It seems impossible that the Coalition could hope to win government with policies more popular than Labor’s over the next two terms of parliament.

If, indeed, Sussan Ley is in charge, it is almost impossible to imagine her ever taking a Coalition Government into power. The chances of a conservative Liberal leader, such as Angus Taylor, or Andrew Hastie, taking the Liberals, or a Coalition over the line seem even more remote.

Labor is exploiting the many fissures within the Coalition and within the Liberal Party. So far, it’s for the short-term, without any regard for hopes that the public interest can be served by a relatively bipartisan policy on, say, climate change, or defence spending, or the flirtation with fairly frank racism being injected into immigration debates. Labor, after all, believes that it has already settled the middle ground on such matters to the electorate’s satisfaction.

If Ley cannot draw her party and the National Party to a similar place, it can only hurt their standing, and public perceptions of unity, and guarantee longer periods of exile to the opposition benches. Moreover, public perceptions of extremism, particularly on net zero, will prevent any chance of a long-term rapprochement with the community-based independents and Teals. The strategists and tacticians around Albanese, in short, think that Ley, or Liberal moderates, can stew in their own juices and that the opposition must face its own contradictions.

But if Labor thinks it is comfortably insulated against losing any argument about ideas and philosophies to a united opposition, it must surely be aware that it can still lose elections because of its own deficiencies, or by a loss of public confidence in its leadership or direction.

Perhaps because of obvious incompetence, mismanagement or corruption – signature Labor problems in public perceptions. It could be because the public perceives that Labor has abandoned public virtue in a shift towards divvying up the spoils of office.

Labor could lose office because it was seen to lose charge of the economy, not necessarily because of bad stewardship. Further downturns in world trade, including ones caused by war and conflict in Palestine, the Middle East, and old Soviet Union states, cannot necessarily be avoided by deft steering of the Australian ship alone. Nor can the uncertainties caused by the erratic policies of Donald Trump, whether on tariffs, America First policies, and constitutional lawlessness. The US is not the only nation which can attempt economic coercion.

Labor has done well in advancing its social policy agenda, including in public health, childcare, aged care and disability care. But it has not yet mobilised the public and private resources to achieve its ambitions in public housing, and it is far from clear that it has a plan which will work. It has shown no real willingness to be bold about policies which keep the prices of houses high, and which sustain the wealth of older Australians who already own their own homes and would be irate if house prices — their financial security in their old age — fell. The government is still well behind in developing plans to provide present and future workforces with the skills, the education and the flexibilities for 21st century economies. There is yet no revolution in university research, in Australian minds and aptitudes, or in vocational training, because too much public money has been withdrawn from such sectors. That’s one big horn of supposedly flat productivity growth.

Beyond health and childcare promises was a vow of a higher standard, better and more honest government

But there is another Labor vulnerability which some in Labor’s leadership seem to be ignoring. It involves the suggestion that Albanese has been walking away from the moral mandate he gained when he won the 2022 election. That was an election in which Labor had a limited policy platform agenda, if one to which Labor, once elected, attached high significance, often refusing to go beyond promises it had made.

There were particular promises about health, childcare and the incomes of people working in the care industry.

But running on top of these specific commitments and pledges not to do some things, were general promises of restoring honest, decent, open and accountable government. These included an anti-corruption commission, the restoration of proper process in government, and inquiries into major scandals such as Robodebt. They were made because it was widely felt that standards of honesty and integrity and due process in administration had slipped badly during the period of the Morrison Government. This had often led to open impropriety, including the use of public funds for blatantly partisan purposes such as over the sports rorts and public parking scandals. It had also led to cruel and punitive policies — as it happened, illegal ones — against people on welfare benefits. COVID saw a major diversion of public funds into the private sector, often without open tender and, in many cases, particularly in relation to business handouts to keep people in employment, a lack of proper arrangements to make sure that money was spent for the reasons it had been given. The public service appointment process became politicised, and some departments, including PM&C and Finance failed to exercise their proper functions to see that money was spent properly.

Falling standards in private as well as public institutions

The marked slip in ethical standards was seen in a context of serious failures of integrity in the private sector, including among the banks. A royal commission showed appalling breaches of public trust by leading bankers and board members, many of whom were captains of industry greatly given to opining on public policy. The conduct of some of the banks and some of the bankers invited questions about whether they had breached their ”social licences” – the quid pro quos of government protection by which banking funds had special protection against bank failure. It was shown that bankers had been involved in fraudulent reporting of financial data, and charging customers (including dead customers) for services not provided. Both sides of politics made election promises about implementing drastic reforms recommended by the royal commission, but after the Morrison Government was returned in 2019, and after COVID, reforming zeal was allowed to ebb away and virtually nothing was done.

COVID saw other excesses, including a dramatic escalation in the use of private sector consultants, particularly the Big Four firms, in advising government about policy, and, often, in getting contracts to implement recommendations. The shift pushed aside much of the policy functions of the public service – indeed Morrison more or less said that the government and its consultants would devise the policies, while the public service should confine itself to implementing them.

Labor did not play the leading role in bringing to public notice falling standards of public service, and the way in which the system was becoming wide open to corruption and maladministration. A bigger role was played by the media, academia and the not-for-profit sector, as well as the activities of early community-based independents. They had a particular focus on developing an anti-corruption body based on the NSW ICAC, which had open hearings after its private inquiries showed corrupt behaviour.

Labor adopted the general criticisms with enthusiasm and pledged that a Labor Government would bring back open, transparent and accountable government with integrity, as well an anti-corruption commission and public service reforms. Although somewhat vague about its edges, it was a big part of the 2022 campaign, if only because specific election promises were fairly thin.

The election saw the emergence of the Teals, community-oriented independents particularly focused on effective climate change action. But they were also sure that Australia needed better and more effective government.

To outsiders it was somewhat puzzling that Albanese set out almost immediately to offend and annoy them. He reduced traditional staffing entitlements for independents and others from whom he would be seeking support. He made only minimal efforts to engage with the Teals and other independents about his climate change promises. He was particularly antagonistic towards the Greens (a party now getting about half of Labor’s primary vote, and always critical to Labor winning their majority).

Although he consulted community independents and Teals about the NACC, he went behind these and did a deal with Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, for a NACC fundamentally different from the model he had endorsed and promised at the election. His NACC would not have open hearings. Nor public reports open to discussion. The new model caused widespread dismay, and many believed that Labor had not delivered on its promise, indeed that it had consciously violated it.

Albo’s stunning betrayal over the NACC makes it an undelivered promise

Albanese had much more than the numbers to get it through without the Liberals. He had an explicit mandate. And those in support of the original model were strongly opposed to the weakened version, which dispensed with open hearings. Royal commissions, for example, had open hearings and public findings without being accused of being kangaroo courts. Perhaps Albanese was looking ahead to a day when it might be Labor ministers before an inquiry for dubious behaviour.

The NACC quickly confirmed everyone’s worst fears when it decided not to investigate Robodebt royal commission recommendations to probe corrupt behaviour of a few public servants and an unnamed minister. An inquiry would simply be duplicating what had already been done, the commission said, wrongly and complacently. It would be fair to say that nothing the commission has done since has raised its standing with the public.

It looked initially as if the government were at least serious about public service reform. But four years on, all that can be said is that a number of anodyne “reforms” have occurred, not one of which would prevent a repetition of the same excesses of the Morrison era, possibly by the same people. The public service commission held secret and unaccountable inquiries into public servants criticised by the royal commissioner. In at least one case, it reversed the royal commissioner’s findings without explanation and substituted its own unaccountable and unexplained thought bubble. It also decided that public servants, whose conduct had been criticised and were deserving (if still employed) of punishment, should have their names suppressed. The public service commissioner was strongly criticised for this, but was exonerated by another secret inquiry whose report is not available.

Nor did public service leaders show any enthusiasm about an inquest into irregularities of the Morrison era. It commissioned a recently retired one of their own to examine whether there was anything worth looking at. She thought not, and they all enthusiastically agreed. This was public service leadership from the top.

Labor soon found itself embroiled in another procurement scandal (from the Abbott era) which, deplorable as it was, could have perfectly suited the agenda of a reforming government. It emerged that a leading private sector tax consultant had sat on a government committee discussing ways of closing some big multinational tax loopholes. Later, he and his firm, PwC, decided they would attempt to monetise their inside information by approaching leading multinationals offering advice on how to get around the new legislation. PwC was banned from seeking public sector consultancy work, and its exclusion became an emblem of the decision to wind back the number of consultancies being put about. But soon the Department of Finance thought PwC had suffered enough and recommended that they be brought in from the cold. Finance conducted what it called a review of how PwC had made some organisational changes to import integrity. But it did not seem to think it relevant that PwC was still withholding important internal reports about what it knew of the scandal, how it had tried to cover it up, and why it was still not willing to come clean.

Now Albo is trying to castrate FOI legislation

Labor pledged more open and transparent government. But it was walking back on its pledge from day one, with the most secretive minister quickly proving to be the prime minister himself. Albanese was highly resistant to handing over material under the FOI Act. His department was adept at stalling and delaying decisions until the information in question lost almost any capacity to be embarrassing. The initial Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, talked some of the talk, though he was very slow to appoint FOI commissioners, and even slower to restore resources to the system. His department was hardly giving any example and was preoccupied with legislation designed to make it a crime for any public servant to speak out of turn.

It might have been altogether too embarrassing for Dreyfus to be proposing the effective castration of FOI legislation. But when, at the last election earlier this year, he was found surplus to requirements by his own faction, the new Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, was given the task of seriously winding back the Act, ostensibly to save money. She has tabled a bill for imposing charges for requests, making it easier to refuse requests on the basis that processing it would cause an unreasonable diversion of agency resources, and massively extending the zone by which officials, and ministers, could claim exemption. The purpose of this, it was said, was so as to help timorous government advisers be frank and fearless with advice.

The extra confidence, apparently, comes from not being accountable or criticisable for anything which the public servant has said. There was a time when a senior public servant said that any senior officer who was deterred from doing his or her duty of frankness and candour, by the fear of having their name attached to what they had said, was not fit to be a public servant. Perhaps the modern public servant lacks that sort of courage or concern for the public interest. It can certainly be said that there were very few conspicuous for their fearlessness during the Morrison era. Nor, as it turns out, in the Albanese era, so far as I can discern.

There are predictions that Albanese will soon be loosening rules which attempt to reduce the jobbery and cronyism involved in making appointments to government boards and authorities. Reforms put forward by John Faulkner, the last Labor minister, in 2010 with a strong sense of public stewardship and public duty, required advertisement, interview panels and reasoned recommendations. Alas, the Albanese Government has no minister widely admired for integrity, or determination to put rules before political convenience. They are not all crooks.

But they are pragmatists and not much concerned with “how it looks”.

Many of the modern ministry, however, would prefer the old system by which they could pepper boards with old cronies, trade union mates and party officials. The patronage (with generous sitting fees) is a way of rewarding past favours and perhaps getting them in future. The future patronage most in demand in the present day is an inside berth on the lobbying and glad-handing gravy train that now tends to mark any political retirement.

Albanese, in short, has shed all his good intentions and is well on the way to running a typically sleazy body of insiders, lobbyists, dealmakers and favour-traders, operating outside any system of external scrutiny or accountability for what occurs.

Of course that was exactly what Morrison did. But what a standard! I’m betting that it will be on just such a slack system, displaying just such indifference to public concern, that Albanese and his government will fall. Second-rate systems give second-rate government, and it shows, quickly.

Republished from The Canberra Times, September 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.