Will Albo crash & burn like Whitlam?

by GRAHAM YOUNG – LAST year was the Golden Jubilee of the election of Gough Whitlam’s government, as well as the inaugural year of Anthony Albanese’s. 

Whitlam faced similar economic challenges to Albanese and had some strikingly similar solutions, leading some to expect Albanese will emulate him and crash and burn within three years. 

Albanese is much more in tune with contemporary Australia. Surveys show that millennials, for example, trust socialism more than capitalism.
Graham Young
Executive Director, Australian Institute for Progress

I’m not so sure.

Whitlam is a touchstone in Australian politics. He is revered by the Labor faithful as the man who modernised the country and the Party and loathed by conservatives and the middle-ground as the man who almost broke the bank.

JINGLE

Elected in 1972 on the slogan “It’s time”, backed by an advertising jingle and countless celebrities, he gained a slim majority of seven, faced a double-dissolution election within 18 months, and was subsequently ejected from office with a record loss in 1975 after having been sacked by the governor-general.

Along the way, he expanded the size of the Commonwealth government by around a third to 23.5 per cent of GDP, abolished university fees, established Medibank (now called Medicare), re-established relationships with China (while cutting them with Taiwan), cut tariffs by 25 per cent, revalued the dollar and established an Aboriginal Land Fund.

His biggest challenges were economic – the OPEC Oil Shock, persistently high inflation and a recession; and personnel – a series of scandals caused by incompetent ministers.

Whitlam effected social change in the Labor Party, particularly its branches, transferring control from its founding blue-collar base to a university-educated white-collar one, and he reversed the status quo of 23 years of Liberal-National coalition.

After he lost, Whitlam became the template for future Commonwealth Labor governments of “what not to do”, with the Hawke/Keating government strenuously disavowing any intellectual links.

Yet Whitlam has always held the heart of the Labor movement.

They say history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.

There are certainly many similarities between the economic challenges faced by both Whitlam and Albanese.

Fossil fuel prices are, in some cases, such as thermal coal and natural gas, at record highs, and in the case of oil, at a price substantially above the average of the past 10 years.

Additionally, the government’s net-zero policy by 2050 is set to dramatically increase power prices as cheap-at-the-margin-and-expensive-in-the-network unreliables, like wind and solar, are added to the system.

At the same time, the previous Morrison government substantially boosted the size of government with spending increasing from 27.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 34.8 percent in 2021, and money supply over the course of the pandemic rose between 30 and 50 per cent.

Albanese will find government spending hard to rein in, just as it was for Whitlam, even though most of the increases are the work of others.

He has inherited the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), originally from the Gillard government, which is set to overtake Medicare expenditure by 2025.

That’s assuming Medicare expenditure doesn’t increase, which it probably will as the government is under pressure to bolster bulk-billing.

Labor has also made promises to increase the number and payment of nurses in aged care and increase the subsidies and eligibility for childcare, both of which will hit budget expenditure.

FREEZE

They have also made promises for massive capital expenditure in energy and housing, which will freeze out more productive private investment in other areas of demand and stretch government borrowing.

Wages are also on an upward trajectory. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has made the bizarre claim that company profits cause inflation, and the only way to beat it is to increase wages.

With a new government, the Fair Work Commission seems to agree.

Legislation introduced in the last sitting of parliament now makes pattern bargaining legal again (first time since 2005), and the government has also signalled it will try to eliminate “insecure” work, which looks like a direct attack on contractors and the gig economy.

This has the potential to lead to wage rises on the back of decreased flexibility and decreased productivity.

So all the conditions for stagflation – rapidly increasing government expenditure, skyrocketing energy prices, an inflexible economy and low productivity growth – are in place as they were for Whitlam, coupled with similarly ambitious social policies.

There is even an echo of Whitlam in The Voice referendum. The Voice owes its provenance to his Aboriginal Land Fund, immortalised in the picture of him sitting down at Wave Hill Station and pouring sand from the land, where a 30-year lease had just been purchased for the Aborigines, into the hands of elder Vincent Lingiari.

However, some differences suggest Albanese could be more radical than Whitlam, yet more long-lived.

The electorate was ready for a change after 23 years of the Coalition government, but not too much.

They found much of Whitlam’s agenda unsettling, and it was said Labor tried to do too much too soon. He was swimming against the tide.

SOCIALISM

Albanese is much more in tune with contemporary Australia. Surveys show that millennials, for example, trust socialism more than capitalism.

The culture that is pumped out through educational institutions and the media is more radical and Left-wing than it ever has been. Added to that is the new social media, also a haven for the mavens of the left.

He also has recent experience in government to draw on. It’s argued Whitlam was shambolic because no one in his cabinet had been in a government before.

However, Albanese has a cadre of ministers blooded during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, with 70 per cent having served in previous governments.

Whitlam was also handicapped by control of the Senate, being in the hands of his enemies.

In the case of Albanese, it is controlled by his frenemies – Greens and independents – who will surely not be as obstructive to his agenda as the Liberal-National Parties were to Whitlam.

Or maybe they will, as arguments over the government greenhouse agenda are starting to suggest.

And then there is the quality of the opposition. Fraser was playing with a fairly powerful deck when he beat Whitlam, but the quality of the current opposition has been significantly degraded as a result of the Teals and Greens eating into heartland metropolitan seats.

Another element, lacking in Whitlam’s time, is the potential security threat to Australia.

Australia was moving away from its Vietnam engagement in 1972 but now appears to be moving into an engagement with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

THREATS

External threats tend to encourage citizens to rally around the government.

The same is not true for bad economic times, which tend to see governments punished.

The final arbiter of Whitlam’s success was a recession. But, unfortunately, it may also be the executioner of the Albanese Government.

It’s always better to win an election than to lose it, but some victories have harder landings than others: 1972 was not a good year to win government, and 2022 was the most challenging in the 50 years since.PC

Graham Young

MAIN PHOTOGRAPH:  Anthony Albanese. (courtesy The Spectator Australia)
RE-PUBLISHED: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on February 19, 2023. Re-used with permission.

8 thoughts on “Will Albo crash & burn like Whitlam?

  1. To whom does the monarch’s representative answer?

    It can not be the monarch, given Ms Windsor despicably gutless cop out in 1975 and her desperate attempts to distance herself from the actions of her appointed representative (not my fault, not my problem).

    So, along with proving she was a spinless coward, she posed a question that no one can answer:

    To whom does the monarch’s representative answer?

    1. A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth DURING THE QUEEN’S PLEASURE, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.

      In other words, the monarch is constitutionally required to monitor and assess the performance of the GG, and ensure they remain pleased.

      Ms Windsor’s gutless cop out in 1975 – not my problem – was not just spineless beyond measure. It was also unconstitutional.

  2. Anthony Albanese and Comrade Union Labor Inc Members of Parliament are mostly former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Union Labor Inc governments members and cabinet ministers, often described at the time as chaotic, dysfunctional and incompetent in government.

    In less than one year into the three year term Albanese and Comrades are displaying the old habits and party politics above governing the nation similar to their past performances. Voice party politics for example more important to them than cost of living rising, electricity supply situation and rising prices, interest rates and inflation, and even defence.

    A Treasurer who had time to write his Manifesto on economics during the Christmas holidays, free enterprise, free markets economy overboard to be replaced with socialism. A Treasurer who wants to seize control of superannuation funds to pay for transition to wind and solar “farms” etc, public housing that is State responsibility, etc.

    A Prime Minister who has large L-Plates and does not present as a statesman, more like a city bloke trying to look like a country bloke wearing a Barry Mckenzie outfit. But no fiddle, at least not in public.

    By the way, if I was asked to rate the Labor Greens and the Liberal National on a scale of 1 to 10 based on performances and woke stupidity I would not give them a rating, maybe for the Coalition a 3 for economics and financial management.

    10
  3. Will the unelected representative of the unelected foreign monarch remove the elected head of government, as per Whitlam?

    Will the crown ignore parliamentary support for the PM, and act without warning, without explanation, and without accountability, as per Whitlam?

    And will the monarch show themselves to be a gutless coward, with a pathetic ‘not my problem’ cop out, as per Whitlam?

    Maybe. Monarchy is still as duplicitous and devious and unaccountable as it was in 1975.

    1. Prime Minister Whitlam and Comrade Ministers was caught attempting to borrow a lot of money via a foreign money lender ignoring the rule at the time that approval was required from the Loans Council of Australia. The plotting was exposed when the Age newspaper published a transcript of secretly recorded conversations in a Melbourne hotel room, The Age Tapes. When the Opposition questioned Whitlam Labor in Parliament they attempted to bluff their way out of trouble resulting in the Opposition blocking a money supply bill that Whitlam Labor did not have sufficient voting numbers to pass, so a constitutional crisis resulted.

      After consultation and consideration the appointed Governor General acted in accordance with constitutional law and requested that Prime Minister Whitlam call a double dissolution election and Labor go into caretaker mode until the election was held. Whitlam refused to cooperate so the Opposition Leader Fraser was asked to become caretaker Prime Minister and he agreed.

      The people voted to dismiss Whitlam Labor in a landslide defeat at the double dissolution election.

      The Constitutional Monarch, emphasis on our Constitution, constitutional laws prevailed.

      1. If Labor had won the subsequent election in 1975, would the crown still have done the right thing?

        You see, real monarchists know that the crown’s sole claim to legitimacy is that it is never ever involved in politics.

        Yet you try and use the political outcome of political event – a fckn election – to validate the crown’s actions.

        You are a joke.

        1. Australian Constitution, constitutional laws;

          * Money supply bill blocked.
          * Government cannot get the bill passed because they did not have sufficient voting support.
          * Constitutional crisis.
          * Governor General required to consult for constitutional advice.
          * Advice: double dissolution election must be called as soon as possible.

          Commonwealth (republic) Of Australia, democratic constitutional monarchy, self governing.

          1. Stop lying. It had not failed to pass twice. Supply was not blocked.
            Even if it was, which law did whitlam break?

            Anyway, that’s not the real question.

            Above all else, was Mr Windsor a gutless coward and a spinless constitutional vandal when she claimed the monarch’s representative does not answer to the monarch?

            We all know the answer to that.

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