Anthony Albanese has differentiated himself from Bill Shorten on the budget, saying the Coalition had raised the “ideological white flag” as he urged Labor to claim a win for progressive politics and move on.
The one-time leadership candidate laid out a distinct progressive foundation for Labor at a time when the Coalition moves closer to the political centre, which has seen Bill Shorten adopt more strident positions.
Albanese labelled the Coalition’s budget an “ideological surrender” in a speech to the Transport Workers Union on Thursday.
“After years of negativity and culture wars, the Coalition used the budget to offload much of its ideological baggage and embrace Labor values on some core issues – at least at a superficial level … The way forward for Labor is to accept their rhetorical conversion and triple our pressure for investment, while continuing to argue the case for further progressive reform.”
His comments come 10 days after the senior frontbencher and infrastructure shadow minister was highly critical of Labor’s ill-fated Employ Australians First television ad, which did not reflect diverse backgrounds, labelling it a shocker.
The speech also comes as Labor conducts a vigorous internal debate over its policy positions over the next period ahead of the election.
At a doorstop afterwards, Albanese disputed his speech was a departure from Shorten’s position.
“I was perfectly consistent with what Bill Shorten did in his budget reply,” Albanese said.
“The fact is that they’re trying to capture Labor ideas because they don’t have any of their own.”
Albanese’s comments come as Tony Abbott described his 2014 budget - famous for large cuts to spending - as the “gold standard” of budget repair and labelled Scott Morrison’s 2017 budget the “second best” because it raises taxes.
Abbott said on Sky News there was “no doubt the 2014 budget was the gold standard in terms of budget repair and economic reform”.
But he said his budget was “sabotaged” and “effectively defeated” in the Senate, where many of the harshest welfare cuts, the GP co-payment and university fee deregulation were blocked.
Abbott reiterated his calls for reform of the Senate and repeated his warning that Australia risked joining the “weak government club”.
“The reason why the other week we had a second-best, rather than a first-best, budget was because the first-best budget – effectively the 2014 budget – couldn’t get through the Senate.”
Abbott made the case for budget savings, arguing debt and deficit cannot be reduced while citizens continue to expect as much from the government in future as they receive at present.
Bill Shorten in his budget reply speech moved quickly to oppose the government’s 0.5% increase in the Medicare levy for those under $87,000, even though in government he previously argued the case for it to apply further down the income scale.
Shorten proposed to maintain the deficit levy for high income earners – due to come off in July – something he opposed when the Abbott government introduced it.
Shorten is also opposing the Coalition’s Gonski 2.0 policy, which applies a standard national school funding formula as proposed by the Gonski panel – not currently in place – while cutting funding to some Catholic schools, and provides less funding over time.
Albanese argued progressive positions could be embraced while fighting for much better funding levels.
“The bad news is that while the Coalition has raised the ideological white flag, their rhetorical conversions have not come with investment,” Albanese said.
“For example, they say they embrace needs-based education funding but they are still cutting investment by $22 bn over the next decade.”
Albanese said the budget proved the Coalition had finally accepted universal healthcare, needs-based school funding, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the government responsibility to build critical infrastructure.
He said it was a reminder that Labor drove progress and the conservatives resisted change.
“As we saw with the budget last week, the forces of conservatism and self-interest are always going to struggle to capture the imaginations of people who live their lives according to the concept of the fair go,” Albanese said.
“The Tories will always preach individualism. They will always seek to promote self-interest. But they will also inevitably be forced to more progressive positions.
“That is because while Australians celebrate individual success, it is part of our culture to reject the idea that it is acceptable to leave people behind.”
He argued if change was left to its own devices – like the free market – people would get hurt and that was the point of government intervention.
“We need to accept that we can’t stop change,” Albanese said. “But we need to manage change so that it serves people, rather than victimising them, particularly working people.”
