a “demolition site” and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians.
The Guardian reports Trump said: “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change. You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’”
The BBC says he added the move “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”.
Reuters quotes Palestinians as saying “forcibly displacing” people who are finally returning to their homes during the recent ceasefire would be “impossible, impossible, impossible”. Hamas official Basem Naim told the BBC Palestinians had “endured death and destruction” for 15 months, and would “not accept any offers or solutions”.
Trump said he would raise the issue with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday. The 78-year-old said he had already asked Jordan’s King Abdullah to take in more Palestinians. The BBC says “More than two million Palestinian refugees, most of whom have been granted citizenship, live in Jordan, according to the UN. They are descendants of some of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the conflicts surrounding the formation of Israel in 1948.”
Discussing the call with King Abdullah, Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “I said to him: I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess. I’d like him to take people.”
The Guardian reports Jordanian Foreign Affairs Minister Ayman Safadi said his country’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians was “firm and unwavering”.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the relocation of Palestinians a “great idea”, The Guardian reports. Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti warned against “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, saying: “The Palestinian people are committed to remaining in their homeland”, Palestinian news agency Ma’an reports.
At the weekend Trump ordered the resumption of shipments of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel after former US president Joe Biden had paused their delivery. “They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time,” the BBC quotes Trump as saying.
The president also told the broadcaster it was an “absolute necessity” for international security for Denmark to relinquish control of Greenland to America. “I think we’re going to have it,” he said, adding that the 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.
You’ll recall Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had very different feelings on the matter last week.
Another of Trump’s decisions in his frantic first week in office was the pardoning of almost 1,600 of his supporters who were arrested over the 2021 US Capitol riot. On Sunday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC News he thought the decision was a “mistake”.
“Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do,” Graham told Meet the Press.
Graham claimed Trump wasn’t “tricking people” with the Capitol riots pardons as they had been a campaign promise. He then rather spectacularly said: “I’ll be consistent here. I don’t like the idea of bailing people out of jail or pardoning people who burn down cities and beat up cops, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.”
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
There’s a lot of legal news coming out of America at the moment, what with who’s in the White House again. One case, however, is a tad different to the rest.
The Colorado Supreme Court last week ruled that five elephants can not sue to leave their zoo because they are… elephants and indeed not human.
The Washington Post reports an animal rights group was hoping to have the elderly elephants freed from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and moved to an elephant sanctuary.
The paper says the group cited “a legal process known as ‘habeas corpus’ that allows individuals in custody to challenge their detention or incarceration in court”.
Following a 6-0 ruling against the action, State Supreme Court Justice Maria Berkenkotter said in her ruling: “It bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically.” She added, “Because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim” under Colorado law.
The Nonhuman Rights Project said it would continue to explore ways to proceed in the case, while the zoo criticised the “frivolous” lawsuit. “While we’re happy with this outcome, we are disappointed that it ever came to this,” the zoo said.
Say What?
In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment. A new experiment and a new society.
Sussan Ley
The deputy opposition leader made the comparison during an Australia Day address in Albury, NSW, on Sunday.
CRIKEY RECAP
The beat-up over the NDIS is skewed by a worldview that sees supporting the most vulnerable in our community as an unaffordable cost, while tactically ignoring the benefits to recipients and our society of that care.
We could equally ask whether Australia can “afford” to give wealthy superannuants a huge tax break on their retirement savings. The Commonwealth actually “spends” more (by forgoing taxation) on superannuation tax concessions than on the NDIS, the lion’s share of which goes to the wealthy. Meanwhile, the main residence exemption for capital gains tax clocked in at $47.5 billion in 2023-24, while negative gearing for property cost $27 billion.
Government is all about choices. As John Maynard Keynes pointed out during World War II in Britain, “anything we can actually do, we can afford”. The true constraint on government action is the real resources of the nation, not fiscal firepower.
Those attacking the NDIS for supposedly rampant levels of fraud or its impact on the private sector should be more honest about why they really oppose disability spending: because they don’t want to pay the higher taxes that a broad-based care scheme requires.
It’s a free-for-all, in which you can trust no-one from the president down, and no institution. Not merely has any community building and support — fundamental to the US political economy from the New Deal to Nixon — been abandoned, but even the rules-based competition of neoliberalism now seems a quaint Utopian fantasy.
The success of MAGA Republicanism is a good reason to abandon referring to “late-stage capitalism”. Capitalism’s ability to endlessly absorb threats to its existence and transform them into structures that reinforce it is truly marvellous. Far from wanting to overthrow their economic system, Americans have voted to embrace an anarchic economic free-for-all in which the strong, and most particularly the rich, enjoy the spoils, and your only choice is to work out how best to rip off the next guy.
Why not buy a griftcoin if it gives you the chance to do over someone else? The grift is the thing. It’s the only thing.
The committee has the power to demand remedies, and it has called on Australia to compensate the victims, as well as review its laws to ensure it gets back in step with its international human rights obligations.
Australia can ignore the ruling, and will. In the old days, it might have nodded to it, then done nothing. Now it knows it doesn’t even need to pretend. Where the US (and Israel) go, we follow.
It has taken 80 years for the lessons of 1945 to be completely forgotten, not coincidentally the span of an average life. This particular case, a smallish example of inhumanity, will be lost in the rush as the whole rules-based order falls to the ground.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Auschwitz: 80 years after its liberation, three survivors tell their stories (The Guardian)
Elon Musk’s call for Germany to ‘move beyond’ Nazi guilt is dangerous, Holocaust memorial chair says (NBC News)
Lebanon says 22 killed by Israeli forces after withdrawal deadline missed (BBC)
CIA now favours lab leak theory to explain COVID’s origins (The New York Times) ($)
South Korea’s prosecutors indict President Yoon for insurrection (ABC)
Nine highlights from JD Vance’s first interview since taking office (CBS News)
THE COMMENTARIAT
All of a sudden, Allan is running out of time in Victoria — Patrick Durkin (AFR): The government responded with an economic rescue plan, which was branded a joke. A week later, Pallas — one of the last remaining experienced ministers after Labor won power in 2014 — resigned.
Love him or hate him, former Labor premier Daniel Andrews was respected and appears to have abandoned ship at just the right time.
Allan will not be so lucky. The conversations would have already started about whether she should remain as leader until the next election. If she does, the polling suggests she and her party will face a humiliating and historic defeat.
Is Albo destined to be a one-term PM? — George Brandis (The Age): Where is Albanese’s self-belief? Where is his boldness? If ever there was any, it seems to have evaporated with the defeat of the Voice. Ever since, his government has been a sorry tale of emasculation and incoherence that could have been scripted by Samuel Beckett. Not Waiting for Godot but Waiting for Albo.
No wonder people say they don’t know what he stands for. After his National Press Club speech last Friday, they won’t be any the wiser. The dead giveaway that a government secretly knows it doesn’t have a record of big achievements is when its reelection campaign is more about trying to scare people about the opposition leader than selling itself. That was the drumbeat of Labor’s summer pre-campaign.
It is too late for Albanese to salvage a legacy from his first term. But it is looking increasingly likely that he will yet take his place in history by depriving Jim Scullin of the only thing for which history still remembers him.
